Feb. 12, 2015 (Bloomberg Business) -- This morning’s cease-fire agreement for Ukraine is horribly flawed, yet far better than the alternative: Without it, the country would continue losing lives, territory and hope for a more stable and prosperous future -- whether or not the U.S. sends arms.
That said, it's easy to see why Russian President Vladimir Putin was the one who emerged from the all-night negotiations in Minsk wearing a grin. In many ways, the deal rewards Russia and the separatists he supports for breaking the last cease-fire, agreed to in September. Putin's displays of machismo -- he snapped a pencil in two and sat in a taller chair, looking down on his glum counterparts from France, Germany and Ukraine -- were only mildly less obnoxious than his straight-faced call for both sides in the conflict to stop fighting, as if the tanks, artillery, anti-aircraft missiles and drones being used against Ukraine’s military weren’t his. Yet there was truth to his posturing: Putin remains in charge of this war. Only he has both the means and the will to determine whether to expand it or end it.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was negotiating from a far weaker position. But this agreement at least creates a framework for his country to regain control of the Russian frontier, ensuring that Ukraine can remain whole and free.
Thursday's deal is based on the terms of the last one -- which failed to stop the fighting -- and it suffers the same central flaw: It sets a demarcation line on which neither side really agrees. This time, Ukraine will have to pull its heavy weapons back at least 31 miles from the current frontlines, while the pro-Russian separatists will have to withdraw the same distance from the line drawn in September. Given that the rebels have, since then, conquered substantial territory, the new buffer zone will be much larger, and leave more land in rebel hands.