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What did Zakharchenko's death mean for peace talks?
Summary
A retrospective on 5 September 2018, days after the killing of the Donetsk separatist leader, when Moscow was already warning of damage to the Normandy process.
What was at stake in the days around 5 September 2018, when the region was still absorbing the death of Alexander Zakharchenko? He was the leader of the self-styled Donetsk People's Republic, and he died on 31 August 2018 in an explosion at a restaurant in the centre of Donetsk.
On 2 September, tens of thousands of people attended his funeral. A day earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had called the murder a provocation and said it would derail the already stalled Normandy format peace process.
The framework at risk
The Normandy format brought together Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France. The group first met informally in 2014 at the 70th anniversary of D-Day celebrations in Normandy, and it played a substantial role in mediating the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015. Lavrov's warning therefore concerned the main diplomatic channel on the war in Donbas, which he described as already stalled before the killing.
Other pressures in the region
The same week brought developments elsewhere. On 4 September, a release of a chemical substance in Armyansk, in Crimea, caused significant environmental contamination.
In Moldova's neighbourhood, Vadim Krasnoselsky, president of the unrecognised Republic of Transnistria, announced on 31 August that he would visit Moldovan President Igor Dodon for talks on 6 September.
What the moment showed
By 5 September, Moscow had publicly tied a violent event in Donetsk to the prospects of the Normandy process, and had labelled the killing a provocation. The stalled state of the talks was part of Lavrov's own description. Meanwhile, the planned Transnistrian visit to Chisinau's president showed that other diplomatic contacts in the region continued on their own schedule.
