Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Derecho Público "Dr. Humberto J. La Roche"
de la Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas de la Universidad del Zulia
Maracaibo, Venezuela
Esta publicación cientíca en formato digital es continuidad de la revista impresa
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197402ZU34
ppi 201502ZU4645
Vol.39 N° 71
2021
Recibido el 03/10/2021 Aceptado el 28/11/2021
ISSN 0798- 1406 ~ De pó si to le gal pp 198502ZU132
Cues tio nes Po lí ti cas
La re vis ta Cues tio nes Po lí ti cas, es una pu bli ca ción aus pi cia da por el Ins ti tu to
de Es tu dios Po lí ti cos y De re cho Pú bli co “Dr. Hum ber to J. La Ro che” (IEPDP) de la Fa-
cul tad de Cien cias Ju rí di cas y Po lí ti cas de la Uni ver si dad del Zu lia.
En tre sus ob je ti vos fi gu ran: con tri buir con el pro gre so cien tí fi co de las Cien cias
Hu ma nas y So cia les, a tra vés de la di vul ga ción de los re sul ta dos lo gra dos por sus in ves-
ti ga do res; es ti mu lar la in ves ti ga ción en es tas áreas del sa ber; y pro pi ciar la pre sen ta-
ción, dis cu sión y con fron ta ción de las ideas y avan ces cien tí fi cos con com pro mi so so cial.
Cues tio nes Po lí ti cas apa re ce dos ve ces al año y pu bli ca tra ba jos ori gi na les con
avan ces o re sul ta dos de in ves ti ga ción en las áreas de Cien cia Po lí ti ca y De re cho Pú bli-
co, los cua les son so me ti dos a la con si de ra ción de ár bi tros ca li fi ca dos.
ESTA PU BLI CA CIÓN APA RE CE RE SE ÑA DA, EN TRE OTROS ÍN DI CES, EN
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gra fía So cio Eco nó mi ca de Ve ne zue la de RE DIN SE, In ter na tio nal Bi blio graphy of
Po li ti cal Scien ce, Re vencyt, His pa nic Ame ri can Pe rio di cals In dex/HAPI), Ul ri ch’s
Pe rio di cals Di rec tory, EBS CO. Se en cuen tra acre di ta da al Re gis tro de Pu bli ca cio-
nes Cien tí fi cas y Tec no ló gi cas Ve ne zo la nas del FO NA CIT, La tin dex.
Di rec to ra
L
OIRALITH
M. C
HIRINOS
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Asis ten tes Ad mi nis tra ti vos
Joan López Urdaneta y Nil da Ma rín
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Vol. 39, Nº 71 (2021), 492-504
IEPDP-Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas - LUZ
Preventive diplomacy as a tool for
conict solutions in Eastern Europe
DOI: https://doi.org/10.46398/cuestpol.3971.27
Iryna Habro *
Mykhailo Fedorenko **
Liudmyla Vovchuk ***
Tatiana Zholonko ****
Abstract
The modern world community is concerned about the search
for humane, non-forceful methods for solving hybrid conicts
that characterize the system of international relations of the
21st century. That is why the concept of preventive diplomacy
has become popular and in demand. The conict in the East of
Ukraine has shown that this concept has some aws in terms of its
implementation in practice. Using the historical method, the key
means of implementing preventive diplomacy are revealed. The
article analyzes examples of the use of preventive diplomacy methods for
solving conicts in Europe by the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe. The authors used the method of comparative analysis to compare
examples of implementation of the principles of preventive diplomacy by
dierent international players. Attention is drawn to the fact that excessive
caution of the OSCE and unwillingness to call Russia a participant in the
conict and even more, so an aggressor country led to skepticism about the
organization itself in Ukraine.
Keywords: Foreign policy in Europe; preventive diplomacy; condence-
building measures; clarication of the facts; preventive
deployment and demilitarization of the territory.
* Ph.D. in Political Science, Department of International relations and foreign policy Petro Mohyla Black
Sea National University, Ukraine. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8215-7615
** Ph.D. in History, Department of Social and humanitarian disciplines Admiral Makarov National
University of Shipbuilding, Ukraine. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1713-6492
*** Ph.D. in History, Department of International relations and foreign policy Petro Mohyla Black Sea
National University, Ukraine. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7201-1388
**** Ph.D. in Political Science, Department of Social Sciences and Humanities Robert Elworthy Institute of
Economics and Technology, Ukraine. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3541-679X
493
CUESTIONES POLÍTICAS
Vol. 39 Nº 71 (2021): 492-504
La diplomacia preventiva como herramienta para la
solución de conictos en Europa del Este
Resumen
La comunidad mundial moderna está preocupada por la búsqueda de
métodos humanos y no contundentes para resolver los conictos híbridos
que caracterizan el sistema de relaciones internacionales del siglo XXI.
Es por eso por lo que el concepto de diplomacia preventiva se ha vuelto
popular y solicitado. El conicto en el este de Ucrania ha demostrado que
este concepto tiene algunas fallas en términos de su implementación en
la práctica. Usando el método histórico, se revelan los medios clave para
implementar la diplomacia preventiva. El artículo analiza ejemplos del uso
de métodos de diplomacia preventiva para resolver conictos en Europa
por parte de la Organización para la Seguridad y la Cooperación (OSCE)
en Europa. Los autores utilizaron el método de análisis comparativo para
comparar ejemplos de implementación de los principios de la diplomacia
preventiva por diferentes actores internacionales. Se concluye que llama la
atención el hecho de que la excesiva cautela de la OSCE y la falta de voluntad
de llamar a Rusia un participante en el conicto y más aún un país agresor
llevan al escepticismo sobre la propia organización en Ucrania.
Palabras clave: Política exterior en Europa; diplomacia preventiva;
medidas de fomento de la conanza; claricación de los
hechos; despliegue preventivo y desmilitarización del
territorio.
Introduction
The search for ways to eectively ensure the peaceful development of
any state, the analysis of the necessary prevention means that are exible
and adequate to modern types of threats and the timely elimination of
conict situations is one of the most important tasks of modern diplomacy.
The sharp increase in the number and frequency of local conicts in almost
all parts of the world after the end of “the cold war” and the disappearance
of the bipolar world have made it critical to nd new ways and means
for regulation and solving conicts. Among these ideas, the concept of
preventive diplomacy, because of its almost peaceful nature, is the most
attractive.
The modern world community is concerned about the search for
humane, non-forceful methods for solving hybrid conicts that characterize
the system of international relations of the 21st century. That is why the
concept of preventive diplomacy has become popular and in demand. The
494
Iryna Habro, Mykhailo Fedorenko, Liudmyla Vovchuk y Tatiana Zholonko
Preventive diplomacy as a tool for conict solutions in Eastern Europe
conict in the East of Ukraine has shown that this concept has some aws
in terms of its implementation in practice. After all, international structures
designed to implement the ideas of preventive diplomacy include countries
that are latent participants in conicts, actual initiators. For this reason,
preventive diplomacy is not always eective and does not justify the hopes
placed on it.
The purpose of the study is the peculiarity of preventive diplomacy as
means of conict prevention, as well as preventive activities of the OSCE to
prevent and regulate conicts in Europe.
The problem of preventive diplomacy is popular in the works of
researchers. For example, the work of the Ukrainian researcher I.
Nazarovsky (Nazarovska, 2012) analyzed the range of the main subjects
of preventive diplomacy and highlighted their main advantages and
disadvantages, peculiarities of the involvement in the activities for
preventing armed conicts. In the works of I. Goncharenko (Goncharenko,
2006), the peculiarities of interaction between the UN and the OSCE as
for prevention and non-forceful conict solution in the post-Soviet space
are investigated. Yu. Pashchuk (Pashchuk, 2002) analyzes the practice of
using preventive diplomacy on the example of Yugoslavia in 1991-1995,
and T. Fichora (Fichora, 2007) - on the example of the Transdniestrian
conict. However, there is no objective and impartial analysis of the use of
preventive diplomacy methods in the East of Ukraine.
1. Methodology of the study
In the analysis of the concept of preventive diplomacy and its practical
application, the author was guided by the method of historicism, which
allowed to place the problem in a changing historical context, to explain
the reasons for its emergence, its evolution, use by individual subjects
and examples of implementation. The historical approach has made it
possible to explain the causes of successes and political failures in the
practical application of preventive diplomacy in a particular setting. The
benchmarking method has been widely used in comparing examples of
implementation of preventive diplomacy principles by various international
players.
2. Results and Discussion
As is known, the concept of preventive diplomacy was rst proposed
by the UN Secretary General D. Hamerscheld. It was he who provided
the rst denition of preventive diplomacy, under which he understood
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CUESTIONES POLÍTICAS
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the actions aimed at preventing the transfer of local conicts to the global
confrontation of two military-political alliances. However, this term came
into the world practice and scientic use after the report of the UN Secretary
General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, which he spoke at the 47th session of the
UN General Assembly on July 17, 1992, with.
Preventive diplomacy is the ocial diplomatic activity of international
organizations, states, their governments, aimed at preventing conicts at
the beginning of their escalation, stopping their growth, creating conditions
for peace. It includes political, economic, military, and other types of
activities for restoring trust between hostilities and for the earlier conict
warning.
For the success of preventive diplomacy, the combinations, and
the simultaneous presence of a number of factors, both objective and
subjective, are necessary. In this regard, many analysts agree that the
lack of information adequate to the crisis situation is not always the cause
of these failures. On the contrary, sometimes there is more than enough
disturbing information, but other reasons of a more prosaic nature, such
as, for example, the overload of the sta of the UN Secretariat with current
conicts or the availability of relevant state services with similar crisis
situations, do not allow to pay sucient attention to latent conicts. As a
result, sometimes due to negligence, sometimes due to the uncertainty of
the level of accuracy of the incoming earlier warning signals, and sometimes
because of uncertainty about the correctness of the actions taken, the
elimination of latent cases does not occur.
Moreover, many people responsible for preventive actions wait until
the conict reaches the crisis phase, when they can condently prove their
actions and receive political dividends. So, one of the main subjective factors
in preventive diplomacy, the so-called political will, sometimes turns out
to be decisive, whereas if preventive attempts fail, inaction can always be
justied by various excuses (Rakhmatullaev, 2007).
The system of subjects of preventive diplomacy consists of the
government of states, international organizations (UN, OSCE, ASEAN,
etc.) and non-governmental organizations. Each of these three elements
of the system plays an important role in the caution, prevention, and
solution of armed conicts. For example, governments initiate military
and political actions that demonstrate the credibility of a solution for a
conict; international organizations initiate coherence of international
eorts, and non-governmental organizations quickly and eectively react
to the challenge. Each element must be leading at a certain time and in a
certain sphere and each of them has the right to count on the support and
understanding of other subjects in prevention of armed conicts.
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Iryna Habro, Mykhailo Fedorenko, Liudmyla Vovchuk y Tatiana Zholonko
Preventive diplomacy as a tool for conict solutions in Eastern Europe
The achievements of these international structures in the eld of conict
prevention have not always been further developed for their implementation
due to the lack of political will, the policy of double standards, or ignoring
the specic circumstances of particular situations. In a number of crises, the
initiatives of the UN, the OSCE and other subjects of preventive diplomacy
on the invention of the formula for a political regulation did not result in
fundamental, qualitative changes.
2.1. OSCE preventive diplomacy in the post-Soviet space
The OSCE is one of the key subjects of preventive diplomacy. This
organization has 57 member-states around the world, covering three
continents - North America, Europe, and Asia.
A comparative analysis of institutions implementing strategies of
preventive diplomacy, at the disposal of the OSCE, allows us to distinguish
two key institutions - a) long-term missions; and b) the OSCE High
Commissioner for National Minorities (HCNM). The long-term CSCE
missions arose under the pressure of circumstances and the emergence of
the need to prevent and solve the conicts in the area of responsibility of the
Organization (Rakhmatullaev, 2008).
OSCE actions taken in Lithuania have become the best example of an
orderly transition from the Soviet republic to a sovereign state with regard
to relations with Russia. Although a similar process took place in Estonia
and Latvia, it was not so successful, however, there was some progress as
well. On the one hand, the specics of the Baltic countries, their Western
political culture, historical experience, Baltic geopolitics contributed to this
process. On the other hand, the OSCE’s eorts to regulate relations between
Russia and the Baltic states took place in fairly favorable conditions,
primarily because the parties wanted solving of existing conicts.
The center of the “Baltic question” was the presence of the Russian
military on the territory of three countries. The OSCE mission, starting its
work in 1992, provided a solution to the acute problems of the region: the
withdrawal of troops from the territory of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia;
advice on regulations of issues of citizenship and language; guaranteeing
the rights of military retirees; cooperation in the negotiations on the
dismantling of the radar in Skrunda; establishing a dialogue with Western
countries.
The specics and focus of the actions of the OSCE High Commissioner
on National Minorities in Latvia and Estonia helped to prevent the crisis
development of events related to the restriction of the rights of the Russian-
speaking minority there.
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Also worth mentioning is the practice of applying preventive diplomacy
in the Moldavian-Transdniestria conict. The most important instrument
used by the OSCE was the sending of a special mission to the Republic of
Moldova in response to the appeal of the Moldavian government.
The main task of the Mission was to promote the achievement of
a nal political settlement of the conict in all its aspects, based on the
independence and sovereignty of the Republic of Moldova, within the
existing borders and restoring the territorial integrity of the state with
granting special status to Transdniestria. The Mission’s mandate covered
several points, the main of which was to provide favorable conditions
for the dialogue between the parties with the aim to solve the problem
politically, as well as to establish contacts with all parties of the conict,
local administrations, local people, monitoring the situation, providing
recommendations and expert assessments, monitoring compliance of
international obligations to ensure human and minority rights, the return
of refugees, etc. (Fichora, 2007).
In December 1999, according to the 19th Paragraph of the Declaration of
the Istanbul Summit, the Mission’s mandate was expanded with the aim to
ensure transparency in the process of removing and destroying of Russian
ammunition and weapons, to coordinate nancial and technical assistance
that was provided to facilitate the implementation of their withdrawal and
destruction. The OSCE Mission (then it was CSCE) in Moldova began its
activities on April 25, 1993, in Chisinau (Melnyk, 2013). The Memorandum
of Mutual Understanding with the Government of the Republic of Moldova
was signed on May 7, 1993 and amended on March 28, 1996. The mutual
understanding of the OSCE activities in the Transdniestria region came
into force on August 25, 1993, as a result of an exchange of letters between
the Head of the Mission and the president of the so-called Transdniestrian
Moldavian Republic (hereinafter – the TMR). The mission opened its oce
in Tiraspol on February 13, 1995. In September 1993, the cooperation of
the Joint Control Commission with the OSCE Mission in the Republic of
Moldova was established. And in November 1993, the Head of the OSCE
Mission in Moscow, T. Williams, sent Report No. 13 to the head of the
organization. This document described the Mission’s viewpoints on how
to solve the conict and a possible basis for negotiations between the two
parties (Melnyk, 2013).
It should be noted that since 1993, the OSCE Mission has been considered
the main mediator in this conict. It was the OSCE that constantly promoted
peace negotiations between Moldova and the TMR. The negotiations in
the “5 + 2” format was particularly active, in which Moldova and the TMR
as parties of the conict, Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE as mediators, as
well as the US and the EU as observers, take part. The negotiations were
interrupted in 2006, then they were restored several times in 2011 and
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Iryna Habro, Mykhailo Fedorenko, Liudmyla Vovchuk y Tatiana Zholonko
Preventive diplomacy as a tool for conict solutions in Eastern Europe
2016. In addition to a direct political regulation, the OSCE focuses on
condence building measures and interpersonal contacts through informal
negotiations during meetings of experts on humanitarian and social issues
(Zvezdova, 2017).
For many years, the Mission has been actively involved in discussions
dedicated to ensuring military transparency and restoring condence
between the parties of the conict. Only during the rst half of 2004, the
Mission’s experts proposed 14 draft agreements on condence and security
building measures. The proposals drew attention to the possible reduction
of the armed forces and armaments; they also included the intensication
of contacts, monitoring of weapons production capacities, joint exercises
for peacekeeping operations, joint inspection exercises and so on.
It should be noted that the OSCE’s activities in the regulation of the
Transdniestrian conict have an ambiguous assessment. On the one hand,
the involvement of this organization in the regulation process has had a
positive signicance, since it allowed to internationalize the negotiation
process and attract the attention of the international community, because
with the assistance and support of the OSCE the format of the negotiations
was expanded. In addition, the presence of the OSCE Mission restrained
the hostile actions of the parties in conict situations since awareness of
the fact of oversight from the side of the international community was
important.
However, sharp criticism exists towards this organization, and
not without reasons. The criticism concerns the ineectiveness of the
peacekeeping eorts and the monitoring mission of the OSCE. There are
no eective tools and levers in the OSCE that could force countries to
fulll their commitments. And it is vividly seen in the failure of the OSCE
to achieve the implementation of the decisions of the Istanbul Summit
on the export of weapons and ammunition of the Russian 14th Army from
the territory of Transdniestria. The procedure for making decisions and
coordinating activities continues so long that sometimes a moment for the
eective implementation of this decision is lost (Fichora, 2007).
In addition, the activities of the OSCE Mission in Moldova are
extremely negatively perceived on the left bank of the Dniester. Although
the OSCE oce operates in Transdniestria, this organization is not trusted
there, it is criticized for formalism, prejudice, and bias. In the opinion of
Transdniestria’s, the OSCE monitoring is one of the methods of collecting
military strategic information. The OSCE is accused of becoming a tool
of pressure, pursuing a policy of double standards, and protecting the
interests of the Western world, regardless of the objective reality existing
in the conict zone. Of course, this is the result of propaganda, and rst of
all, Russian one.
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2.2. OSCE and preventive diplomacy in solving the conict in
the East of Ukraine
Ukraine has been a member of the OSCE since January 30, 1992, when
the rst president of independent Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, signed the
Helsinki Final Act. For a long time, Ukraine has been actively involved
in regulation of conicts under the auspices of the OSCE. However, after
the start of the Russian aggression, Ukraine has turned from a donor to
a recipient of international security and is now forced to seek external
support in order to restore peace.
In the practice of international peacekeeping, the responses to the
challenges that Ukraine faces now have long been processed, and even a
simple linear projection of the state of conict on the forms of peacekeeping
assistance allows to avoid false expectations and answer the question of
what kind of peacekeeping assistance Ukraine needs.
As noted by the Ukrainian expert V. Filipchuk, already during the
Maidan - in February 2014 - Ukraine should have called for the preventive
deployment of an international peacekeeping contingent. Preventive
deployment is one of the most eective mechanisms of international
inuence to prevent the escalation of violence, allowing in a number of
cases to stop conicts before the start of their active phase. But the restraint
of international players and the short-sightedness of the Ukrainian political
leadership led to the fact that this issue was not even considered at the
international level. Only a year after several military defeats, the loss of
territories, the deaths of thousands of Ukrainians, the conversion of millions
of citizens into refugees, and nally the signing of Minsk-2, the Ukrainian
leadership turned at last to the international community with a request to
introduce a “peacekeeping” contingent (Filipchuk, 2016).
The annexation of Crimea put the world community before the fact
that one member state of the UN and the OSCE violates the territorial
integrity of the other state through direct use of military force. The Russian
special services removed the Special Representative of the UN Secretary
General in Ukraine from the territory of Crimea during the annexation,
the peninsula was removed from international monitoring altogether.
To facilitate the regulation of the conict on the territory of the Donetsk
and Luhansk regions, the OSCE has been determined as the main format
of international involvement. But the mandate and activities of the OSCE
Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, the OSCE Observer Mission on
the Russian-Ukrainian border, as well as the OSCE’s activities to facilitate
the operation of the tripartite contact group (the Minsk process) did not
help to stabilize the situation in the Donbass, but also failed to prevent an
escalation of the armed conict (Filipchuk, 2016).
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Preventive diplomacy as a tool for conict solutions in Eastern Europe
Standard mechanisms that the OSCE uses to solve conicts under the
conditions of conict in the East of Ukraine do not work. The Minsk process
and the agreements that are accepted during its work are not eective.
These agreements are violated almost immediately after their approval.
In Ukraine, a special monitoring mission of the OSCE is now operating,
but its capabilities are limited - it has neither the ability to coerce, nor the
ability to protect itself. Moreover, the mission’s right to free movement
and monitoring in the conict zone is systematically violated from the side
of the militants, and the OSCE representatives themselves often become
objects of aggression by military formations in the East of Ukraine. Ukraine
has repeatedly expressed a request to strengthen the existing mission with
an additional mission under a military mandate or a police component.
Excessive caution of the OSCE and unwillingness to call Russia a
participant in the conict, and even more so an aggressor country, lead
to skepticism towards the organization itself in Ukraine. The situation is
similar to how the OSCE is perceived in Moldova and Transdniestria. In
addition, in the mission of the OSCE observers there are representatives of
Russia, which also does not contribute to the increase of the credibility to
the OSCE among Ukrainians. When one state is at the same time a party of
the conict and a mediator, this is nonsense. One can only imagine how this
situation aects mission reports, their content and language.
The Russian Federation has many levers of inuence on the functioning of
the OSCE. Consensus must be not only in political, but also in administrative
decisions. In particular, in decisions to send a mission or extend its mandate.
Many of those who came to the East of Ukraine, had experience in other
missions. For example, in Bosnia. There, they promoted dialogue between
Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, and Croats. They put in their memory that the
mission should facilitate dialogue. They intended to act in Ukraine in such a
way as well. At the beginning, it was believed that the conict in Ukraine was
a civil conict, where there are two sides - the majority of the population of
the state and residents of the East, in particular of the Donbass. Only later
they realized that this was not an internal conict. Therefore, in this case,
the mission’s mandate was inadequate to the situation.
The denition of the Ukrainian crisis as an internal conict between
Ukraine and ORDLO (separate districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk
regions) excludes the deployment of an international peacekeeping
operation, and regulation of the conict due to the implementation of the
Minsk agreements is an obligation of Ukraine, which was approved by the
UN Security Council resolution (Zartman, 1996). The Minsk agreements
are only a mechanism for transforming the war in the East of Ukraine into
a conict of low intensity, but it continues in the acute stage. The use of
preventive diplomacy will only contribute to the localization of the conict
and its non-proliferation to other regions of Ukraine and neighboring
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countries, which is not expedient in this situation. Therefore, the only
eective form in this case would be assistance to peace using the whole
arsenal of eorts provided by Art. 33 of the UN Charter (negotiations,
examination, mediation, arbitration, appeal to regional organizations),
with the following use of peace-building form and peace enforcement of the
Russian Federation, however, with the ocial qualication of Russia as the
aggressor country, and then the removal of the Russian Federation when
considering the issue of Ukraine in the UN Security Council (Panchenko,
2016).
It should be noted that some members of the OSCE realized that Russia
is a party of the conict, but this happened only after the tragedy with the
Boeing 777 in July 2014. But then it was too late to remove Russia from the
mission to the East of Ukraine. This could, but only theoretically, be done at
the very beginning - in the spring of 2014. But then, and now this requires
political will in the countries of the West. Western politicians, even those
who personally would like to increase the pressure on Russia in the OSCE,
should take into account the opinion of Western society. And their anti-war
sentiments are dominant.
It is also necessary to say that the OSCE insists on the principles of
tolerant relationships between the parties of the conict in Ukraine. Back
in 2014 in Minsk, representatives of the organization oered to adopt
the relevant documents on amnesty at the level of national legislation in
Ukraine.
In the conditions of the conict, an amnesty is understood as a
deliverance from criminal prosecution and, possibly, from civil liability,
limited by the conduct that took place during a specied period and/or
related to a military conict.
The world experience is rich in the application of amnesty in dierent
countries and with a dierent purpose. Under some conditions, amnesties
for “ordinary” criminal oenses may have a humanitarian purpose, for
example, to allow terminally ill persons to return home or to ease the harsh
conditions in overcrowded prisons.
At the insistence of the OSCE and the world community, Ukraine adopted
a relevant law - the Law of Ukraine “On the Prevention of Prosecution and
Punishment of the participants of the events on the territory of the Donetsk
and Luhansk regions” dated September 16, 2014. This document was
approved to facilitate the peaceful regulation of the situation in the East
of Ukraine and was adopted in compliance with the Minsk agreements,
where an amnesty was introduced for all parties of the conict, without the
possibility of granting a conditional amnesty and establishing responsibility
for war crimes (Panchenko, 2016).
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Preventive diplomacy as a tool for conict solutions in Eastern Europe
Accordingly, the persons referred to in the rst part of Article 1 of the
document
Are exempt from criminal responsibility, provided that, after a month since
the entry into force of this Law, they red or do not hold hostages, voluntarily
surrendered to state bodies or do not keep rearms, ammunition, explosives,
explosive devices, military equipment, do not occupy buildings, premises of state
bodies and local self-government bodies and do not take part in blocking the work
of state bodies authorities, local authorities, enterprises, institutions, organizations
in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, about which they led a relevant application
to the pre-trial investigation authority conducting the criminal proceedings
(Abugu, 2000: 29).
Also, in this document it is not specied what time frame for the
commission of crimes is in question.
In addition, the consequence of an amnesty for such persons is the
closure of criminal proceedings. Article 4 establishes:
Exemption from administrative responsibility of persons who committed
from February 22, 2014, to the date of entry into force of this Law inclusive in
the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions where the antiterrorist operation
was carried out, acts containing signs of administrative oenses envisaged in the
Code of Ukraine on administrative oenses.
Even though the list of administrative oenses for the commission of
which the exemption from administrative responsibility is provided, isn’t
specied, the exemption from any administrative oense is presumed.
Ukraine should be very careful about the issue of amnesty in the aspect of
the armed conict in the Donbass. If Ukraine should introduce amnesty, it
is only conditional, because the provision of a broad, unconditional amnesty
can create social tension in the society. The introduction of conditions for
granting amnesty makes it dicult to solve the conict, at the same time
increases the legitimacy of the amnesty, contributes to reconciliation of the
population.
Several conditions are crucial for performance. First of all, this is
disarmament and demobilization, which is the key to further solution and
stabilization of the situation. Refusal of violence and release of prisoners
of war and hostages are obligatory requirements for granting amnesty. No
less important is the prediction of the conditions for the future behavior
of the persons who received the amnesty. But in any case, to implement
and highlight the main ideas and requirements for the granting and
preservation of amnesty, a law is needed that would regulate in detail the
conditions under which amnesty is granted. Monitoring the fulllment of
such conditions would make it impossible for abuse on the part of persons
who apply for an amnesty, or for ocials who make decisions about its
provision, as well, would perform a preventive function, establishing
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Vol. 39 Nº 71 (2021): 492-504
conditions for further behavior of persons for preserving the amnesty,
and would provide a measure of responsibility in case of violation of these
conditions.
Conclusion
Preventive diplomacy as a tool for conict prevention was rst used
only in specic cases, and over time, preventive activity started to have a
character of the daily work of subjects of preventive diplomacy. The use of
preventive technologies has had positive results on the European continent:
Macedonia, Albania, Latvia, and Estonia, etc. At the same time, there are
unsuccessful attempts to prevent crises in Croatia, Moldova, Bosnia, and
Serbia.
All successful attempts to apply preventive diplomacy methods were
such because of the willingness of the governments of these countries to
work, the countries were able to control the special services and the armed
forces. The failures of the use of preventive diplomacy are primarily due to
the unwillingness of politicians to solve conicts and the long-term ignoring
by the world community of those conicts that were inevitable.
The Transdniestria conict and the conict in the East of Ukraine are
examples of how preventive diplomacy achieved partial success. Because
these conicts do not have a large scale and numerous victims. In this result
of preventive diplomacy methods, the OSCE is often blamed, which does
not conict with the Russian Federation, denies that Russia is a party of
these conicts and does not fully perform the functions assigned to this
organization.
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Esta revista fue editada en formato digital y publicada
en diciembre de 2021, por el Fondo Editorial Serbiluz,
Universidad del Zulia. Maracaibo-Venezuela
Vol.39 Nº 71