Elaborate actions and communication with the society about the decisions and their consequences are the important tasks for the participants of the political process in the context of conflict resolution in Donbas. The ceasefire reached in 2020 created the necessary prerequisites for entering the political process. According to the experts of the international civil society platform CivilMPlus, assuming the OSCE Chairmanship in 2021-2022, Sweden and Poland have the opportunity to give an impetus to establish sustainable peace in eastern Ukraine, to strengthen security and human rights protection, to promote political process based on the international law.

The chairmanship agenda was discussed at the CivilMPlus meeting with the participation of representatives of the Foreign Ministries of Sweden and Poland, diplomats from Germany and Slovakia, experts of international and civil society organizations. The purpose of the meeting was to determine the OSCE potential for resolving the conflict in Donbas and to strengthen a channel of interaction between diplomats and civil society.

Two experts – Martin Kragh, Head of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and Adam Balcer, Program Director of the Jan Nowak-Jeziorański College of Eastern Europe – presented their vision of the agenda of the upcoming OSCE Chairmanship. Both stressed the necessity to set realistic goals and plan concrete steps.

“For the Swedish Chairpersonship of the OSCE, focus will be to defend the European security order and to uphold the OSCE comprehensive concept of security. A priority will be to contribute to conflict resolution in full respect of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity and independence of Ukraine,” said John Zachau, OSCE-Secretariat, Task Force/Swedish OSCE CiO 2021.

Poland still has another year to plan its Chairmanship agenda for 2022.

“Of course, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict will be at the top of the list of priorities. The OSCE is a consensus-based organization, so there are obvious limitations to rapid and effective action. Yet, the OSCE does have potential in the process of conflict resolution,” underlined Grzegorz Jazowski, Minister Counsellor, OSCE and Eastern Security Unit, Security Policy Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland.

The OSCE work in the zone of hostilities has already brought certain positive changes.

“Largely thanks to the efforts of the OSCE it was possible to take a number of deterrent measures, to reduce the intensity of hostilities and to restore critical infrastructure,” said Stefan Melle, Head of DRA e.V, Berlin.

Based on the experience from Slovak 2019 OSCE Chairmanship, Samuel Goda, Head of Future of Security and Cooperation in Europe Program (Slovak Association of Foreign Policy, SFPA/ Bratislava) underlined the importance of the Chairmanship country and its Chairperson-in-Office which has a unique opportunity to set the tone of the work of the organization.

“Well prepared, informed, not undersized and ready to listen Chairmanship teams both in capital and in Hofburg (Vienna) might have a positive real impact on the lives of people in the field – including the region of Donbas”, stressed Goda.

Along with the fieldwork, it is crucial to strengthen political and diplomatic influence, experts say.

“The priority of the OSCE Chairmanship should be to stabilize the ceasefire. An important step would be to ensure full access of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to monitor the ceasefire, including in the non-government-controlled territory,” emphasized Wilfried Jilge, Associate Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP/Berlin).

The issue of access to the temporarily occupied territory of Donbas was also raised by Oleksandra Matviichuk, Head of the Board at the Center for Civil Liberties, Ukraine. She called on diplomats to make more efforts to ensure that international monitors get unhindered access to places of detention in the occupied Donbas.

At the end of the meeting, the experts emphasized the importance of new forms of interaction between parties to peace negotiations – politicians, diplomats – and civil society.

“Consultations between diplomats, participants of peace negotiations and such civil society platforms as CivilMPlus could be more systemic,” said Wilfried Jilge. “For example, representatives of the state parties to the peace talks could benefit from the current ceasefire and to use this time to develop, in cooperation with civil society, a road map for entering the pollical process of Minsk negotiations. Such road map should cover humanitarian and economic issues, envisage unimpeded access of Ukrainian political parties and media to the non-government-controlled territory, as well as the concept of transitional justice. The implementation of this road map would create favourable conditions for political negotiations, as well as for people living together in united Ukrainian Donbas. Consultations with civil society will better prepare the parties for the complex negotiations on the political part of the Minsk agreements,” summarized Jilge.

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The meeting was initiated by the international civil society platform CivilMPlus, under the coordination of the German NGO DRA e.V and Slovak Foreign Policy Association, with the financial support from the German Federal Foreign Office and Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Slovakia.