Ukraine: October Ceasefire Statistics

News notes

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.

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

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