Don’t Stop Until Ukraine Has Democracy, Territorial Integrity, Sovereignty

Ambassador Samantha Power, US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, has been an ardent supporter of Ukraine as it has been forced to defend itself against blatant Russian aggression. Power does not shirk from any occasion to refute Russian lies about its invasion of Ukraine and the 15-month-old Russo-Ukraine War of 2014-15. In the Security Council of the UN, she regularly challenges and disproves every fabrication uttered by the Russian Permanent Representative Vitaly Churkin, oftentimes overlooking diplomatic niceties.

In the aftermath of Russia’s escalation of its war with Ukraine last week and the intensification of fighting in Maryinka and Krasnohorivka, Power forthrightly assured her Russian counterpart and Security Council colleagues that the fight in defense of Ukraine will not end inconclusively. There is a definite mission and goal, she declared.

“The consequences of Russia’s contempt for Minsk and the rules undergirding our international peace and security are too great – both for the integrity of the international system, and for the rights and welfare of the Ukrainian people. We cannot fail to see and fail to act. We must not stop applying pressure until Ukrainians get the stable democracy, the territorial integrity, and sovereignty they yearn for and deserve,” Power said during another special Security Council meeting on Ukraine on Friday, June 5.

Her eloquent support for Ukraine should only be matched by other leaders of the free world, who unfortunately display far less mettle. Power is heading to Ukraine on a fact-finding mission this week and we look forward to reading her eye witness account of what she sees.

Among other her other observations made at the Security Council meeting, Power said Russian forces launched on June 3 multiple, coordinated attacks west of the Minsk line of contact in Donetsk. They were definitely concentrated on the towns of Maryinka and Krasnohorivka, she said.

Russia and its terrorist allies offered multiple – often conflicting – explanations for these attacks, she said tongue in cheek.

But this set of arguments, Power continued, has been undermined by some of the mercenaries themselves, who seem to have forgotten to run their tweets and their blog posts by Moscow for approval. During the attacks, one tweeted, “‘Maryinka is ours!’ – posting a photo of armed soldiers atop a tank flying the separatists’ flag. A post on a separatist website said, “‘As a result of a massive attack by [DPR] armed forces, Maryinka has been liberated.’”

The problem with the terrorists’ line of argument that Maryinka and Krasnohorivka are internal – or occupied towns – quite simply, is that it is false, Power said. “At no point did the Minsk Agreements recognize Maryinka and Krasnohorivka as separatist-controlled territory. Nor did they grant the separatists control over Debaltseve or other areas combined Russian-separatist forces have seized, or tried to seize. Yet for Russia and the separatists, it seems the contact line can shift to include the territories that they feel they deserve.”

Power pointed out that objective eyes in eastern Ukraine belong only to the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission, the SMM. “And what they tell us is that, on the evening of June 2nd and early morning of June 3rd, ‘SMM observed the movement of a large amount of heavy weapons in DPR-controlled areas – generally in a westerly direction toward the contact line – close to Maryinka, preceding and during the fighting.’ So, to repeat: according to the SMM, heavy weapons from the Russian-backed separatist side moved westward ‘preceding as well as during the fighting.’”

She said these and other joint attacks by Russian forces have had deadly consequences.

“At least five Ukrainian soldiers were killed, and 38 wounded, in the assault on the towns. The number of casualties is surely higher, but we do not, unfortunately, have reliable reports from the separatists’ side. That is because, as the UN’s Human Rights Monitoring Unit noted in its May 15th report, independent media have been prosecuted, threatened, and otherwise muzzled in separatist-controlled territory.

“We also do not know how many Russian soldiers were killed in recent attacks – or in any of their operations in eastern Ukraine, for that matter. Russia continues – despite incidents such as the recent capture of two special operations Russian soldiers in Schastya last month – to deny any military involvement in eastern Ukraine.”

Putin continues to violate the right of the bereaved of Russians killed in action in Ukraine by depriving them of information of their fate, Power noted.

“Just last week, President Putin signed a decree classifying any death of Russian soldiers in ‘special operations’ in peacetime a state secret, a policy which previously was limited to wartime only. Not content with denying their military service in life, Russia now denies their loved ones the respect and closure – not to mention social services – for their service in death. And it denies the Russian people knowledge to which they are entitled – of a conflict their government has been fueling with weapons, training, and soldiers. No matter what your opinion of the open secret that is Russia’s military involvement in eastern Ukraine and occupied Crimea, the dignified recognition of one’s dead should have primacy.”

But suffering is hardly limited to those involved in the fighting, Power said.

“Civilians living near and along the front lines continue to endure profound hardship. Approximately 1.3 million Ukrainians have been displaced by the fighting. Small children on the front lines have gotten used to going to school and sleeping in basements. Families live underground for months at a time. The elderly and disabled are trapped with little access to vital medicine and other forms of assistance. A health professional working in Debaltseve said, ‘I’ve met elderly people who say that they would just like to die. They don’t have depression; they just don’t want to be 80 years old and living in a basement.’”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine follows what Power called Moscow’s playbook of occupying foreign lands or, in other words, how Russia repeats its own imperial history.

“By now, the international community is quite familiar with Russia’s playbook when it comes to efforts to occupy the territory of its sovereign neighbors – as it did in Crimea, and before that in Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. The consensus here, and in the international community, remains that Minsk’s implementation is the only viable way out of this deadly conflict.”

Power also offered praise for the Ukrainian government’s efforts to address crime and corruption.

“The Ukrainian government has made good faith efforts to honor that consensus – notwithstanding the seemingly endless violations by Russia and the separatists – and deliver on the commitments made at Minsk. Ukraine is holding direct dialogue with the separatists, a bitter pill to swallow, but one they have swallowed for the sake of peace and for the sake of the implementation of the Minsk Agreements. At the same time, Ukraine has undertaken critical efforts, with the participation of Ukrainian civil society, to address pervasive problems it inherited from its predecessors, like widespread corruption, as well as to pursue crucial reforms such as decentralization. Ukraine cooperates with the international monitors and bodies, and has committed to address identified areas of concern. The United States will continue to raise tough issues and these areas of concern, including some raised here today by the briefers, with the Government of Ukraine, and we will support the government and Ukrainian people as they continue their efforts toward meaningful reform.”

While Russia arms its mercenaries and escalates the war, Power criticized the Security Council and the world for turning a blind eye.

“Yet Russia – and the separatists it trains, arms, fights alongside, and with whom it shares command and control systems in eastern Ukraine – continues to ignore this consensus, flouting the commitments it made at Minsk. It goes right on applying its playbook in new territories – as though this Council and the world are too blind, or too easily deceived to notice.”