This book forms part of a wider project on the relations between the
European Union and Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, and in
particular the Association Agreements and Deep and
Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs) between these three
states and the European Union.
The wider project was begun in 2015 in the aftermath of the
Maidan uprising at the beginning of 2014, which had been provoked
when President Yanukovich reneged over the signing of Ukraine’s
Association Agreement with the EU. Following Yanukovich’s flight
to Russia, the Association Agreement was duly signed later in 2014.
The agreements with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine have a
substantial common content, while differing in various details.
Overall, they provide an association model of unprecedented extent
and depth. Democratic political values are at the heart of the
agreements, while the economic content goes far beyond classic free
trade agreements to include a wholesale approximation of EU
internal market regulatory law. The purpose of our wider project was
first of all to explain the complex content of the Association
Agreements and DCFTAs, which was achieved in a series of
comprehensive handbooks published at www.3dcftas.eu.
However, the agreements contain only short and simple
articles on conflict prevention and management, without meaningful
operational content. This was notwithstanding the fact that the EU
considers itself, for its own historical reasons, to have a special
vocation in conflict prevention and resolution. In addition, Georgia
and Moldova were already the sites of unresolved separatist conflicts
originating around the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades
ago, namely Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and
Transdniestria in Moldova, to which we have added the case of the
Nagorny Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan. On top of this legacy, the Maidan uprising led to the Russian annexation of Crimea
and its hybrid war in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of the Donbas.
The Donbas thus joined the old ‘frozen conflicts’.
In the light of the above, CEPS took the initiative to examine all
five unresolved conflicts, to assess where these disputes seem to be
heading, and what different scenarios could be imagined for their
future, including how the European Union might become more
engaged. Indeed, while none of the conflicts are resolved, none are
for that matter ‘frozen’. Our first practical priority was to find an
author to undertake a comprehensive study of the Donbas, since
conditions there make it practically impossible for any analysts from
the government-controlled part of Ukraine or from Europe to safely
enter these territories for research purposes. We were therefore very
fortunate to find Nikolaus von Twickel who had recently been
travelling in the Donbas as part of the OSCE Mission there, and is
now an independent analyst. For the other four ‘old’ conflicts we
were also most fortunate to bring in Thomas de Waal, who has been
a leading scholar of the region for some decades, and was willing to
bring the stories of these conflicts up to date. The two authors were
able to address the complete set of conflicts with a consistent
analytical approach, as will be evident from reading the sets of
scenarios.
We express our warm appreciation towards Sweden and the
Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) for their support
to the entire project.
This volume looks at future prospects for the string of unresolved
conflicts that continue to plague the post-Soviet world. Four of them
date back to the period when the USSR began to break up in the late
1980s. A new conflict, with many different elements and some
similarities, was added to the list in 2014: the Donbas in eastern
Ukraine. The open confrontation between Russia and Ukraine over
the Donbas and Crimea not only destroyed relations between
Moscow and Kyiv but changed politics across the region, shaking up
the dynamics of the four existing protracted territorial conflicts over
Abkhazia, Nagorny Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transdniestria.
The five post-Soviet conflicts are often called ‘frozen’, but this
is a misnomer. Although the peace processes around them often look
frozen, the situations themselves are anything but frozen and are
constantly changing. Two of them, over the Donbas and Nagorny
Karabakh, are either ongoing or close to violence. Each dispute has
its own history, character and context, which has grown more
distinctive over time and has been further shaped by the
confrontation over Ukraine. Each continues to evolve. Here we chart
scenarios for how these conflicts may develop further with the aim of
focusing policymakers’ thinking on which tendencies are dangerous
and which ones can be encouraged. There are many moving parts to
these situations and complacency is not an option