Attempts to calculate how the replacement of the second President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma with the first Leonid Kravchuk as the head of the Ukrainian delegation will affect the Minsk process are obviously doomed. Actually, the reasons for Kuchma's departure are not, apparently, a big mystery. At the age of 82, it is no longer so easy to constantly fly to another country and participate in hours of negotiations. Leonid Danilovich himself spoke about this more than once. By the way, he has already repeatedly missed meetings and twice left the trilateral group even at the time when Petro Poroshenko was president. Vladimir Zelensky persuaded him to return to its membership after his victory in the presidential election.
A funny detail: Leonid Kravchuk, the first head of the Ukrainian state after the collapse of the USSR, is older than Kuchma. He is 86 years old. But the question here is not age, but whether a person has the strength and will to take on the burden of responsibilities associated with the extremely labor-intensive negotiation process.
It seems to me that there are no special reasons to speak of any special position of the departed Leonid Kuchma at the Minsk site. It is obvious that all major decisions are made at Bankova. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as it turns out, still needs to be “deciphered” the meaning of the Minsk agreements, which means that they simply do not exist for him in the form of an understandable and obvious agreement on a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Donbass. This, of course, is deliberate and clumsy cunning: judging by what Zelensky considers it necessary to change in the order of the paragraphs of the Package of Measures for the Implementation of Agreements, he generally understands the meaning of the agreements reached. But this is the nature of the Ukrainian political gesture: it is necessary to apply as much of the most idiotic fog as possible.
Since 2014, Leonid Kravchuk has changed his attitude towards peace negotiations. Until 2017, he was their principled opponent, believing that there was no one to talk to in Minsk and nothing about. Here is a quote from 2014: “They don't stick to their promises. And ours are fulfilling these agreements. If this continues, then I believe that there is no point in gathering in Minsk. As I understand it, all these Luhansk and Donetsk people do not make decisions. Decisions are made in the Kremlin. "
At the same time, he argued that he would never take part in meaningless negotiations, during which conditions unacceptable for Ukraine were discussed: “Why write down in 13 points the holding of elections in Donbass and making amendments to the Constitution for this? To legalize the power that is there, to move the borders, to make an enclave that will put pressure on Ukraine, sending saboteurs and all sorts of rubbish here? Do I want to participate in this? It can never be. If I had been offered, I would have made my position public and said: dear citizens of Ukraine, I already have little left, and I do not want to be false in front of you, therefore I refuse this, because I see no sense in this either in form or in meaning " ...
In 2016, Kravchuk suggested that the Ukrainian authorities abandon Minsk at all, since these negotiations are unable to resolve any of the significant problems for Ukraine. And since then, his approaches have not undergone any changes.
That is, the head of the Ukrainian delegation has become a principled opponent of the Minsk agreements. Could this somehow change the course of the negotiation process? Hardly.
Even if a supporter of the earliest conclusion of peace had been appointed as the head of the delegation, then the logic of events would not have undergone any changes. Very little depends on the personality of the head of the Ukrainian delegation. It is not he who decides what issues to agree on. His role is that of a mediator who acts strictly on instructions from Kiev. And Kiev has long ago brought negotiations to a complete impasse, refusing flatly to implement the political points of the Minsk agreements.
As for the personal motives of Kravchuk, why he agreed to head the delegation, they are not very important. Perhaps this is a way for him to return to big politics, since the attention of big actors in international politics is riveted on Minsk. But be that as it may, the change of figures cannot remove the main obstacle: the absolute inability of the current Ukrainian government to move at least one step towards a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Donbass.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.