KIEV: Ukraine ratified a sweeping agreement with the European Union on Tuesday — an issue at the heart of the Russia-West crisis over its future — and sought to blunt the independence drive of Russia-backed separatists by offering them temporary and limited self-rule.

But although Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko savoured a historic triumph with parliament’s seal of approval for the EU deal, his peacemaking efforts drew derision from separatists and some mainstream politicians, while his military reported three more deaths of Ukrainian servicemen despite an 11-day ceasefire.

“No nation has ever paid such a high price to become Europeans,” Mr Poroshenko told parliament referring to the bloody conflict that has gripped Ukraine since his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovich, walked away from the EU pact last November in favour of closer ties with Ukraine’s former Soviet master, Russia.

After Mr Yanukovich fled to Russia in February in the face of huge street protests, Moscow denounced a pro-Western “coup” against him, annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and subsequently backed armed pro-Russia separatists in eastern regions in their drive for independence from Kiev.

The chain of events has provoked the worst crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War. The United States and its Western allies imposed sanctions against Moscow over a conflict with pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine in which more than 3,000 people have been killed.

Just moments earlier, at a closed session of parliament, deputies voted in support of Mr Poroshenko’s plan to grant “special status’ to the ‘people’s republics’ proclaimed by the separatists.

President Poroshenko elaborated the plan after reluctantly agreeing to a ceasefire on Sept 5 following battlefield losses and heavy Ukrainian casualties which Kiev said were caused by Russian troops entering the fight on behalf of the rebels.

The law would grant self-rule to separatist-minded regions for a three-year period and allow them to “strengthen and deepen” relations with neighbouring Russian regions. It would allow the heavily-armed rebels to set up their own police forces and hold their own local elections in December.

A separate law also crucially offered freedom from prosecution to separatists who have been fighting government forces — though there would be no amnesty for those involved in the July 17 shooting down of the Malaysian airliner nor people involved in purely criminal acts.

“These laws are an attempt to create a chance for the gradual peaceful settlement of the crisis in the Donbass,” political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko said.

“It has to be understood that other variants for the development of events are either freezing the conflict, or war in which Ukraine can lose the whole of the Donbass and possibly even more.” But the offer quickly drew criticism from the separatists.

Rebel leader Andrei Purgin said in the separatist-held city of Donetsk: “The basic part of the document which foresees us politically staying on Ukrainian territory — that is, naturally, not acceptable.

“We will insist that any political unions with Ukraine are not possible now in principle,” Mr Purgin said, renewing charges against the Ukrainian military of violating the Sept 5 truce.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2014