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What Ukraine agreed on 1 October 2019
Summary
A look back at the day Kyiv accepted the Steinmeier formula for Donbas, as a separate US legal development unfolded over Ukraine.
What did Ukraine commit to on 1 October 2019? According to reports from that day, it agreed to the so-called Steinmeier formula, a framework tied to the long-running effort to end the war in Donbas.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy replied to a letter from Martin Sajdik, stating that Ukraine approved the text of the formula. The formula provides a special status for what the reply called "separate territories" of Donbas. It also envisages elections organised under Ukrainian law and validated by the OSCE, and it is aimed at granting the region a special self-governing status.
Where the formula sat
The formula belongs to the framework of the Minsk agreements, a series of international agreements meant to end the Donbas war between Russian-backed separatist groups and Ukraine's armed forces. Talks took place in Minsk, Belarus, involving the Trilateral Contact Group, made up of representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE, with France and Germany mediating through the Normandy Format. The first Minsk Protocol was signed in September 2014.
The reports from 1 October 2019 describe Kyiv's step as agreement to the text, together with the elements of special status and OSCE-validated elections under Ukrainian law.
A parallel story in Washington
The same day brought a separate development in the United States tied to the Trump–Ukraine scandal. Rudy Giuliani, the personal lawyer of US President Donald Trump, hired Jon Sale, a Watergate-era prosecutor, to represent him in the impeachment inquiry into the president.
The two developments were distinct, but both involved Ukraine's place in international politics on that date.
