First interview of new NBU Head – A war “end date”?

In an interesting first interview with Valeria Gontareva since her appointment as the head of the National Bank of Ukraine.

Of particular note is the claim that Ukraine has done all necessary to facilitate the 29th August IMF meeting and next tranche of assistance.  Within that claim is this:

“The program of cooperation with the IMF, based on the assumption that the war should be over in three months, of which it’s been three weeks.”

An expected, or demanded, rather than “assumed” end date to the war in the east?

An end to the war as in formal military action?  It will surely continue in one form or another – even if not by way of formal military proactive engagement – for a lot longer than is being “assumed”, even if on an ad hoc and/or purely defensive basis.

The projected “latest end date” would therefore appear to be a fortnight prior to the local – and probable RADA – elections scheduled for 26th October.  As has already been written, extreme caution need be taken when working to politically expedient time lines, rather than that of military realities in war.

As the probable dissolution of the current RADA draws near, sometime around 24th – 26th August, if the retaking of the east is not more or less complete – the cities of Luhansk and Donetsk in particular – it seems almost guaranteed that those MPs and political parties who are against these elections occurring with “open lists”, will argue that it cannot happen as individual MPs on the open party lists will not have the ability to canvass freely in the east (or Crimea theoretically).

The argument will be that in a war situation, retaining the “closed party list” must remain for the 50% of the proportional representative RADA seats to avoid the need for non-essential canvassing in a war zone.

В умовах війни реалізувати відкриті списки на виборах неможливо. У кандидатів у депутати не буде можливості агітувати на сході і в Криму.

— Анатолій Гриценко (@agrytsenko) August 11, 2014

Naturally that argument would seem to fail when considering the 50% of the first past the post RADA MP seats, who will also need to canvass regionally with no alternatives – but be sure that this argument will be raised somewhat noisily so that certain parties can pick and choose their MPs based on the proportional representation part of the electoral system, rather than voters doing so from an open proportional representative list.

Anyway, the “assumption” between NBU and the IMF regarding cooperation, is that war will end by mid-October at the absolute latest – presumably based upon the electoral calendar and organisational polling needs that relate.

Perhaps it will be, but if that assumption is based on the usual accuracy of an IMF forecast, then war will probably still be on-going.