Mark MacKinnon
In the hours before Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko took his place at the roundtable amid 28 NATO leaders, the shells began to fall on the city of Mariupol.
By the time NATO had finished promising Mr. Poroshenko a "trust fund" that would allow members to donate to upgrading the Ukrainian military, the strategic Azov Sea port was bracing for an all-out assault by pro-Russian fighters. The rebels have made stunning advances in the past 10 days, helped – according to NATO – by several thousand regular Russian troops, backed by hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles.
The battle for eastern Ukraine, Mr. Poroshenko knows, is rapidly being lost. His country's exhausted army – already overstretched battling a five-month-old insurgency around the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk – was caught unprepared when a column of Russian troops attacked along the Azov Sea coast on Aug. 27, opening a third front the Ukrainians couldn't hope to defend.
And so, on Wednesday, Mr. Poroshenko announced he had agreed to a "permanent ceasefire" with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Despite a hail of criticism, he confirmed on Thursday that he would order his forces to cease firing on Friday. Rebel leaders replied they would stop shooting an hour later if the Ukrainian side was holding to its part of the bargain.
The terms of the deal aren't fully known, and the pact could easily fall apart, but the seven-point plan laid out by Mr. Putin looks a lot like capitulation by the Ukrainian side. There are many in Ukraine, and the West, who aren't happy about that.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk, whose job will be on the line in elections next month, immediately slammed the agreement – which according to the process laid out by Mr. Putin involves a halt in the rebel advance in exchange for Ukrainian forces pulling out of shelling range of rebel-held cities – as "an attempt to hoodwink the international community." Yulia Tymoshenko, Mr. Poroshenko's chief rival in the May presidential election, was also harshly critical of any agreement that would leave part of Ukraine in the hands of Russian or Russian-backed forces.
U.S. President Barack Obama and outgoing NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh-Rasmussen have also expressed cynicism about making a deal with Mr. Putin, who still insists the Russian army isn't even in Ukraine. (He made the same claim about Crimea, only to later admit Russian forces had secured the peninsula ahead of a controversial referendum there in March.) The summit in Wales is expected to end as it began, with more condemnations of Moscow, and the announcement of more sanctions against Russia.
But NATO isn't going to help defend Ukraine. The kind of aid Canada and other Western countries have offered – Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Thursday that Canada would contribute $1-million to the trust fund, money that will help upgrade the Ukrainian military's communications capabilities – won't make a difference against Russian tanks.
Ukrainians elected Mr. Poroshenko, a billionaire confectionary tycoon, by a landslide in May because they saw him as a practical businessman who could negotiate the country through some very choppy waters. And after initially going on the offensive – he promised after his election to crush the insurgency within "hours" – events on the ground have convinced Mr. Poroshenko to make at least a temporary peace.
The Russians have delivered their message. Mr. Putin will not allow the Donetsk People's Republic and the Lugansk People's Republic to be defeated. Mr. Poroshenko can either accept that new reality, and negotiate, or face the prospect of even more Russian troops being sent into Ukraine. (Mr. Putin reportedly warned European Commission President José Manuel Barroso this week that he could capture Kiev "in two weeks" if he wanted to.)
Negotiating from a position of weakness is, of course, far from ideal. To make the ceasefire last, Ukraine will likely have to do one of two things: either draw up a new constitution that brings the breakaway regions back into the fold by giving them new powers – and thus giving Russia renewed influence over the whole country – or accept a "frozen" conflict in the southeast that might even come with Russian "peacekeepers" in Donetsk and Lugansk. Both ends suit Moscow's aims far more than Kiev's.
Mr. Poroshenko certainly knows this. And he appears to have chosen a risky peace over fighting a war that he knows his country can't win. (Or at least that Ukraine can't win without a pause to allow its forces to rest and regroup.)
"The first task is peace. … One cannot deny the fact that it is necessary to stop the deaths of people," Ukraine's presidential press service quoted Mr. Poroshenko as saying ahead of his arrival in Wales. Then he took aim at those criticizing his ceasefire plan. "The people of Ukraine are 100 per cent for peace. Politicos want to play war. I would like to say that I will not let them do it."
The same words could have been delivered to the NATO leaders. All of them seem to want Mr. Poroshenko to continue playing war, encouraging him to stand up to Russian aggression even as they have offered nothing but night-vision goggles and token training exercises to the retreating Ukrainian army.
Speaking before the Wales summit, NATO's deputy secretary general, Alexander Vershbow, made it as clear as he possibly could: "I don't see any red line that, if crossed [by Russia], would lead to military engagement."
In other words, Ukraine must fight alone. And Ukrainians will suffer alone. The death toll in the fighting surpassed 2,600 this week. More than a million people have been forced from their homes.
Western leaders are right to be skeptical about the deal Mr. Putin is proposing: The Kremlin is pursuing its own narrow interests, not those of Donbass residents, and certainly not those of all 46 million Ukrainians. Washington, Brussels and Ottawa are right to condemn and sanction Russia for putting its neighbour through hell these past six months. Moscow would say the West toppled the first domino by backing the February revolution that deposed a pro-Russian government in Kiev.
NATO and the West – if they're not going to offer anything beyond token support – have no right to push Ukraine to keep fighting a war that the country's commander-in-chief has decided it can't win.
The ceasefire may fall apart, and the fighting may resume. But to encourage Mr. Poroshenko in the meantime to keep up a hopeless fight is to nudge Ukrainians toward an even greater disaster than what they've lived through so far.
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Mark MacKinnon