Minsk “approved” 12 steps to achieve peace in Donbass (updated)

The result of the consultation meeting on September 5 in Minsk were 12 points of the protocol aimed at stabilizing the situation and achieving peace in Donbas. The trilateral contact group, which discussed the necessary steps, consisted of representatives of Ukraine, the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism) and the OSCE.

The format of the document looks rather strange, since the only official person listed by position is the Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov. OSCE representative Heidi Tagliavini is for some reason presented as “ambassador”. Leonid Kuchma acts in the informal “position” of the second President of Ukraine. Representatives of the DPR and LPR Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, apparently, act as private individuals without any official positions or regalia.

This begs the conclusion: does a document have legal force, where representatives of almost all parties act in an unclear (in the official sense) capacity? And does such a format relieve all participants of responsibility for what is signed?

Suspicions about the unofficial nature of the document are also reinforced by the absence of the date and place when and where the signatures of the participants were actually placed. There is information that another document was also signed, which will soon be made public.

REFERENCE:

Heidi Tagliavini is a Swiss diplomat. In 2003, NZZ Folio (the monthly magazine Neue Zürcher Zeitung) named her “Switzerland’s outstanding diplomat” (German: die herausragende Diplomatin der Schweiz). She headed the commission investigating the causes of the armed conflict in South Ossetia.

Speaks seven languages. During the meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva in 1985, she translated from Russian for Swiss President Kurt Furgler.

Born in 1950 in Basel to an Italian-born architect and an artist from Lucerne. In 1982, she began working in the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, and from 1984 in the Political Directorate of the department. In 1995, she was a member of the first OSCE assistance group in Chechnya. In 1996, she worked at the Swiss Embassy in Moscow.
From 1998 to 1999, she held the position of Deputy Head of the UN Observer Mission in Georgia.

After returning to Switzerland in 1999, she was appointed head of the Political Section for Human Security in the Political Directorate of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. From 2000 to 2001, she served as Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office in the Caucasus. From 2001 to 2002, she was Swiss Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2002, she headed the UN Observer Mission in Georgia. In 2006, she returned to Bern, where she took up the post of Deputy Head of the Political Directorate of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

On 21 November 2008, it was announced that Tagliavini had been appointed head of a commission to investigate the causes of the armed conflict in South Ossetia. She was allocated a budget of 1.6 million euros. The commission’s report was due on 31 July 2009, but was postponed until 30 September. The final report, published on 30 September, concluded that Georgia had started the war, but both sides were responsible for the escalation of the conflict.

From late 2009 to early 2010, she headed the OSCE mission to observe the presidential elections in Ukraine.

SKELET-info