‘Plan B’: Build a WALL & carry on living, if peace talks over eastern Ukraine fail, says Zelensky aide

Ukraine will wall off its breakaway eastern regions if the upcoming Paris talks end up at an impasse, a presidential aide has suggested, and Israel looks set to become Kiev’s wall-building role model, according to reports.

As leaders of France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine brace for the closely-watched ‘Normandy Four’ summit in Paris, the top Kiev official hinted at what his side has in mind, apart from diplomacy and political solutions.

“We will be building a wall and life will go on,” Andriy Yermak, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky, revealed at a security forum in London, according to the organizers and reporters present at the meeting.

“We do have friends and we’ll be borrowing from their experience, first of all Israel,” the official said, referring to the border fence erected along the West Bank border.

Construction of the 708km-long (440 miles) wall was met with worldwide condemnation, and was considered unlawful by the UN’s International Court of Justice.

The Paris summit will start next Monday, bringing together leaders of the four countries for the first time since 2016. Russia insists that the meeting should reaffirm the common understanding of the Minsk agreements, adopted to settle the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

They include heavy weapons disengagement by government and self-defense forces, as well as a ceasefire, among other conditions.

Conflict broke out in Ukraine in 2014, following a coup d’etat that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The Donetsk region, along with neighboring Lugansk, engaged in open conflict with Kiev as people refused to accept the new government following the coup, and instead established self-proclaimed republics.

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