Steinmeier sees long road to Ukraine calm

After his surprise meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin, Frank-Walter Steinmeier issued a sober analysis of global chances to solve the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

"Sadly, we remain far away from a de-escalation and even further from a political solution," Steinmeier said in Berlin Wednesday after talks with his Polish counterpart, Grzegorz Schetyna. However, the foreign minister added that September's ceasefire deal, signed in Minsk, had given "small momentum" to the diplomatic drive, urging the West not to give up on a negotiated settlement.

Schetyna said all EU countries needed to see the resolution of the Ukraine conflict as their "shared concern," calling the crisis "a test for Europe's ability to take political action." Poland borders Ukraine.

The Social Democrat Steinmeier warned that the situation was in danger of escalating again after the partial calm secured two months ago. During his trip to Moscow, he said that he noted "dramatically differing perceptions" of events in Ukraine, with Russia citing last February's ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych as the root cause of the conflict.

The Platzeck problem

Steinmeier also called the annexation of Crimea in March a "clear violation of international law" following a fellow Social Democrat's controversial suggestion that recognizing Crimea as part of Russia might help defuse the conflict.

Matthias Platzeck, chairman of the German-Russian Forum business lobby and a former state premier in Brandenburg, made the suggestion in an interview with the Passauer Neue Presse daily, saying "a wise man changes his mind - a fool never will." He said that finding a solution in which "Putin won't walk off the field as a loser" would help to resolve the conflict, a position Steinmeier rejected.

"I've often made public my view that it is a clear violation of law which we cannot endorse or recognize," Steinmeier said of Crimea's annexation. "We must stand by our common European position, which is that we don't accept what has happened and we don't accept Europe's borders being changed again 70 years after the war."

Moscow and Kyiv trade allegations

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Wednesday that Ukraine might be preparing a fresh military offensive in the east against separatist fighters after the government in Kyiv cut off the payment of state salaries and pensions for the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

"Behind this decree might be not only the urge to stifle the region economically, but to prepare the ground for another military invasion," Lavrov told politicians in Moscow, saying that Ukraine's government must open negotiations with the separatists.

Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of sending troops and heavy weaponry to eastern Ukraine, charges the Kremlin denies. Ukraine's Security Council on Wednesday alleged that Russia was concentrating more troops along the border.

According to UN estimates, more than 4,000 people - most of them civilians - have been killed since the conflict flared in April.

Steinmeier's surprise talks with Putin, shortly after an unusually critical speech from Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered in Australia after the G20 summit, have also prompted speculation in the German media about a possible split within the grand coalition government. An article published by Spiegel, for instance, ran the headline "the secondary chancellor," asking whether Merkel and Steinmeier were together trying a new "good cop, bad cop tactic," or whether "the first cracks in a so-far-united front on Russia" had begun to appear. By NATO standards, Germany has been a comparatively reserved critic of Russia during the conflict, stressing the need for a negotiated solution.

msh/mkg (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)