The practice of hybrid negotiations on a
hybrid settlement of a hybrid conflict
The Fokin incident
I want to dwell separately on the story of Fokin in the TCG because, for me, it became a kind of watershed in my attitude toward the Office and my colleagues in the delegation.
Before his appearance, it seemed to me that Yermak and Zelensky's team and we were one team—a multi-deck ship with different levels of responsibility and different functions, but still one ship sailing toward the same port. The way the elderly Fokin was ruthlessly used, and the cynicism with which he was later discarded, shattered those illusions.
The first thing that should be noted is that Fokin was 88 years old when he joined the delegation.
Vitold Fokin headed the government of the Soviet Ukrainian SSR beginning in October 1990. On August 24, 1991, as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR (at that time it was possible to simultaneously hold positions in both the executive and legislative branches), he voted FOR the declaration of Ukraine's independence. After that, until October 1, 1992, he served as Prime Minister of Ukraine. He was one of the six people who, together with Leonid Kravchuk, signed the Belovezha Accords that dissolved the Soviet Union. He also signed, as head of the Ukrainian government, the Agreement between the Governments of Belarus, russia, and Ukraine on the Conduct of a Coordinated Economic Policy.
In other words, his commitment to Ukraine's independence was demonstrated not merely through words but through actions. At the same time, he (like all of us) was a product of his era and of the specific circumstances of his personal biography, geography, bibliography, genealogy, and so on. It is therefore obvious that his views on certain contemporary political issues could differ from those of people from other generations and regions.
He was born in 1932 into a family of Soviet schoolteachers in the settlement of Novomykolaivka in the Dnipropetrovsk oblast (now part of the Zaporizhzhia oblast). In other words, his personality was shaped under Stalin and by the belief in the "unity of the peoples of the USSR". After graduating from the Dnipropetrovsk Mining Institute, Vitold Fokin spent nearly twenty years working in the mines of the Luhansk oblast. He started as a horse driver, guiding the horses that hauled coal from the mine face, and eventually became the head of a major mining association. After that came the State Planning Committee of the Ukrainian SSR, then the Council of Ministers of the republic, and finally the premiership of independent Ukraine. From 1991 to 1994 (until 1992 concurrently with his tenure as prime minister), he served as an independent member of the Ukrainian parliament.
It is understandable that a man with such a biography, like the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians before 2014, regarded russians as a "brotherly people". As an economist, he also understood the importance of preserving Ukraine's economic ties with the russian federation, since within the USSR the national economy had indeed been built as a single integrated system. This is probably why, in 1998, Fokin became the head of the International Foundation for Humanitarian and Economic Relations between Ukraine and the russian federation, which he himself had established. At the same time, in 1999, he became president of the Luhansk Fellowship in Kyiv.
On top of all this, for essentially sixteen years—from 1994 until August 2020—Vitold Fokin (unlike, for example, Kravchuk) did not engage in politics at all. From what I gathered in conversations with him, he even lived "on a farmstead outside Kyiv", rather than in the capital. At the same time, he maintained contact with his contemporaries in the Luhansk oblast. And most of them were certainly not ordinary retired workers, but former managers and members of the Soviet party. It is easy to imagine the kind of information he was receiving from Stakhanov (now Kadiivka), which has been occupied by russia since 2014.
At the meeting with our delegation at the Office of the President, Vitold Fokin arrived wearing a suit he had long since outgrown. He reminded me of a child who had wandered into someone else's sandbox: sullen, braced for defense.
A few minutes of conversation and some of his remarks immediately revealed the old man's views on the conflict with russia and the sources that had shaped those views (I don't know how this could have gone unnoticed during the hours-long meetings at the President's Office). Therefore, for me personally, his subsequent statements about the need to hold local elections in the occupied territories or declare an amnesty for the militants came as no surprise. Moreover, if this had truly been an internal Ukrainian conflict, if russia had genuinely wanted it to end and to leave Ukraine, I would have agreed with him. But after 2014, it was absolutely clear to me that Donbas was not an object of "protection" for russia, but an instrument of aggression; the goal was not "autonomy" for the "people of Donbas" created by its propaganda, but to deprive Ukraine of real sovereignty. Fokin, objectively, could not understand this because he had not had the opportunity to see it from the inside in 2014. So yes, perhaps he was right when he said at the introductory meeting that we looked at the events in Donbas "from different perspectives"...
The most interesting thing is that during the TCG meetings Fokin usually remained silent and never voiced the ideas that he had put forward in his interviews. He was completely reasonable and, like Kravchuk, was outraged by russia's unwillingness to negotiate constructively. And the media, it seems, did not always accurately reflect what he said. I remember that after one of the TCG meetings he himself called me over and suggested we talk: "I am a straightforward person. I don't like ambiguity or intrigue".
Then he started talking about an interview that he had supposedly given to "my" website (I head the OstroV news agency), claiming that his words had been distorted there. In reality, the interview had been given to the pro-russian outlet Strana, with which I had absolutely nothing to do. But it was headed by the russian journalist and political strategist Ihor Huzhva. Huzhva, Harmash—they both start with the same letter, easy enough to confuse for an 88-year-old man... I simply hugged him.
Facebook, September 2, 2020. "I'll start with the most controversial issue—the well-known ideas of Vitold Fokin. We spoke today. In fact, he insisted on it himself, so that we could clarify our positions and avoid any misunderstandings. He showed me the version of his interview that he had approved, and it turned out not to be entirely identical to what was published. Specifically, after the words about a general amnesty, there were also the words 'except for those whose hands are soaked in blood up to their elbows'. But for some reason those words disappeared... His idea of a 'special status' for the whole of Donbas also wasn't quite what everyone thought. When he began explaining it to us, it turned out that by special status he meant the same 'free economic zones' that Kravchuk had spoken about earlier. Moreover, I'm convinced he isn't trying to wriggle out of anything or deceive anyone. He is sincere and is taking very emotionally everything that is now being written to him and about him... I think this is exactly one of those cases where the problem is not the ideas themselves, but misunderstanding and someone's manipulation of a man who sincerely loves his country but, after being away from politics for so long, failed to find his bearings in these murky waters. The old man was simply set up, and I don't mean only the pro-russian publication..."
To be completely honest, my rejection of the campaign against Fokin was also driven by the fact that his statements had enormous practical value. After all, he did not voice them during the negotiations. Once expressed in the media, they simply became a test of society's reaction to ideas that could have originated (considering who appointed him) not only from him. Therefore, for me and for those who did not support Fokin's ideas, the public's negative reaction created serious political support. Accordingly, it deprived those who were testing these ideas of that support. I wrote about this openly on my Facebook page as well.
September 3, 2020. "People, stop hounding Fokin! Yes, the ideas he voiced are, to put it mildly, controversial. But what are the consequences of those statements in the media (not at the negotiations!)? Ukrainian society has consolidated and demonstrated that such ideas are unacceptable for Ukraine. Accordingly, if anything similar is voiced during the negotiations, we (at the very least, I) will be able to stand up and state that such positions cannot even be discussed because they will not be accepted by the people of Ukraine—the people have already shown that. Whether intentionally or not, Fokin gave us that opportunity... I don't know whether those who authorized him to give that interview planned this, or what goals they were actually pursuing, but the result was an additional argument against the russian interpretation of the Minsk Agreements. The issue is closed. So stop hounding the old man!"
Of course, no one listened to me, because it is always easier to hound someone than to understand them. But I am convinced that time and direct confrontation with reality at the negotiations would have changed Fokin's position. However, as I have already written, the Minsk process was more political than diplomatic, and by then Vitold Fokin was no longer a politician...
"As for the war, I am not a politician. I cannot provide any definite definition of it. Because so far I see no evidence whatsoever that there is a war being fought there between Ukraine and russia... According to Fokin, mercenaries from nearly 30 countries, including with the support of the russian federation, are fighting against Ukraine in Donbas", - Ukrainska Pravda wrote on September 29, 2020, about a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on State Building, where Fokin had been summoned to explain himself.
Politicians immediately descended on the old man.
"Fokin, in the war that, according to you, does not exist, thousands of our soldiers and civilians have died. Tell that to the families of those killed by russian Grad rockets near Saur-Mohyla and Ilovaisk! Scoundrel. 'They're not there'—those are putin's words, not the words of Ukraine's representative. A complete idiot cannot be excused because of old age. He should be kicked out immediately—at the very least, back into retirement", - Interior Minister Arsen Avakov wrote on Facebook.
That same day, Fokin's "employer", Head of the Office of the President Andrii Yermak, also made his position clear. "Yes, we are at war, and in this war russia is a party to the conflict, not an observer. It is precisely for this reason, as well as because of the annexation of Crimea, that the West imposed sanctions on russia.
We insist on the complete de-occupation and return of all our territories—that alone can mean the restoration of genuine peace. Russia must leave our land, taking with it everything it brought: its army, armed formations, military equipment, and occupation structures. And it would also be nice if russia took away the diplomatic traps it set for Ukraine's representatives in previous years, which we are now forced to deal with...
The Trilateral Contact Group does not make any decisions; it is merely a logistical platform for coordinating the details and agreements reached by the leaders of the Normandy Format...
My personal position is that Mr. Fokin should leave the TCG", - Yermak wrote on Facebook.
Now let's summarize. Fokin never concealed his views, and Yermak and Zelensky could not have been unaware of them. Nevertheless, he was included in the delegation. Why? I see only two possible explanations: either so that he would voice his ideas while the Office tested society's reaction to them (which would mean those ideas were not entirely alien to the authorities themselves), or so that he would say things moscow wanted to hear while having no influence whatsoever on the delegation's actual position. Either way, the old man was, as the saying goes, "used". And it was done deliberately.
...Then again, perhaps it was not all so intentional and cynical. Perhaps I am unfairly demonizing Yermak and Zelensky in the way they treated the old man. Because, as it turned out a couple of weeks before Fokin's dismissal, the decision to appoint him to the TCG had not been made by the Office of the President at all, but by "Masha and Andriusha".
"I personally introduced my grandfather to Andrii Yermak. He's my friend. And it was our decision for my grandfather to start working on this", - the former prime minister's granddaughter, singer and model Masha Fokina, said on the Svitske Zhyttia television program in September 2020. As it turned out, she and Yermak had been friends "for more than 15 years".
"My grandfather has always been ambitious. He's always behind the camera; he doesn't like interviews or the press. But he and Andriusha—well, Andrii Yermak—found common ground on how they could end this war", - she said...
Kravchuk
"As for Leonid Kravchuk, he is a very energetic man. I can see how he has revived the Minsk process. And indeed, we have reached many agreements. Kravchuk is the face of Ukrainian diplomacy; we have no one better". That was how President Zelensky assessed Kravchuk in an interview with one of the Ukrainian TV channels after Kravchuk's first TCG meeting.
I have to admit that I, too, was genuinely impressed by his debut. After our first meeting at the Office of the President and everything he had said in numerous interviews, I had expected much worse. But the old man, as they say, showed real class and lived up to the reputation immortalized in a joke from the 1990s, when he was president. The joke went something like this: Kravchuk arrives for some negotiations, gets out of his car, and it is raining. His security detail offers him an umbrella, and he replies, "Thanks, I'll just walk between the raindrops..."
Facebook, August 19, 2020. "...Each of us considers ourselves the smartest person in the room and believes we know better than anyone else what should be done. I am no exception. But today, I admit, I was at a loss. So I watched with curiosity to see how he (Kravchuk—the author's note) would get himself out of the situation. And he handled an extremely difficult situation with great dignity. Most likely, in order to derail the upcoming Normandy Four meeting at the level of foreign policy advisers, the other side effectively blocked the negotiations by demanding that one of the Verkhovna Rada's resolutions be repealed, claiming it violated the Minsk Agreements. Yesterday (at the meeting of the political working group—the author's note), they simply repeated the same thing for four hours, paying no attention to any arguments. We were talking to a wall. Today the same thing happened again. Honestly, I would have lost my temper and explained to them in legal terms the difference between a resolution and a law, and so on. But Kravchuk walked 'between the raindrops'. He promised to ask the Verkhovna Rada to reconsider the resolution if the negotiations were unblocked and he could inform the deputies about the delegation's productive work. Nothing specific, but now it will be difficult for the russians to sabotage the meeting of the N4 advisers—a meeting that Kozak (russia's representative in the N4 and the kremlin's supervisor of the Minsk process—the author's note) is so reluctant to attend after his famous letter in which he declared that he would no longer participate 'in this'. At the very least, the West will interpret it unambiguously against russia.
Overall, in my opinion, Kravchuk's debut in the delegation was very successful. And already today, on the second day of his immersion in the real Minsk process, it seems to me that his views on communicating with the other side have become much more realistic".
I should say right away that my impression of Leonid Kravchuk did not remain the same throughout his entire time in the delegation. The First President's age, his health, and the routine nature of the negotiations sometimes took their toll. There were occasions when the old man would fall asleep during TCG meetings, and he could greet or say goodbye to you twice—"for a good person, no greeting is too much". There were also moments that revealed his belonging to the species of "political animals"... But more on that later.
Kravchuk was not as fortunate with granddaughters as Fokin was, so he apparently owed his appearance in the TCG to other circumstances...
Let me begin with why, in my opinion, the delegation was not headed by Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Reznikov, who had been acting as its head during the several months when Leonid Kuchma had effectively stopped working but formally remained our leader.
The reason is that, ever since the delegation was created under Petro Poroshenko, the main criteria for choosing its head had been the candidate's willingness to take responsibility for unpopular political decisions and their acceptability to Moscow. For the latter, besides what we might call communicative compatibility (that is, similarity in worldview and life experience), the counterpart's status has always been of great importance.
The head of the russian delegation, Boris Gryzlov, had previously served as Chairman of the State Duma of the russian federation. Accordingly, our side needed someone of equivalent rank, or preferably someone with even greater stature. Reznikov simply did not fit that requirement. He was only at the beginning of his political career, so the Office could not be certain that he would be willing to "burn himself out" over unpopular decisions that were being considered there. Or perhaps they simply did not want to "burn" him, given the shortage of loyal personnel.
Most importantly, Reznikov had already participated in the negotiations, had already clashed with Gryzlov, and the latter had even made public negative remarks about him. In diplomacy, there is a tradition that even when an ambassador is appointed to a country, its leadership is asked whether they have any objections to that person. After all, how can someone work effectively if the receiving side has a negative attitude toward them from the outset? Of course, this rule could have been bypassed in negotiations, but Kyiv tried not to take steps that would unnecessarily irritate moscow. Incidentally, contrary to the claims made by the russians after 2022, this indicates that Ukraine genuinely intended to reach an agreement with them and resolve the issue through diplomatic means.
So, after former President Kuchma, the delegation was headed by former President Kravchuk. Unlike Kuchma, however, Leonid Kravchuck had never personally known either Gryzlov or putin.
I have already written above about my first impressions of the new leadership of the delegation. They made me very uneasy. Although I calmed down somewhat after the subsequent TCG meeting, I wanted to get to know the old man better, understand his motivations, and establish what is commonly called personal rapport. So I "abused my official position" and suggested doing an interview for OstroV. He agreed. Most likely, not for media reasons either. Besides, he clearly appreciated my positive review of his debut in the TCG. He never said so directly, but much later, while we were discussing some issue in Demchenko's lounge, he remarked: "...and then you'll write again that the old man did well". So he had read it and remembered it.
We met between TCG sessions on August 27 in a building located right next to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. At the entrance was a sign reading "Ukraine–China Friendship Society". It turned out that Kravchuk headed the organization and had a spacious office there with a reception area. At the time, I silently thanked the Chinese for allowing a former president of Ukraine to enjoy a dignified old age.
It was an unusual interview. Suffice it to say that I ended it with my own words rather than those of the interviewee—I gave myself the last word. I consider that extremely unprofessional. Listening to the recording now, I am surprised at myself: my voice is raised. Meanwhile, the 86-year-old First President calmly and specifically parries my attacks without any irritation.
September 3, 2020. This conversation took place a week ago, on August 27. We met not just for an interview, but for a frank dialogue. By that time, a great deal had already been said in the media, and on some issues our opinions differed completely. I wanted not only to learn, but to understand—and to persuade. Naturally, not everything we discussed could be made public. Nevertheless, what OstroV readers are about to read, in my opinion, provides a clear understanding of the logic behind the actions and statements of the head of the Ukrainian delegation in Minsk, as well as the external circumstances that shape that logic. Diplomacy is the art of the possible...
I also delayed the publication for a week, so as not to give our opponents the opportunity, before the TCG meeting, to throw that sh… which they will definitely see in this article, because they see it everywhere and in everything. At the same time, Mr. Kravchuk refused to read the text, - "on your own responsibility. I have nothing to hide" …
By Serhii Harmash, editor-in-chief of OstroV