Cease fire in Ukraine: what do the statistics of the last 4 months say?

News notes

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.

Graph of the total number of Violations and Explosions / week

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

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