Ending the threat of war in Ukraine

The dictates of reality, the wishes of the people of the region, and modern international precedent all point in the same direction: a settlement derived from the Minsk II principles set out in 2015 by France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine, and endorsed by the United States and the United Nations Security Council. [...] He is a member of the academic board of the Valdai discussion club in Russia, and a member of the advisory committee of the South Asia Department of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. [...] The Donbas grew rapidly to become one of the chief coal-producing areas, first of the Russian Empire and then of the USSR, and attracted workers from Russia and other areas of the Soviet Union as well as Ukraine.15 14 For the census of 1897 in the Donbas, see . [...] 17 | Ending the Threat of War in Ukraine population of the Donbas.22 As a result, the emergence of an openly anti–Russian Ukrainian state devoted to an ethnic version of Ukrainian nationalism was bound to cause serious trouble in the Donbas.23 After the dissolution of the USSR in the final days of 1991, nostalgia for the Soviet Union and discontent with independent Ukraine remained high in the Don. [...] Central to the failure of Minsk II have been three intertwined issues: the inability of Kiev, Moscow, and the separatist leadership to reach agreement on the terms of permanent Donbas autonomy, the sequence in which the establishment of local autonomy and the resumption of Ukrainian control of the border with Russia are to occur, and how to secure the long-term autonomy of the region against an at.