Hoping To Enlist Reason 

"The plan will begin with my order for a unilateral ceasefire."
"I can say that the period of the ceasefire will be rather short. We anticipate that immediately after this the disarming of the illegal military formations will take place."
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko

"They ceasefire, we lay down weapons, and then they will capture us weaponless."
Denis Pushilin, Donetsk insurgent leader

"We call on Russia to support President Poroshenko's peace plan and to cease support for militants and separatists who are further destabilizing the situation and to stop the provision of arms and materiel across the border."
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew

"[Any ceasefire should be] comprehensive ... then it could be the step President Poroshenko has promised and which in general we were all waiting for."
Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister

A Ukrainian military helicopter flies near a Ukrainian checkpoint near the town of Slavyansk in eastern Ukraine May 2, 2014 (Reuters / Baz Ratner)

Ukraine's new president cannot be faulted for trying all approaches that appear reasonable to him in the conflict ongoing between his country and Russian-speaking Ukrainians who have been the recipients of encouragement, training and weapons by Russian undercover agents, facilitating the annexation of Crimea by Moscow.

The savagery of the Russophile insurgents in their determination to be successfully instrumental in gaining secession of part of Ukraine to become linked with the Russian federation has been a dreadful ordeal for those people living in the Donetsk area who want no part of the conflict and wish to remain within Ukraine as loyal citizens.

That the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin have engineered the current crisis to fulfill their aspirations to revisit their former hegemonic power, lost with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, has not been lost on anyone. Moscow's aggression and the threats inherent in the massive buildup of Russian manpower and military assets on the border between the two countries represents naked aggression born of the ambition to destabilize and loot another country's geographic and material assets.

President Poroshenko must be given high marks for trying. He has attempted to forge a way out of the dilemma by meeting with President Putin, as former allies, hoping that reason will prevail. Instead, nuanced greed and the raw passion of power remain uppermost motivations for Vladimir Putin, intent on restoring Russia to its former glory as a world super power.

Ukraine's diplomatic overture would or could result in allowing Moscow to pull back, saving face should they take the initiative offered them to persuade the rebels to surrender their ambitions. Ambitions which Moscow stoked and gambled with, to begin with.

Russia, if it succeeded in turning back the clock to a place before it interfered in the internal affairs of a former ally, trading partner and reliable business/economy associate, could forestall further sanctions and embarrassment on the world stage through helping to de-escalate current high-strung tensions.

The rebels have become more aggressively volatile and their attacks have been fiercely damaging to the future of the two countries. Mr. Poroshenko is recommending a ceasefire, following which would be securing the border.

President Poroshenko swiftly settled a diplomatic brouhaha by nominating the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Pavlo Klimkin, to replace Andriy Deshchytsia as foreign minister when the latter used a particularly crude obscenity in describing President Putin while he attempted to calm protesters who had besieged the Russian Embassy in Kyiv last weekend.

Mr. Lavrov had sanctimoniously taken huge umbrage, declaring he would never speak to Mr. Deshchytsia again; now he can speak to Mr. Klimkin.

The offer is a reasonable one, particularly under the circumstances of a nation extremely ill done by through the deliberate attempts of a neighbouring country to ransack it of its natural resources. Separatists who heed the invitation to lay down their weapons, and who have not committed grave crimes would be given amnesty, permitted to leave Ukraine if they so wished.

But the standoff must come to an end, and the sovereignty of Ukraine respected.