Very briefly, the recent cease-fire agreement in Donetsk and Lugansk between the Ukrainian central government/military/pro-Ukrainian militias and pro-Russian separatist regimes/militias/Russian military "volunteers" will not hold because the negotiations between Ukraine, Russia, pro-Russian separatists, and German and French leaders leading to this agreement in Minsk did not adequately deal with the question of a cease-fire line and the demarcation of non-militarized areas, with specific reference to the Debaltseve salient. To some extent, it was too much to expect that such specifications could be negotiated - no deal would have been negotiated at all if either the Ukrainian government or pro-Russian rebels had been forced to surrender a claim on the Debaltseve salient as a condition of entering into the cease-fire. And, yet, nothing short of sealing the fate of Debaltseve, as a key logistical/transportation connection between the principal population centers of Donetsk and Lugansk, would have achieved a durable cease-fire en route to long term peace negotiations. In turn, neither side was willing to give in on Debaltseve because neither side wants to concede their own optimal end-game scenario: the Poroshenko government will not give up a strictly unitary, pro-European vision of a geographically unaltered Ukraine; pro-Russian separatists will not give up the hope of annexation by the Russian Federation, with or without explicit support from the Putin government. In short, Debaltseve has become the lynchpin determining the present course of the war in eastern Ukraine and measuring the successes and failures of both sides.
I would venture to argue that Debaltseve has been extraneously overvalued by the Poroshenko government. Noting the strategic relevance of the town to both sides and the fact that its fall to pro-Russian forces would create a contiguous ground logistical linkage from Donetsk to the Russian frontier, the geographic features of the salient, which has apparently been flanked to its northern apex by pro-Russian forces, make a feasible defense of Debaltseve by the Ukrainian military improbable at best. According to Reuters, pro-Russian forces laying siege to the town have made the offer to the Ukrainian government to allow Ukrainian forces in the town to lay down their arms and enjoy safe passage out of the town (see "Rebels offer corridor for Ukraine troops out of key town," Reuters (16 Feb 15), at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/16/ukraine-crisis-corridor-idUSL5N0VQ2EP20150216). The Poroshenko government needs to take this offer and spare any more Ukrainian military and/or civilian casualties over a town that will fall to pro-Russian forces and will lead to a breakdown of the present cease-fire agreement, largely as a result of the stubborn persistence of the Ukrainian government to hold ground that is utterly untenable under current conditions. Moreover, any trickle of a handful of weapons from the U.S. to Ukrainian forces would not tangibly alter this picture, especially if such a move by the U.S. would lead to a deluge of weapons for rebel forces from the Russian Federation. Noting the probable validity of satellite photography presented by U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, showing Russian artillery systems emplaced in the Debaltseve area (see: https://twitter.com/geoffpyatt), the fact that Russian military equipment and Russian military personnel are, in all likelihood, currently engaged in the siege of Debaltseve still does not constitute a meaningful rationale for Ukrainian military forces to continue to hold a town whose defense is both beyond hope and a certain source for impending destabilization of the current cease-fire with the probability for a deadly escalation of the conflict. If the cease-fire collapses with pro-Russian forces overruning the defenses of Debaltseve, the Poroshenko government and the Ukrainian nationalist right-wing, which the former is attempting to placate, will enjoy the lion's share of the blame for not taking advantage of any available transitory off-ramp to maintain the peace by de-escalating the stakes involved in holding one strategic patch of land. Having said this, I do not expect that the Ukrainian government and military will pursue a course of action oriented toward the maintenance of the peace at the expense of surrendering its tenuous control over Debaltseve.
My summary conclusion in this post remains remarkably consistent with other statements that I have conveyed on this blog regarding the conflict in Donetsk and Lugansk. First, the Ukrainian central government absolutely has to sacrifice some degree of autonomy to ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the eastern oblasts as a precondition of retaining these areas as a part of a united Ukraine. Such a devolution may imply the federalization of the country, as Putin has called for. Maybe something less than this is feasible. In some way, shape, or form, however, Kiev has to bend if it wants to keep the country whole. As argued previously, one possible starting point for such a strategy might come in areas of the eastern oblasts now under firm control of the central government. In this manner, the Poroshenko government could preempt new separatist movements and/or lend enough credibility to its initiatives to meet pro-Russian groups half-way in areas not under its control by proceeding to develop some limited vision of regional autonomy without the obligation to do so in formal agreements.
Conversely, the Ukrainian government cannot and should not expect to receive adequate military logistical, training, and/or intelligence support from the U.S. Likewise, the Obama administration and other, generally Russophobic, supporters of Ukraine in Washington need to stop stoking the fire for a Ukrainian reconquest of lands currently under rebel control in Donetsk and Lugansk. Insofar as rebel forces are being supported by the Russian Federation, the interior lines of logistical support for forces in the rebel areas are too thick to be counterbalanced by a minor logistical intervention by the U.S. government. Moreover, this is not the message that we should be sending back to Kiev. Rather, the U.S. and EU need to demonstrate firm resolve in placing economic pressure on Moscow to restrain its support for pro-Russian forces in Ukraine, and we need to support Poroshenko in developing alternative decentralizing policies toward the eastern oblasts, even to the extent that such policies contradict the nationalist aspirations of a noisy Ukrainian right. Any other policies by the West toward Ukraine can only lead to an escalation of the current conflict to the detriment of long term domestic political stability in Ukraine and to the detriment of Russian relations with the West, as a continued muscular engagement by Putin with Ukraine bolsters his own political standing with the Russian nationalist/imperialist right.
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