What is the Steinmeier Formula, and why did it become a stumbling block in the peace process?
The second Minsk agreement of February 2015 was signed in the heat of battle, just as it became clear that the Ukrainian forces had suffered a major defeat in the Debaltseve pocket.
Minsk II mandated an immediate ceasefire followed by the withdrawal of heavy artillery from the front line and POW exchanges. But it went beyond that. Like the first Minsk agreement of 2014, it charted out a tentative set of measures that could bring about a peace settlement in the region. Building on a proposal put forward by then French President Frangois Hollande and German chancellor Angela Merkel, this set of far-reaching measures included a provision for local elections in the area not controlled by the Ukrainian government, granting it special status within Ukraine, the resumption of Ukraine's social payments to the region, the withdrawal of all foreign troops, and the restoration of Ukrainian control over the Ukrainian-Russian border in the Donbas. However, the very nature of the Ukrainian state would also have been changed by a constitutional reform enshrining decentralization. The exact meaning and sequencing of these measures were left unclear at the time. The negotiations in Minsk took place in the so-called Normandy Format, with the leaders of France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine making important decisions in principle, but the details being left to a “tripartite working group,” meeting separately and comprising representatives of the two so-called people's republics and Ukraine's special representative, the former President Kuchma. The “protocol" that this group produced—the only document listing the proposed measures—carried significantly less weight than the verbal agreements of the Normandy Four, and Russia was not even a signatory.Minsk II resulted in a de-escalation of fighting in the Donbas, although low-intensity fire exchanges along the front line never really ceased.
It soon became clear that the belligerents had no intention of following up on the long-term measures agreed on at Minsk. For Poroshenko, Minsk II was a difficult decision taken at a moment of military disaster. Some volunteer detachments at the front refused to accept it. In March 2015, when the president pushed through the Ukrainian parliament a law granting special status to the occupied areas of the Donbas (at least, in theory), Russia criticized it as unacceptable, because it made the implementation of the special status contingent on the regional elections being conducted according to Ukrainian legislation and under international monitoring. Conversely, Ukrainian patriotic forces saw it as a betrayal. Poroshenko's own party bosses had to explain to the rank and file that the law was no more than a signal to the West that Ukraine was not rejecting the peace process. Uncertainty also reigned on the other side of the front. Russia tried to test the waters by having the leaders of the two “republics" threaten to hold elections right away, which would allow them to take control of the peace process. However, the representatives of France and Germany intervened with Russia to shut down this opening. The measures proposed at Minsk could be interpreted as either the restoration of Ukrainian control over the Donbas or the legitimation of the two “people's republics." Since neither side felt that it had the means to enforce its preferred interpretation, both refrained from implementing any measures while awaiting changes in the international situation.Following renewed fighting in the Donbas during the summer of 2015, the then German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier first spoke in the fall of that year about sequencing the initial steps in the peace process. His plan consisted of implementing the Ukrainian law on the region's special status on a provisional basis at 8:00 p.m. on the day that local elections were held there, according to Ukrainian legislation and under international monitoring.
After the OSCE confirmed that the elections were free and fair, the law on the region's special status would come into force permanently. The subsequent summits of the Normandy Four approved this solution in principle, but for years no document was signed, cementing the commitment of the belligerents to proceed with the implementation of what became known as the Steinmeier Formula. The Ukrainian position in the final years of the Poroshenko presidency was based on the reasonable argument that no free and fair elections in the occupied Donbas would be possible before the withdrawal of all Russian troops and the resumption of Ukrainian control over the border. Of course, Russia denied the presence of its troops to start with, thus revealing its failure to take the Minsk agreements seriously. Nevertheless, the Putin administration tried to damage Poroshenko's standing in the West by arguing that Ukraine refused to implement the Steinmeier Formula.After he came to power in Ukraine in 2019, President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to demonstrate his commitment to the peace agenda by reactivating the Normandy process. Apparently, his advisors did not see formalizing Ukraine's commitment to the Steinmeier plan as politically damaging. This was done in October 2019, not by signing a single document, but by submitting to the international moderator of the tripartite “working group” separate letters from Kuchma and representatives of the “people's republics," stating that they all accepted the agreed-upon text of the Steinmeier Formula. The text did not include the former Ukrainian conditions about the withdrawal of foreign troops or resumption of control over the border.
The signing led to mass protests in Ukraine. Zelensky's opponents accused him of betraying national interests, and some provincial legislatures even passed declarations condemning the agreement. Switching quickly into damage-control mode, Zelensky resorted to the old Poroshenko line about the importance of Russia's military withdrawal and Ukrainian border control. He also promised a new Ukrainian law on the breakaway regions' special status, which would reflect these demands better.