Ukraine: 4 months of an almost ceasefire

News notes

The ceasefire in Donbass theoretically came into effect in September 2014 and February 2015. After multiple ceasefire attempts, the ceasefire of July 27, 2020 is the first one that is “almost a ceasefire”. There have been an average of 140 violations and about 50 explosions per week. This is a very low level compared to the previous 6 years. It is the only one that has resulted in several days without any violations.

The ceasefire is crumbling a bit :

  • 8 days without any violation in August
  • 3 days without any violation in September and October
  • for the moment, there are no violation-free days in November.

The majority of the remaining incidents are in 3 distinct geographical areas:

  • the surroundings of Shyrokine
  • the surroundings of the DFS (water filtration plant near Donetsk)
  • the extreme west of the Luhansk sector

This repetition of violations in these areas seems to show that there is no sub-sector organization and local coordination. Probably only a few hierarchical orders re-launched from time to time by the JCCC military hierarchies without local investment or any medium- and long-term strategy.

If there may have been an embryonic local system at the beginning of the ceasefire, it has probably disappeared: everything that does not officially exist ends up disappearing, with the renewal of the teams, reinforced by the lack of future vision.

The level of explosions increased steadily until mid-November. Since mid-November, things have been a little better, but there have been no more days without any violations.

The lack of a known field survey makes it impossible to know more at this time or to identify more precisely the remaining violations.

Is there a future? None known for the medium and long term.

A ceasefire with no future other than to remain in a low-intensity conflict with no evolution or solution? Probably. This will not bother anyone in Europe, since most European leaders seemed to be unaware that the ceasefire in Ukraine was fictitious and resulted in hundreds of violations every day. This is not a subject that interests and motivates them. Counting and recounting their money, showing nice statistics on COVID and having a different strategy to fight COVID from their neighbor: these subjects motivate them much more.

Is there a pilot? It must be non-existent or unknown: there is no visible perspective.

To be continued

November 29, 2020

Reference texts:

ND201707003 Ukraine Ceasefire – update – 2020-09-23 EN-US
ND201709001 Active Cease-fire control System – update – 2020-09-14 EN-US
ND202004001-6a Variant from ND201707003 for ukrainian authorities EN-US
2020-10-28A Analysis of SMM Report EN-US

Find out more:

Leave a Reply