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What Kyiv and Washington signalled on 11 April 2018
Summary
A look back at the security picture around 11 April 2018, shaped by a planned change in Donbas operations and fresh US sanctions on Russian entities.
What was the security picture in Ukraine's neighbourhood on 11 April 2018? Two announcements from the preceding days framed it: a plan to change how Ukraine ran its operations in Donbas, and a new round of US sanctions on Russian targets.
A new format for Donbas
On 5 April 2018, President Petro Poroshenko held a press conference in Vinnytsia. He announced that the anti-terror operation in Donbass would end in May and be replaced with a military force.
The operation had been declared by the Ukrainian government as the 2014 pro-Russian unrest escalated with the arrival of armed militias, marking the start of the war in Donbas. The term "ATO zone" came to describe the parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under the control of Russian military forces and pro-Russian separatists. The Minsk II protocols of 2015 referred to the area as certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Sanctions from Washington
On 6 April 2018, the United States imposed sanctions on twelve Russian-owned companies, a Russian arms exporter and a bank. Washington cited multiple reasons, including Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and military engagements in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria, among others.
The measures were taken under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. That law imposed sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia by preventing US companies from doing business with sanctioned entities. It passed the Senate 98–2 on 27 July 2017, after clearing the House 419–3, and President Donald Trump signed it on 2 August 2017, though he believed the legislation was seriously flawed.
Why the two belong together
The announcements came from different capitals and addressed different matters. Together, they show that in the first days of April 2018 Kyiv was preparing to change the formal basis of its operations in the east, while the United States named Ukraine among the places where it objected to Russian military activity.
