A meeting of the U.N. Security Council convened by Russia opened with an appeal from neutral international officials who urged Moscow to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty amid warnings from U.S. officials that a major new offensive could soon begin.
“Whatever one believes about the prospect of such a confrontation, the reality is that the current situation is extremely dangerous,” U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo told the council. “We simply cannot accept even the possibility of a new conflict in Ukraine. Indeed, we are facing a test.”
Russia, which holds the rotating presidency of the council this month, called the meeting to mark the seventh anniversary of the second Minsk agreement, which Moscow regards as a key agreement for ending the long-running conflict, while Ukrainian officials regard it as an attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to gain permanent political control over Ukrainian foreign policy choices. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin downplayed the prospect of a new Russian attack on Ukraine, but DiCarlo and the other expert witnesses undercut Russia’s pressure on Kyiv.
ANTONY BLINKEN: RUSSIA MIGHT USE CHEMICAL WEAPONS FOR UKRAINE ATTACK PRETEXT
“It’s incumbent on all member states to fully respect key principles of the United Nations Charter — to settle disputes by peaceful means and to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” DiCarlo said. “In this regard, let me restate the commitment of the United Nations to the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders as called for in [General Assembly] resolutions.”
That statement amounted to a fresh criticism of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which the General Assembly condemned by a vote of 100-11 in 2014, as well as Russia’s posture toward Ukraine in the current crisis. Russian officials have amassed about 150,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders, a mobilization they claim cannot be criticized because the troops have not invaded Ukraine.
“We won’t consider complaints with regards to how we move the armed forces on the territory of our country,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday. “This is our sovereign right, and we don’t intend to discuss it with anyone.”
Russian forces already are present in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, according to a court ruling recently published by a Russian judge, and they have moved more recently into Belarus to conduct military exercises — an operation that puts thousands of Russian troops within easy striking distance of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. That mobilization has taken place as Russian officials insist that Ukraine implement the Minsk II agreement in the manner that Russia prefers and that the United States withdraw the nuclear weapons that American forces placed in Europe during the Cold War in order to deter the Soviet Union from attacking U.S. allies.
“Our proposals deal with the need to resolve the problem that U.S. nuclear weapons capable of striking targets on Russian territory are present on the territory of some NATO nonnuclear member states,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, per a state media translation of a document presented to U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan. “Without removing this irritant, the issues of nonstrategic nuclear weapons cannot be discussed.”
The foreign ministry document also demands a withdrawal of nonnuclear U.S. forces from the territory of countries that joined NATO after gaining independence from the late Soviet Union. “We insist on withdrawal of all US armed forces and weapons, deployed in Central Eastern, Southeastern Europe and the Baltics,” the document says. “We are certain that national potentials in these areas are quite enough.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry demanded full compliance with all demands, declaring their proposals a “package” deal for the U.S. “In the absence of readiness of the U.S. side to negotiate solid, legally binding guarantees of our security by the U.S. and its allies, Russia will have to react, including via implementation of measures of military-technical nature,” Lavrov’s team said.
The exact details of those “military-technical” moves remain unstated, but American officials interpret the threat in light of the major Russian military buildup around Ukraine. U.S. diplomats in Ukraine blamed Russia for an intense barrage of shelling overnight in the eastern Ukrainian territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, locales that Russian-controlled forces have declared independent from the central government in Kyiv. Russia’s national parliament passed a resolution this week urging Putin to recognize those territories as independent states, which drew a rebuke from another third-party official who appeared before the Security Council on Thursday.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“While I know that the [Russian legislature’s] resolution does not reflect the official line of the government, it is important to emphasize that all participants need to remain committed to the goal of restoring Ukraine’s sovereignty over the totality of its territory,” said Ambassador Mikko Kinnunen, a Finnish diplomat who is now the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s special representative for Ukraine.
