10 February 2015
These were weeks during which negotiations between Kiev and pro-Russian rebels were to take place, but it was all over even before talks began. What is worse is that fighting has increased very violently in the east of the former Soviet republic. “Bus stops, schools, kindergartens, hospitals and residential areas have become normal battlefields in the Donetsk and Lugansk region,” said Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaking of the kind of war now being fought in Ukraine; a Yugoslav-styled war one might say. This is perhaps the reason for which Angela Merkel and François Hollande have decided to travel first to Kiev and then to Moscow to re-establish dialogue and avoid a total catastrophe.