Ukraine: Status of the ceasefire of 27 July 2020

News notes

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

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