REMARKS AT UN ON RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EASTERN UKRAINE

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Samantha Power
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
New York, NY
June 5, 2015

AS DELIVERED

Thank you, Mr. President, for organizing today’s meeting to speak to the recent developments in eastern Ukraine. And I join others in thanking our briefers, Under Secretary-General Feltman and OSCE Deputy Chief Monitor Hug, for providing the Security Council and the international community with the facts underlying the escalation in violence, which are critical in a conflict where some continue to try to obscure the truth.

On June 3rd, combined Russian-separatist forces launched multiple, coordinated attacks west of the Minsk line of contact in Donetsk. The attacks were concentrated on the towns of Marinka and Krasnohorivka.

The Russian Federation and its separatist allies have offered multiple – often conflicting – explanations for these attacks.

In some instances, Russia and the separatists have blamed Ukraine for inciting the attacks. For example, a Russian presidential spokesman attributed the violations of the ceasefire to the “provocative actions by the Ukrainian armed forces,” claiming, “the Ukrainian side has repeatedly taken similar efforts to escalate tensions against the backdrop of international operations.” Similarly, the so-called “Defense Minister” of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic blamed Ukraine for “provocations” and, what he called, “a breach in the Minsk agreements,” which led to the fighting. Exactly what the so-called provocations are was never explained.

This argument, this set of arguments, have been undermined by some of the separatists themselves, who seem to have forgotten to run their tweets and their blog posts by Moscow. During the attacks, one tweeted, “Marinka 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, Marinka has been liberated.”

In other instances, Russia has argued that the attacks were justified because the areas that are actually part of the separatist-controlled territory under the Minsk agreements are these areas. They are not. This was the case Russia made about Marinka and Krasnohorivka yesterday, at a meeting of the OSCE. We’ve seen this tactic before; when combined Russian-separatist forces encircled and attacked Debaltseve immediately after signing the package of measures at Minsk on February 12th, 2015. As a separatist commander Eduard Basurin told Reuters on February 15th, “Of course we can open fire [on Debaltseve]…The territory is internal: ours. And internal is internal. But along the line of confrontation there is no shooting.”

The problem with this line of argument is, quite simply, that it is false. At no point did the Minsk Agreements recognize Marinka 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.

The Kyiv-born surrealist master Mikhail Bulgakov put this problem a different way: “The tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes, never!” In this case, the objective eyes in eastern Ukraine belong 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 Marinka, 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.”

The SMM tried to contact high-ranking DPR personnel over an hour-and-a-half period on the morning of June 3rd, but reported, “Either they were unavailable or did not wish to speak to the SMM.” The eyes do not conceal the truth. And the truth here is that the recent violence was rooted in a combined Russian-separatist assault.

These and other joint attacks by Russian-separatist forces have deadly consequences. At least 5 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.

And 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.

Of course, suffering is hardly limited to those involved in the fighting. 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.”

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.

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.

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.

We must not let ourselves be deceived. 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. Thank you.

U.S. UNITED NATIONS AMBASSADOR POWER'S REMARKS ON UKRAINE

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 
01/26/2015 03:37 PM EST
Samantha Power
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations 
New York, NY
January 26, 2015
AS DELIVERED 

Thank you, Mr. President for convening today’s urgent meeting. Under Secretary-General Feltman, we are grateful for your thorough briefing on such short notice.

Just five days ago, we met in this Council and denounced the devastating consequences of attacks by Russian-backed separatists on civilians in eastern Ukraine, and we appealed to Russia to stop supporting, training, and fighting alongside separatist forces. Members of this Council pressed Russia and the separatists not only to recommit themselves to the agreements they had made at Minsk, but actually to honor those commitments in their actions. Unfortunately, we are back here today because Russia and the separatists have once again flouted these commitments.

The targets are fresh ones, but Russia’s end goal remains the same: to seize more territory and move the line of Russian-controlled territory deeper and deeper into Ukraine.

This time, though, statements by the separatists are complicating Russia’s strategy. On Friday, January 23, the de factor leader of the Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk, Alexander Zakharchenko said, and I quote: “Today the offensive on Mariupol begins.” He also said, “There will be no more ceasefires.” He said the separatists would not stop their attacks until they had, “reached the borders of the former Donetsk region,” bragging that separatist forces were now “able to attack in three directions simultaneously.” The Representative of the Russian Federation today said that these are statements we have taken out of context. What context possibly justifies a massive offensive against a civilian populated town? I would note, also, that attacking in three directions, as the separatist leader said he now had the capability – his forces had the capability to do – takes a lot of weapons and forces. This capability reflects the difference made by the substantial, months-long influx of Russian personnel and heavy weapons.

We know that Zakharchenko said these things because he was filmed when he said them, and quoted by the official Russian news agency, TASS. On Saturday, Zakharchenko told people at a rally in Donetsk, “Today the attack on Mariupol began.” He added that, “In a few days we will encircle Debaltseve,” a city that is twelve kilometers outside the ceasefire line established at Minsk.

If only the separatist’s words had been empty bravado. Unfortunately, on Saturday, the world witnessed the horrors that resulted from the separatists’ attack on Mariupol, a city 25 kilometers outside of the Minsk line. On Saturday alone, more than 100 people were injured in rocket attacks on the city. Approximately 30 people were killed, including women, elderly, and children, one of whom was a four-year-old boy. Some 40 rounds of rockets struck the city, hitting a market, homes, and a school, among other civilian structures. The impartial OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine examined blast craters and concluded that they had been caused by Grad rockets fired from multi-rocket launcher systems in separatist-controlled areas.

Why do these locations matter to the Russians and the separatists? Mariupol is a port city, which would provide Russia with another means of supplying separatists. And controlling the city would be another step toward creating a land bridge to illegally-occupied Crimea. Debaltseve is a strategic rail and road hub, and serves as a key link between Donetsk and Luhansk regions. It is no accident that these strategic cities are in Russia’s sights.

When, on Saturday, members of the Council tried to issue a joint statement denouncing the civilian casualties and expressing concern about the separatist’s statements, as we’ve heard, Russia blocked it. No wonder, given that less than a day earlier Russia had been perfectly content disseminating Zakharchenko’s statements in its state-run media. It would be strange to be concerned about statements one had encouraged and publicized.

But when your state news agency circulates announcements relishing a new offensive and your diplomats refuse to express concern about them, you own not only the statements, but also the offensives.

Now sometimes, perhaps given the fog of this bloody war, the separatists are too explicit about their objectives. Indeed, after initially blasting around the separatists’ Mariupol ambitions in the news service, Russia began to see the same ghastly images and reports of the carnage that the rest of us saw. At that point, perhaps knowing the source of the weaponry used, Russia tried to deny any tie between the separatists and the attacks. The Russian news service, TASS, even tried to erase from official news stories all quotes from Zakharchenko speaking about the separatists’ attacks.

It is not hard to understand why Russia does not want the world to hear separatists’ statements. Last Wednesday, the Representative of the Russian Federation told this Council that, “the Russian Federation is ensuring full compliance with the Minsk accords.” On Saturday, though, Zakharchenko openly admitted his forces were violating those same accords. He appeared not to have gotten the Russian memo, which clearly calls for violating the accords while pretending you are not.

Despite Zakharchenko’s statements, Russia continues to try to play the international community for the fool, and blame the violence on the Ukrainians. As recently as yesterday, Foreign Minister Lavrov said, “The worsening situation in Ukraine was the result of constant attacks conducted by the Ukrainian government troops, which breached the Minsk agreements.” We heard the same here today from the Representative of the Russian Federation.

Zakharchenko’s statements are a problem for Russia because they are too straightforward. As members of this Council know – and as, increasingly, all the world can see – the separatists he claims to lead are trained and equipped by Russia, and fight with Russian forces by their side. So when Zakharchenko brags about seizing territory beyond the Minsk ceasefire line; when he announces at rallies that separatists will strike Ukrainian forces without provocation; when he says he is not interested in negotiating; he is not only speaking about the separatists’ intentions, but also about Russia’s intentions. This offensive is made in Moscow. It is waged by Russian-trained and Russian-funded separatists, who use Russian missiles and Russian tanks, who are backed up by Russian troops, and whose operations receive direct Russian assistance.

Since December, Russia has transferred hundreds of pieces of military equipment to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, including tanks, armored vehicles, rocket systems, heavy artillery, and other military equipment. And in recent weeks, Russia has resupplied the separatists with hundreds of pieces of advanced weaponry, including additional rocket systems, heavy artillery, tanks, and armored vehicles.

In mid-to-late January, notwithstanding the shoot down of MH-17, Russia even deployed into eastern Ukraine advanced surface-to-air missile and antiaircraft systems, marking the highest level of Russian air defense presence in eastern Ukraine since September 2014. There is a direct correlation between the movement of heavy weapons, the surge in that movement across the border, and attempts by separatists to take more ground.

The horror wrought by this arsenal has been deadly. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, January 13th to the 21st was the deadliest period on record since the September 5th agreement was signed in Minsk. During this time, an average of 29 people were killed each day. More than 5,000 people have been killed and almost 11,000 maimed since the conflict began in April 2014. And today, this very day, the attacks continue on the civilian-populated areas over the Minsk Ceasefire lines – not only in Mariupol and Debaltseve, but also in Pisky and Stanychno-Lunhanske.

To the Russians, Mariupol and Debaltseve may just be strategic chess pieces in their effort to move the line of territory that they control. But these cities are also home to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians. Nearly 500,000 people live in Mariupol, the second biggest city in the Donetsk region, and more than 25,000 live in Debaltseve. Mariupol is home to 92 pre-schools, attended by 13,000 children.

We continue to believe that the only solution to this situation is a political solution, not a military solution. To that end, we continue to support the efforts of the Trilateral Contact Group, as well as the Normandy group of foreign ministers. We welcome the Normandy group’s agreement in Berlin, which recognizes the need for full, immediate implementation of the Minsk agreement.

If Russia is serious about peace, why doesn’t Russia condemn the statements by separatists that they will attack Ukrainians first and accept no more ceasefires, instead of trying to erase those statements from its state-run news services? If Russia is serious about peace, why doesn’t it pull its tanks and Grad missiles out of eastern Ukraine, instead of sending in more? If Russia is serious about peace, why doesn’t it withdraw its forces at least to the lines agreed upon at Minsk, rather than sending in a huge infusion of Russian heavy weapons so as to carve out new lines.

Only if Russia takes these steps will there be a chance for the political solution that is so desperately needed.

Thank you.

G-7 LEADERS EXPRESS "GRAVE CONCERN" REGARDING RUSSIA'S ACTIONS IN UKRAINE

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE 

G-7 Leaders Statement on Ukraine

We, the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, the President of the European Council, and the President of the European Commission, join in expressing our grave concern about Russia’s continued actions to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence.  We once again condemn Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, and actions to de-stabilize eastern Ukraine.  Those actions are unacceptable and violate international law.

We condemn the tragic downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and the deaths of 298 innocent civilians.  We demand a prompt, full, unimpeded, and transparent international investigation.  We call upon all sides to establish, maintain, and fully respect a cease-fire at and around the crash site, as demanded by UN Security Council resolution 2166, so that the investigators can take up their work and to recover the remains of all victims and their personal possessions.

This terrible event should have marked a watershed in this conflict, causing Russia to suspend its support for illegal armed groups in Ukraine, secure its border with Ukraine, and stop the increasing flow of weapons, equipment, and militants across the border in order to achieve rapid and tangible results in de-escalation.

Regrettably, however, Russia has not changed course.  This week, we have all announced additional coordinated sanctions on Russia, including sanctions on specific companies operating in key sectors of the Russian economy.  We believe it is essential to demonstrate to the Russian leadership that it must stop its support for the separatists in eastern Ukraine and tangibly participate in creating the necessary conditions for the political process.

We remain convinced that there must be a political solution to the current conflict, which is causing rising numbers of civilian casualties.  We call for a peaceful settlement of the crisis in Ukraine and underline the need to implement President Poroshenko’s peace plan without any further delay.  To this end, we urge all parties to establish a swift, genuine, and sustainable general cease-fire on the basis of the Berlin Declaration of 2 July with the aim of maintaining Ukraine’s territorial integrity.  We call upon Russia to use its influence with the separatist groups and ensure effective border control, including through OSCE observers.   We support the OSCE and the Trilateral Contact Group as central players in creating the conditions for a ceasefire.

Russia still has the opportunity to choose the path of de-escalation, which would lead to the removal of these sanctions.  If it does not do so, however, we remain ready to further intensify the costs of its adverse actions.

OBAMA-PUTIN CALL MENTIONS DOWNED PASSENGER JET NEAR RUSSIA-UKRAINE BORDER

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE 

Readout of the President’s Call with President Putin of Russia

President Obama spoke with Russian President Putin today about the situation in Ukraine and the additional sanctions on Russian individuals and entities that the United States announced on July 16.  President Obama emphasized that he remains committed to a diplomatic solution and that sanctions were not his preferred course of action.  President Obama noted, however, that in the face of extensive evidence that Russia is significantly increasing the provision of heavy weapons to separatists in Ukraine and Russia’s failure to take other steps set out by the United States and Europe to de-escalate the crisis, it was necessary to impose additional sanctions, consistent with the clear statements from the United States and our allies following the G-7 meeting in Brussels.  President Obama also reiterated his concerns regarding the buildup of Russian forces near the Ukrainian border.  President Obama called on President Putin to take concrete steps to de-escalate the situation, including to press separatists to agree to a cease-fire, support a roadmap for negotiations, halt the flow of fighters and weapons into Ukraine, obtain the release of all hostages still held by the separatists, and work to establish an effective OSCE border-monitoring mechanism.  He noted that Russia would face continued costs and isolation unless it takes these concrete steps.  The President emphasized that Russia and the United States have a shared interest in supporting a stable and prosperous Ukraine.  President Obama and President Putin agreed on the need for a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine crisis achieved through diplomatic means.  During the call, President Putin noted the early reports of a downed passenger jet near the Russia-Ukraine border.

WHITE HOUSE READOUT: VP BIDEN'S CALL WITH UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT POROSHENKO

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE 

Readout of the Vice President's Call with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko

Vice President Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko today to discuss the latest situation in eastern Ukraine and diplomatic efforts to pursue a sustainable ceasefire that would be respected by the separatists and fully supported by Russia, and would allow for the implementation of the peace plan laid out in Poroshenko’s inaugural address. The Vice President underscored that the United States remained focused on Russia’s actions, not its words. The Vice President noted the United States is prepared to impose further costs on Russia if it fails to withdraw its ongoing support for the separatists, including the provision of heavy weapons and materiel across the border.