RÉSEAU VOLTAIRE | 20 JUILLET 2018
Selon Bloomberg, le président
Vladimir Poutine aurait proposé à son homologue états-unien Donald Trump de
régler ensemble la question du Donbass [1].
Un
référendum pourrait être tenu, sous la surveillance de la communauté
internationale, pour permettre aux habitants de cette région de choisir leur
avenir.
Le
président Trump aurait réservé sa réponse.
Les
accords de Minsk prévoyaient quant à eux l’adoption par la Douma ukrainienne
d’un statut particulier pour le Donbass et l’organisation d’élections
locales ; des engagements auquel le président ukrainien Pedro Porochenko
(photo) s’est opposé.
En mai 2014, les rebelles du Donbass
avaient organisé un référendum d’indépendance auquel la population avait
massivement adhéré, soulevant la fureur des Occidentaux.
[1] "Putin Tells Diplomats He Made Trump
a New Offer on Ukraine at Their Summit", Ilya Arkhipov, Bloomberg, July 19,
2018.
Source : « Vers un référendum au
Donbass ? », Réseau Voltaire, 20 juillet 2018, www.voltairenet.org/article202076.html
Ilya Arkhipov
20 hrs ago
© Bloomberg U.S. President
Donald Trump And Russian President Vladimir Putin's Helsinki Summit
(Bloomberg) -- Vladimir Putin told
Russian diplomats that he made a proposal to Donald Trump at their summit this
week to hold a referendum to help resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine, but
agreed not to disclose the plan publicly so the U.S. president could consider
it, according to two people who attended Putin’s closed-door speech on
Thursday.
Details of what the two leaders
discussed in their summit in Helsinki, Finland, remain scarce, with much of the
description so far coming from Russia. While Putin portrayed the Ukraine offer
as a sign he’s seeking to bring the four-year-old crisis to an end, a
referendum is likely to be a hard sell with Ukraine and its backers in Europe,
who remain committed to an 2015 European-brokered truce deal for the Donbas
region, parts of which are controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
White House officials didn’t
immediately respond to a request for comment. If Putin’s account of Trump’s
reaction is accurate, it would suggest a more flexible approach than the U.S.
has shown to date on the issue. At the Helsinki meeting, Trump also agreed to
consider a Putin request to question the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow
over U.S. campaign-finance violations that critics say Trump should have
dismissed outright.
Putin gave his latest account of the
meeting during at a conference with top Russian ambassadors and officials at
the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, the people said, asking not to be identified
discussing the president’s comments to the part of the session that was closed
to the public. One of the people said that Trump had requested Putin not
discuss the referendum idea at the press conference after the summit in order
to give the U.S. leader time to mull it.
U.S. President Donald Trump met his
Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, 2018. The
meeting between the two finished with a joint press conference at which Trump
appeared to defend Putin against claims made by American intelligence agencies
regarding Russia’s involvement in the last U.S. presidential elections.
Trump’s comments have drawn criticism
from politicians and celebrities. Check out some of those
reactions.
Referendum
Proposal
Putin’s proposal would call for a
vote conducted under international auspices by the residents of the separatist
territories on their status, the people said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov
declined to comment on the details of what Putin said about Ukraine at the
summit, saying only, “Some new ideas were discussed. They will be worked on.”
On Twitter Thursday, Trump called the
summit “a great success” and cited Ukraine among the areas discussed, without
providing details.
Putin’s proposal will alarm Ukrainian
officials after Trump last week appeared to leave open the possibility of recognizing
Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, which triggered the crisis that led to
fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Ukraine has offered
the areas autonomy under its rule and backs the deployment of international
peacekeepers in the region.
The U.S. and the European Union have
repeatedly accused Russia of sending troops and weapons to support separatists
in eastern Ukraine. Russia denies the charge, though Ukraine has captured a
number of Russian soldiers and weaponry on its territory.
Putin pointed to a 2014 referendum,
which wasn’t internationally recognized, that was held in Crimea to justify
Russia’s annexation at his press conference with Trump after the summit in
Helsinki on Monday. “We believe that we held a referendum in strict compliance
with international law,” he said. “This case is closed for Russia.”
‘Farce’ Votes
Leaders of so-called rebel republics
in Donetsk and Luhansk held referendums in May 2014 that declared independence.
The votes were rejected as illegal by the U.S. and the European Union, while
Ukraine called them a “farce.” Russia said at the time that it “respects” the
votes, which showed as much as 96 percent support for breaking away from
Ukraine.
Last year, Putin angered his
Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, by signing a decree recognizing passports and other
documents issued by the separatist governments in Luhansk and Donetsk, which
have already declared the ruble their official currency.
If a referendum was held in rebel
areas of eastern Ukraine, “the result would be the same as in Crimea,” which
voted to join Russia, Igor Plotnitsky, who was then leader of the self-declared
Luhansk People’s Republic, told Russian state-run RIA Novosti news service in
March last year.
--With assistance from Stepan
Kravchenko and Margaret Talev.
To contact the reporter on this
story: Ilya Arkhipov in Moscow at iarkhipov@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible
for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Tony Halpin, Torrey
Clark
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
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