When world leaders pull an all-nighter, something has to come out of it. What came out of the 17-hour, Ironman-level endurance test in Minsk is a cease-fire deal for eastern Ukraine that mitigates the Kiev government's defeat in a war it could not have won, gives Russian-backed rebels two days to make final territorial gains and freezes the conflict until next year. 

The challenge now is to make this cease-fire stick where previous ones didn't. It's not clear if Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has proven to be an unreliable negotiating partner in recent months, will stand by the few concessions he made. If he can be held to them, it will be a major diplomatic victory for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. My bet, however, is that this is not the final round of high-level talks: the deal resulting from the negotiating marathon is too contradictory to work long-term.

Two separate documents came out of the meeting: an empty declaration, in which the negotiating parties affirm "full respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine," and a three-page, 11-point document purporting to be a roadmap to the implementation of last September's cease-fire agreement. It is, in fact, a new deal, more favorable to the Russian-backed rebels than the September agreement.

According to it, fighting is to cease at midnight, Feb. 15. The Ukrainian military is to pull back its artillery at least 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the current separation line, which the rebels have moved significantly in recent months:

David Fuller's view

The article title is appropriate, and here is how I think it play out over time. 

Putin gains a useful chunk of Ukrainian territory.  He will probably lie low for a while, waiting for a firmer oil price to improve his weak economy.  Reduced hostilities in Ukraine might even be sufficient for the EU-Russia reciprocal sanctions to be at least partially removed. 

This would help the EU’s struggling economies and contribute to the outperformance of the region’s stock markets that we are beginning to see.  Putin will be planning his next military moves against not only Ukraine but other countries that were previously part of the Soviet Union.  That is all he really knows, and it will go on until influential Russians finally decide to remove him from power.