To summarize the situation, take a look at this graph. It is the weekly sum of violations and explosions since July 27. This date is the beginning od the first credible ceasefire since 2014.

In addition, days without any violation since that date can be taken into account:

• 8 in August
• 0 in December and January until January 24, 2021

The ceasefire was globally ok until the end of November. Since that date, there is a global degradation.

There has been a slight overall improvement in the last 2 weeks. Awareness seems to have started. A TCG meeting was held on January 21. A press release reported discussions but apparently no publishable decisions.

The Luhansk sector has had very few violations in the last few days, but the Donetsk sector reached a record this last weekend. Apparently they are not in phase and do not do the same thing from one sector to the other

When one reads the communiqués of each camp, there is uneasiness and many of the elements accepted in the January 22nd agreement no longer work:

• the parties had undertaken not to respond to shots received unless ordered to do so by their command at the highest level. This is no longer the case: there is a systematic return,
• The JCCC had been presented as an arbiter of violations: it seems that it merely relays the information to the SMM, which itself, as usual, does little more than relaying this information with delay in an unidentified form and frequency, except for public reports that are between 24 and 72 hours late on events, depending on the day they are published,

The officially available information is too partial to be sure of what is going on, but it is probably not much. The local actors seem to apply principles that they apparently did not understand, perhaps because they were not explained to them and perhaps also because there is a lack of a kind of coach for all the actors in the field (JCCC and SMM).

If any of you know SMM observers or members of the JCCC, please allow contact to be made so that we can verify some of the information needed to readjust the ceasefire.

Naej DRANER (naej.draner@gmail.com)

January 26, 2021

Find out more:

• Ukrainian news: https://www.unian.info/
• DPR news: https://dan-news.info/en
• Ukraine SMM daily report: https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/reports
• Reference texts in english : look at available documents

3 statistical elements indicate a progressive deterioration:

• The “number of days without any violations per month”:
  8 in August
  3 in September
  3 in October
  0 in November
  0 in December (until December 29)
  
  
• Weekly totals of violations and explosions
  

• Monthly totals of violations and explosions
  

The first 3 months after the July 27th ceasefire were about the same in terms of violations and explosions.

Between October and November, there were 1.7 times as many violations.
Between November and December, there were almost 3 times as many violations. This month-to-month acceleration is not a good sign. Almost exponential increase.

(violations and explosions are from SMM reports)

Why?

• JCCC’s membership is renewed every 3 months. Has there been a loss of information and behaviour? We don’t know: JCCC never communicate or report objectively and publicly.
• The system supposed to control the ceasefire is still not adequate. The main characteristic of the fighting forces is that they are partially destructured and only partially react to hierarchies, whereas the only measures taken now are hierarchical: there seems to be only one operational CP for all sectors, only one very high-level coordination, nothing adapted to the local situation and traditional hot spots. The organization is fixed on a hierarchical basis, whereas there are precisely hierarchical management breaks that may explain the inability of the combatants to comply with global hierarchical orders.
• The notion of real time does not exist between stakeholders. Information breaks can be several hours or days long, as if everything could wait. When you’re monitoring a fire, every minute counts. It should be the same for a cease-fire monitoring system. It is not. The notion of time seems foreign to them. They end up transmitting hierarchical orders of moderation, but they can wait 24 or 48 hours before they are analyzed and then transmitted to the authorities.

Conclusion:

This is still better than the situation before July 27, 2020, but it is still not a complete ceasefire. The deterioration is insidious because it is slow and invisible to those who do not know the issue. So slow that it will not move any media or leaders who will not be informed and will not inform.

Il serait intéressant de faire parler quelques membres JCCC et SMM pour confirmer comment ils travaillent. Apparemment ils n’ont pas compris ce que serait un système adapté à la situation locale.

Updated on December 29, 2020

Find out more:

• Ukrainian news: https://www.unian.info/
• DPR news: https://dan-news.info/en
• Ukraine SMM daily report: https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/reports
• Reference texts in english : look at available documents

On the evening of December 11th was published the SMM report 295/2020 corresponding to what happened between December 9th at 7:30 pm and December 10th at 7:30 pm.

In total there were 290 violations and 267 explosions (all sectors). The worst day since July 27, 2020. December 10 was a day like before July 27, 2020, the date that was supposed to mark the beginning of a definitive ceasefire, which over the course of the days and weeks became “fictitious” again.

The day before had been a relatively quiet day.

The information available in the SMM report and the Ukrainian press does not allow us to reconstruct the reason for this sudden surge of violence. We can only see that the shootings and explosions took place in a short period of time, as if the artillery calculators were plugged in again or if it was a decision to simultaneously activate several artillery pieces or to respond to any fire.

What’s the problem? Probably in what we don’t see or don’t want to see.

Is December 10, 2020 still a day of ceasefire? Objectively NO. It will be necessary to rethink a new one, on other bases.

December 11, 2020

We must not deny it. The “War Cycle” is a subject where events regularly contradict the principle of the cyclicity of wars. We must take them into account and try to understand.

As a reminder, the War against Iraq in 2003 began at the most unlikely time in the “War Cycle”. This war thus contradicted the “War Cycle”. Some people wanted to use it to demonstrate that this theory is smoky and false. The 2003 war in Iraq led to astonishing demonstrations that reinforce the “War Cycle” by demonstrating a phenomenon of amplification of violence that could be measured by thousands of measurements: Materialization of the “War Cycle” by thousands of measures

Another element that is not yet explained in detail on this site is the “parallelism of History between the Second World War and the post-September 11, 2001”. The war in Iraq occurs (in relative time) at the moment when the allies liberate Europe and the World. This demonstration of the parallelism of History does not really concern the “War Cycle”, but it is a fundamental element that reinforces the Clock of the Unconscious in its basic theory, which is the ” Return Theory”, of which the “War Cycle” is only a derivative application.

For a war that should ridicule its author and his theories, Iraq has become a fundamental war to understand and confirm the Clock of the Unconscious.

We must therefore be careful when we find one or two wars that do not confirm the “War Cycle”, hastily believing that we will find a definitive argument against the Theory.

In 2020, 2 wars thus contradict the “War Cycle”:

• The war in Nagorno-Karabakh started on September 27, 2020
• The war in Ethiopia between the Ethiopian Federal Army and Tigray began in early November.

Moreover, what is interesting is that these 2 wars started in a relatively short period of time (1 month and a half) which can allow us to imagine that these wars would have been favored (conflicts amplified to the point of degenerating into war) by a single unidentified cause.

In 2014, we had a 3-month period during which we were triggered:

• the Donbass war (beginning of April)
• the war against the Islamic State (June)
• an Israel-Gaza war (beginning of July)

exactly as if the same phenomenon at the origin of the “War Cycle” had favored the emergence of 3 wars.

Some will point out that this period from April to July 2014 is a little more than a year and a half away from the theoretical amplification peak of the “War Cycle” which is in December 2015.

YES, it is certain that the phenomenon at the origin of the “War Cycle” is not a perfect sinusoid. It is very likely that it is a cycle that has half-periods of 6 years and others of 10 years rather than exactly 3085 days (about 8 and a half years).

Maybe the real amplification peak was in the second quarter of 2014 rather than the end of 2015?

In the last quarter of 2020, we are close to the peak of the attenuation of wars and we can’t, by a faulty reasoning, show that these 2 new wars help to demonstrate the “War Cycle”.

On the other hand, it is not impossible that the phenomenon at the origin of the “War Cycle” may from time to time have unknown secondary peaks. This hypothesis is gratuitous since we do not know what the phenomenon at the origin of the “War Cycle” is. There is, for the moment, no serious study by astronomers and radio-astronomers, although this is certainly the way to look for it.

A study was done a few years ago to see if the cycle of solar activity would explain the “War Cycle” or have an influence on wars. The conclusion was that the cycle of solar activity is not related to the “War Cycle” but that periods of high solar activity can promote or amplify certain wars.

In the last quarter of 2020, solar activity is minimal. The lowest activity occurred in July 2020. However, there were some very strong solar flares in November 2020.

Nagorno-Karabakh: a “Return from the past” from the end of the 1988-1994 war?

For the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, one could consider the new war to be a “Return” from the end of the 1988-1994 war, which ended on 16 May 1994. According to the “Return Theory”, the probable date of return was September 2019, which corresponds to the 25-year cycle. Given the known uncertainty of + or – 2 years, the war of 2020 can be considered as a “negative Return” (since it is against the original event) .

Moreover, one could attempt to construct a negative parallelism of history between the period from 1989 to 1995, which corresponds to the period from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the final disintegration of the USSR, and the few years that followed. What is interesting is that all the events identified for the moment are in negative logic. This would be the only known case at the moment. This parallel part of the history is not yet presented on this site. It is a fascinating part and not as fragile and far-fetched as it seems at first glance. Making it available to the public still requires some checking

What to conclude?

Nothing for the moment. It is necessary to keep in mind this period and these 2 wars that contradict the “War Cycle”. When an explanation will be found for the “War Cycle”, it is possible that this anomaly can be explained or that it will become a recognized contradictory exception. For the hypothesis of a “Return”, one would have to dig deeper into the subject before being able to conclude.

December 8, 2020

In many developing countries, the rejection of election results can lead to the outbreak of civil war. This happens regularly in Africa.

Can this happen in the United States?

There has not yet been a pitched battle between Trump and Biden supporters. The democratic tradition of the United States should prevail, but the image of American democracy is seriously tarnished, with the impression of being in a new banana republic.

In a provocative way, one could ask the question: can the greatest democracy be transformed into a dictatorship or in a softer form: autocracy?

Everyone will answer: NO. This is true for the moment, but Trump’s behavior is a first blow to a democratic tradition that seemed to be taken for granted and institutionalized.

The current situation in the United States is a typical case of the outbreak of civil war in countries with no democratic tradition. But we all believe that this will not happen in the United States.

But let’s wait a little longer: day by day, Trump has surprises in store for us. While everyone thought he was finally going to admit defeat, a meeting on December 5 with his supporters allowed him to unroll his arsenal of untruths once again:

• the election was stolen,
• the election was rigged
• We won

Amazing!

December 8, 2020

Since July 27th there has been a ceasefire in force: the first serious one since 2014.

The graph you see corresponds to the total number of violations and explosions per week, over the 4-month period from July 27 to the end of November.

What to conclude?

You have 2 “trend” curves over the 4 months. It is these “trends” that determine the future evolution. The ceasefire is barely under control. Peaks and troughs drift inexorably upwards. Of course it is still a low level, but it could gradually increase until it gets out of control again.

This information is also correlated by the number of days without any violation. There were 8 in August, 3 in September and October and 0 in November according to the information published by SMM (SMM Weekend reports add up the data from Saturday and Sunday and it is not possible to see if any of the 2 days were without violation. In any case, no day of the week in November was a day without a violation).

Why?

The lack of precise field data allows only hypotheses to be made:

• lack of future: on both sides the fighters see no future for themselves.
• idleness of the combatants
• passivity of the official actors SMM and JCCC (problem already known for the SMM, less obvious for the JCCC which is a little more active in the field). They are interested in the observed effects (violations and explosions) not at what is causing the effects.
• Lack of field sectorization allowing customized management of smaller perimeters corresponding to sub-sectors.
• absence of field inspectors trying to understand the origin of incidents
• very high level coordination

There was a small lull in mid-November, but the JCCC system seems very hierarchical: a small global reminder to the fighting hierarchies is probably their only way of acting.

Conclusion

A simple truce that will end one day or another.

December 1, 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:

• Ukrainian news: https://www.unian.info/
• DPR news: https://dan-news.info/en
• Daily reports from SMM observers: https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/reports
• Reference texts in english : look at available documents

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:

• Ukrainian news: https://www.unian.info/
• DPR news: https://dan-news.info/en
• Daily reports from SMM observers: https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/reports
• Reference texts in english : look at available documents

The OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) has 57 members and is the largest regional security organization.

OSCE members are not limited to the European continent. This is a characteristic found in several European organizations and in the difficulty for Europeans to find a European identification. Does it make sense to have members who are geographically in the Middle East or North America?

That there are observer countries from continents other than the European continent makes sense, but that they are members who intend to be full members and to be key players is more debatable.

Europeans who have difficulty finding their own leadership tend to solve this problem of lack of European leadership by seeking external leadership. The United States has played this role, both at its own request to prevent European affairs from getting out of control as they did to end 2 world wars and both because some European members play such an external player to assert one or the other position.

Europe in its geographical definition also remains variable geometry. Peter the Great’s Russia wanted to be part of Europe. Putin’s Russia plays sometimes with its Asian dimension, sometimes with its European dimension. Does the European continent integrate all of Russia or from the Atlantic to the Urals? The answer varies according to the times and the interlocutors.

On security, the OSCE has the following main missions:

• Anticipate and prevent future conflicts
• enable conflict resolution (from ceasefire to final settlement)

The year 2020 shows that the effectiveness of the OSCE is being questioned. Several events illustrate these problems.

• In Ukraine, after 6 years of intervention and existence of SMM, there was finally a ceasefire that looks like a real ceasefire on July 27, 2020.
  This ceasefire was a real progress, but when we look at the details, it was only possible by institutionalizing external actors to the OSCE, such as the JCCC, a coordinating body between the belligerents. Overall, if an agency other than the SMM does what the SMM cannot do, it works. The OSCE should have within it everything necessary to manage a ceasefire. Is the OSCE aware of what would have to be changed to achieve this? Not sure, the SMM reports are focused on what the SMM is doing, as if nothing else is needed.

• In the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan monitored for more than 25 years by the OSCE, there has been a ceasefire, certainly, but not because of the OSCE. And the draft settlement, almost dictated by the military victory, is not especially due to the teams officially in charge of the negotiations under the leadership of the OSCE.

The OSCE remains a link of exchange between all but is not, today, the essential engine of conflict resolution.

The Albanian Presidency 2020 of the OSCE has shown itself to be aware of today’s reality where the OSCE is more in posture or observation than in action and anticipation of future events.

One day or another, this institution will have to be reformed and brought back to its fundamentals. But when and by whom?

November 20, 2020

On November 9 was announced an agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia. It should initially lead to a ceasefire.

This “Russian-style” settlement is similar to what was happening in the time of the USSR: a fit of anger, a rant with a few soldiers and hopefully everyone will keep quiet and accept it. That’s how most of the conflicts were repressed in the time of the USSR and did not express themselves. They all reappeared at the time and after the disintegration of the USSR.

It is good news that there may be an effective cessation of fighting, which we will be able to confirm in a few days. It is not the few Russian soldiers on the spot that will be enough to maintain this ceasefire but the repeated persuasion and determination of Russia with both sides.

Is this a settlement? No, it’s just a gradual return to the pre-1988 situation, with the same causes that led the Armenians to demand independence. Depriving Armenians of their cultural rights, in their language, their culture, their education, as Azerbaijan did before 1988, could reproduce the same effects.

Azerbaijan celebrates its victory but risks making the same mistake as Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh in 1994. For 26 years, they took advantage of their military superiority to refuse any serious negotiations. Azerbaijan is preparing to make the same mistake..

We don’t have a lot of details about the settlement yet. It is only a temporary situation, like a truce in a conflict that is ready to bounce back, whether it is tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in 20 years.

There are grey areas such as Turkey’s request to be an observer and a stakeholder in the peace force. How can a country, which sent the cruellest Syrian militiamen (even if this country denies it) and provided all the military support to achieve victory, declare itself neutral? It is an ally of one of the countries at war, not a neutral and objective country.

This “Russian-style” settlement is a good thing and moreover there was probably no other short-term solution to avoid a bloodbath that would have been a new genocide. Europe remains non-existent outside itself, the United States is reliving its presidential victory and defeat, and the bodies supposed to settle conflicts on the European continent such as the OSCE are incapable of doing so..

But Putin’s Russia is comfortable when it imposes a settlement by force but uncomfortable when it comes to finding a new political balance that makes sense. Today, authority is needed to impose a ceasefire and make it stick. Tomorrow, something else will be needed to overcome this conflict whose roots go back more than a century and whose upheavals since 1988 have been bloody.

Let’s hope that a slightly more serious negotiation than the one that has been going on since 1994 can be resumed. It will take more than just a stance and a piece of paper to come up with a settlement that is a true balance.

November 11, 2020

The statistical information presented here has been calculated from the information available in the daily SMM reports.

Since July 27, there is a ceasefire that has come into effect. This is the first ceasefire since 2014 that looks like something.

The available statistics therefore show that there has been progress in respecting the ceasefire but that it is still not a complete ceasefire.

Reminder of the reasons why the ceasefires did not hold

For the record, Naej DRANER wrote two documents in 2017 and 2020 on why the ceasefire was not holding.

• ND201707003 Ukraine Ceasefire – update – 2020-09-23 EN-US
• ND202004001-6a Variant from ND201707003 for ukrainian authorities EN-US

75% of these reasons were taken into account during the ceasefire, on July 27, 2020.

Officially, there is no causal link between these two N.D. texts and the July 27th ceasefire. In practice, the missing 25% largely explains the fact that the ceasefire remains partial.

The actors come from so far away that they are satisfied with this progress, and show no eagerness to go beyond it. They are reverting to their small pre-ceasefire habits and contemplating new areas of disengagement that will not solve the problem any more than it has led to a credible ceasefire in previous years.

A partial ceasefire : in October about 496 violations and 302 explosions.

Of these violations and explosions about 90% concern the Donetsk sector and 10% concern the Luhansk sector.

Is it possible to achieve a total ceasefire?

Yes, but by implementing part of what has not been implemented and by giving a future perspective to the security zone (which is in line with the removal of ambiguities in the Minsk Accords which corresponds to what was not done before the ceasefire of July 27, 2020).

The main unimplemented element in the implementation of the texts is the fact that there is still no integrated SMM and JCCC organization, which could be called SMCC.

Charging the JCCC with monitoring the ceasefire in the July 22, 2020 decision was an improvement over the passivity of the previous system, which did not intervene in case of violations, but it is insufficient and affects the limits of the JCCC’s organization, which is only a few dozen officers and will never be able to assume alone the security of the entire security zone.

In order to move forward and transform the embryo of a ceasefire it would be necessary to:

• create the SMCC integrating part of the SMM and JCCC
• Accept that the SMCC makes the necessary security decisions without waiting for any Trilateral Contact Group meetings. Any security system must be able to make decisions according to the evolution of the situation and within the framework of its mission.
• Define and train security forces in charge of the whole security zone (and not only of some disengagement zones: it is a global disengagement of the whole security zone that must be defined and implemented, which is not possible with JCCC resources alone.)
• find an occupation for idle militiamen (there is enough to clear and rebuild to make it possible)

November 9, 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:

• Ukrainian news: https://www.unian.info/
• DPR news: https://dan-news.info/en
• Daily reports from SMM observers: https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/reports
• Reference texts in english : look at available documents