Ukraine Protesters Reject Geneva Deal Demands

Ukraine Protesters Reject Geneva Deal Demands

They Didn't Actually Agree to Anything to Begin With

by Jason Ditz, 

Yesterday’s Geneva talks on the Ukraine ended with a joint statement of policy from the participating countries, which mostly included a litany of demands on the protesters in eastern Ukraine. The protesters, who weren’t invited to the talks, have rejected the demands out of hand.

The deal demanded that the protesters abandon all protest sites in return for amnesty for their “illegal” rallies against the interim government, and also called on militias supporting the protests to disarm.

As with the repeated Syria Civil War talks in Geneva, which likewise didn’t include many of the principal combatants, the assumption seems to have been that anyone not invited would just accept whatever terms were thrust upon them.

Western nations were likely believing their own hype in this case, as they have been claiming publicly that the protests were just Russian covert operations. The reality is something else entirely.

Far from stabilizing the situation, the Geneva “deal” now risks escalating violence there, as Ukraine’s interim government will no doubt take the position that it is on them to forcibly impose the terms of the deal on the protesters.

http://news.antiwar.com/2014/04/18/ukraine-protesters-reject-geneva-deal-demands/