Making the Most of Minsk
With a major battle around the rail hub of Debaltseve ending with the withdrawal of Ukrainian government forces, it looks like the tenuous truce in eastern Ukraine may hold. After violence that has left more than 5,600 dead and displaced about 1.6 million people, world leaders hope the cease-fire can be sustained and Ukraine can start to rebuild — even though the Minsk agreement, concluded last week after talks between Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany, is regarded skeptically by many, including some of its European Union architects.
Ukraine’s leaders, however, point to one crucial gain: The Minsk agreement treats the Donbass, the eastern region that includes the Donetsk and Luhansk areas declared “people’s republics” by separatist rebels, as an integral part of Ukraine. Officials note that the declaration recognizing their country’s territorial integrity even appears on the Kremlin’s website. Moreover, they say, the agreement makes no reference to the Donetsk and Luhansk republics and speaks of the rebel regions as subjects of Ukrainian law.
The Ukrainian leaders’ guarded optimism may, however, be misplaced. This is not mainly because Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, has shown himself, time and again, to be a deceitful interlocutor, nor because he already has routinely violated Russia’s treaty obligations to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
In this instance, Mr. Putin may be earnest. Russia has been hit hard by Western sanctions, and the growing sentiment for arming Ukraine within the American leadership has raised the prospect of an even higher price for direct intervention. Moreover, unlike other Russia-engineered breakaway statelets like South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in Georgia, and Transnistria, in Moldova, the Donbass has suffered severe protracted war, a ruined infrastructure, economic devastation and social dislocation, making Russia’s support for the enclave costly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/opinion/a-closer-look-at-the-ukraine-cease-fire-agreement.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
= new reply since forum marked as read
It seems Ukraine will be very well funded....and that makes his NYT OP-ED interesting from many angles. 
-------------
MYRMIDON GROUP LLC
CONNECTING YOU TO OPPORTUNITIES IN UKRAINE
Adrian Karatnycky, Managing Partner
Adrian Karatnycky is the founder and Managing Partner of the Myrmidon Group LLC. For over a decade he was the President and CEO of Freedom House, a major pro-democracy and economic reform non-governmental organization. In the 1980s, he played a leading role in offering assistance to and building support for Poland's Solidarity movement. In 1989, he began working in Ukraine with reformist forces and over the years he has developed an extensive relationship with Ukraine policymakers, opinion leaders, business leaders, and entrepreneurs. Mr. Karatnycky served as co-director of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on the US and the United Nations (2003-4), as co-director of the first World Forum on Democracy (2000), and was a member of the United Nations Blue Ribbon Commission on Ukraine (2005). Educated at Columbia University, Mr. Karatnycky, has co-authored and edited over twenty books focused on the post-Communist space and global trends in reform. A respected expert on Ukraine and Eastern Europe, he writes regularly for Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal.
In recent years, Mr. Karatnycky has advised a number of investment banks, funds, and companies on politics and economic policy in Ukraine. In addition to his role at Myrmidon, Mr. Karatnycky co-founded and volunteers his time with the non-profit Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter and conducts research at the Atlantic Council of US, where he is a Senior Scholar.
CLIENTS
The Myrmidon Group began its work in 2007 and has quickly acquired a wide array of corporate and business clients and today provides a wide array of advisory services, from due diligence to external relations to market entry.
Our growing client list includes corporations from the U.S., Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, Poland, and Ukraine and represents a wide array of industries and services.
Investment and Financial Services
A Major New York-based Global Investment Bank
A European Holding Company Focused on East European Media and Energy Investments
A Leading New York-based Hedge Fund
A Leading International Trader in Carbon Credits
A New York-based Merchant Bank
A New York-based Global Finance Company
A Milan-based Mezzanine Fund
Law and Public Relations
A Central European Government Relations Firm
Ukraine’s Largest Law Firm
A Top 50 US-based Law Firm
Industry, Energy, Media, and Technology
A Major US-based International Media Group
One of Ukraine’s Largest Industrial Conglomerates
A Fortune 500 Business Process and Information Technology Services Company
A US-based Wind-Power Company
A Major European Printing Company
An International Intellectual Property Marketing and Security Company
A Canadian Biotech Advisory Firm
A Leading Silicon Valley High-Technology Venture Capital Fund
A Ukraine-based Nanotechnology Company
Government
Myrmidon Group advises the Government of Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, on investment promotion and on outreach to the think tank community, policy analysts, and the news media of the U.S.
-----------------------
Berel Rodal, Senior Advisor
Berel Rodal has provided executive leadership and strategic, planning, and management advice to governments, and since 1990, to companies. His professional experience as a senior official in the Government of Canada included policy, planning, and executive responsibilities in the foreign affairs, international trade, defense, security and intelligence, economic and social domains, and in managing across jurisdictions; his career involved him in many of the central challenges facing government during his twenty-two years of public service. He served in the Department of External Affairs and in the Cabinet/Privy Council Office in the Government of Canada; as Secretary of the Steering Committee on national unity in the Cabinet Office during the period of the (first) Quebec referendum; as Director-General of the Policy Secretariat in the Department of National Defence; and as a member of Canada’s negotiating team in the Canada-US Free-Trade negotiations.
He has lectured in Canada, the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Japan on governance and the state, federalism and intergovernmental relations, nationalism and political identity, international relations, ‘information-age’ issues, international trade, and strategic policy/international security affairs. He was born in Montreal and was educated at McGill University and Balliol College, Oxford.
Roman Kyzyk, Senior Advisor
Roman Kyzyk has worked at senior levels in capital markets, venture capital and private equity investing and has served in senior positions in operating and turning around businesses. A Wharton MBA, his experience includes leading the division for a Fortune 500 enterprise and directing an international consultancy that crafted corporate strategy and implementation for major corporate clients in aviation, aerospace, technology, hotels and hospitality and energy. He also founded and served as managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson Nexus Fund, a technology venture capital fund focused on Ukraine and the former Soviet Union.
George Sarcevich, Senior Advisor
Mr. Sarcevich brings more than twenty years of international investment banking, high technology entrepreneurial, and government advisory experience to the team. At Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, and HSBC, he helped issuers across multifarious industries raise more than $33 billion in the international capital markets. He is a founding partner and former CFO of IX2 Networks, a leading provider of carrier-neutral co-location services in Los Angeles, California. In Southeast Europe since 2002, he completed World Bank, EBRD, UNDP, and US Treasury supported public and private sector financial assignments in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Serbia. He was involved in restructuring Serbia’s London Club debt and initiated and led the process for the initial credit ratings for the republics of Serbia and Montenegro. He was a founding partner of Bastion Group, a boutique investment bank focused on southeastern Europe sold to KBC Securities in 2007. He is a graduate of Princeton University.
Myroslava Luzina, Associate
Myroslava Luzina is the Myrmidon Group’s liaison in Ukraine. She holds an MA in philology and an undergraduate degree in law from the Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University, and an MBA from the Kyiv Mohyla Business School.
Her job experience includes positions of a university teacher and of a parliamentary staff member for a leading Ukrainian legislator and former foreign minister. She has also done a prestigious one-year internship at the German Bundestag and has served as the liaison in the organization of major North American business conferences focused on Ukraine. She is fluent in English, German, Ukrainian, and Russian.