A lot will depend on the extent to which Russia and Ukraine are willing to make concessions on or across the main issue areas and the extent to which they and the presumptive security guarantors are willing and able to deliver on any deal that might ultimately shape up.
Ukraine has no good options if Russia refuses to accept anything less than its own peace terms, and there are challenges to making neutrality a viable option to end the war.
Differentiating between Belarus and Russia and carefully calibrating policies towards both countries should be among the priorities for western policy makers.
Every additional weapon that crosses from Russia into Ukraine; every rebel, soldier and civilian killed; and every new sanction imposed take us one step further away from establishing trust.
The debate and vote in the Security Council n the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over rebel-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine have the feel of yet another first step in the right direction. However, it is sadly not clear that any meaningful second steps will follow.
With the outright victory of Petro Poroshenko in Ukraine’s presidential elections on May 25 now confirmed, hopes are running high for a new beginning that will deliver a swift way out of a protracted crisis.
The presidential elections in Ukraine on May 25 were meant to offer the country the beginning of a way out of a protracted crisis.
The coming days and weeks will tell how serious all the players in and around Ukraine are about contributing to resolving this ever-more dangerous crisis and whether Kiev, Moscow, Brussels and Washington can rise above their own short-term and increasingly narrow interests and agendas and prevent the unnecessary bloodshed that further escalation would inevitably bring with it.
The Ukraine crisis may thus yet turn out as an event with consequences as momentous as the end of the Cold War or 9/11.