A"glimmer of hope." That was how German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday described the ceasefire scheduled to begin in eastern Ukraine from Sunday.

According to Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin "put pressure" on the pro-Moscow separatists while Ukraine's leader Petro Poroshenko, "did everything to achieve the possibility of an end to the bloodshed." So far, so good then... or is it?

At face value what was agreed after 17 hours of negotiations in Minsk looks promising. The deal envisages a ceasefire between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists starting on Sunday, followed by the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line and constitutional reform to give eastern Ukraine more autonomy.

The agreement even addressed some of the main stumbling points, including a "demarcation line" carving off the separatists from Ukrainian forces, which the rebels wanted to reflect gains from a recent offensive which shredded an earlier ceasefire deal. And speaking of that earlier ceasefire deal- -also drawn up in Minsk- why should this one fair any better than the last?

Indeed, even while yesterday's negotiations were still ongoing, the Ukrainian military authorities in Kiev were claiming that around 50 tanks, 40 missile systems and 40 armoured vehicles were simultaneously crossing overnight from Russia via Izvaryne border crossing into east Ukraine and the separatist Luhansk region.

But putting aside for a moment such immediate concerns for the solidity of the ceasefire, there are other much more deep rooted and less visible reasons why this truce might have difficulty holding.

During my time in eastern Ukraine last year, many Ukrainians I met spoke of the significant role being played in the current conflict by organised crime and gangsters.

As Professor Mark Galeotti at New York University's Centre for Global Affairs, recently pointed out,

Ukraine headed into this current crisis already undermined and interpenetrated by criminal structures closely linked to cabals of corrupt officials and business oligarchs.

On numerous occasions since hostilities in the region began there has been abundant evidence of many paramilitary commanders both within the separatist and anti-separatist ranks "who have spotted an opportunity to convert underworld might into upperworld power."

As early as the 1990's Ukraine, like Russia, saw a huge upsurge in organised crime. During this period the gangsterism of the streets was matched by the rise of a new elite determined to seamlessly fuse political, economic, and criminal enterprises.

Professor Galeotti points to one example in the Moscow-based Solntsevo network, Russia's largest and most powerful mob, which has a long-standing relationship with the "Donetsk clan," an infamous political-criminal circle in the eastern Ukrainian city of the same name and scene of much recent fighting.

What has to be borne in mind here is that is that it is not only with Russia that many of these Ukrainian mobsters have become aligned. Some too have found common cause with the country's extreme right that played its part in the 'Euromaidan' protests in Kiev and recent fighting on the frontlines of eastern Ukraine.

Oleksandr Muzychko, the Nationalist Right Sector leader, who was killed in a gun battle with security forces in Ukraine last March, was wanted for membership of an organised crime gang.

But if serious gangsterism already had a grip on Ukraine long before the current war, it was also bolstered in great part through the role played by democratic countries in the West.

Many of these countries, Britain included, allowed Ukraine's corrupt leaders to export embezzled money and to enjoy Western property rights for years.

The vast extent to which this was made possible is outlined in a report published last year entitled

Looting Ukraine: How East and West Teamed up to Steal a Country, produced by the London based Legatum Institute (LI) an independent public policy research organisation.

This report should be required reading for any understanding of why Ukraine is in the crisis it finds

itself today.

Yes, the Kremlin's influence is a part of the problem, but not all of it. Just as 'Vladimir Putin and Gazprom have helped subvert bids to stop Ukrainian officials stealing from their own people,

Western bankers and lawyers have also laundered and hidden the proceeds,' the rports rightly points out.

Hardly surprising then that in the eyes of many Ukrainians, Russian and the West are as bad as each other. To such people the West might talk of democracy and bringing Ukraine into its embrace but in reality is only interested in the money and profit - lots of it - that Ukraine by legal and illegal means can provide.

Gangsters, very rich and very powerful are already key players in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Keeping the region unstable would not only provide them with even greater leverage and influence on the ground, but open up new business opportunities.

Already the sea port of Odessa is an infamous trafficking conduit through which vast quantities of illegal Europe-bound Afghan heroin transits. In western Ukraine meanwhile, organised crime gangs there are equally active moving drugs and people and other contraband.

Last March a Donetsk prosecutor warned that "through crime networks (Moscow) has an army of hoodlums it can use."

Moscow however is not unique in that capacity. Using international diplomacy to make the latest ceasefire stick is one thing. Reining in the widespread and pernicious influence of the mafias' and big business who have a vested interest in undermining it will be something else.