(Wilson Center) The fluctuating intensity of warfare in the Donbas region should be seen neither as a step toward freezing the conflict nor toward achieving a lasting peace. While Russia remains nominally unrecognized as party to the conflict by the West, the Minsk II agreement may well share the ineffectual fate of its predecessor, Minsk I. To avoid this fate, the West, and the U.S. in particular, must recognize Russia a party to the conflict. There are several reasons for this.
Reason number one is the need to develop a right strategy. In order to stop the war, one must call it by its proper name. As Philip Karber, Igor Sutiagin, and the Atlantic Council team reported, there were between 9,000 to 12,000 Russian military personnel in the Donbas in February-March 2015. Nearly the same number is still operating in the vicinity of the Russo-Ukrainian border. The posthumously released report by Boris Nemtsov on the conflict in Ukraine claims that over 200 Russian soldiers have been killed in Donbas since the beginning of the conflict. […]
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