Abstract
This chapter analyzes police reform efforts within Ukraine as an example of law enforcement assistance that has achieved a considerable level of success, even as the country continues to lose lives to a conflict that is no closer to resolution. Though deep reform has largely been limited to those police working daily with the public (notably the new urban patrol police and rural community policing officers across many regions in Ukraine), those units also serve as critical interlocutors with the public in the war-torn Donbas region. This study suggests that police reform can serve as a prerequisite to build and enhance the regional trust necessary for a negotiated settlement to work in the Donbas region. Most notably, police reform may facilitate the critical step, as required in the Minsk II Peace Agreement, for Kyiv to trust the residents of the Donbas Region to choose their local governments through elections and further decentralize power in Ukraine.
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Peacock, R. (2021). The Role of Police Reform in Conflict Resolution in Ukraine’s Donbas Region. In: den Heyer, G., Albrecht, J.F. (eds) Police and International Peacekeeping Missions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77900-9_9
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