It is amazing what the death of a Russian U.N. ambassador can achieve. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov is now claiming that the Kremlin never received a letter from ex-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych asking Russia to send in troops to Ukraine. The Russian prosecutor general recently issued a similar denial. So what precisely did the now deceased Vitaly Churkin wave about at the United Nations, claiming that it had been received on March 1, 2014, and why did President Putin himself speak of such an appeal from Mr. Yanukovych as grounds for the deployment of Russian forces?
The most direct mention of the letter was during an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council. Since this was called by Russia, it is inconceivable that Ambassador Churkin had not confirmed his position and the supposed backing for it provided by the Yanukovych letter with Moscow.
Mr. Churkin specifically stated that the letter was dated March 1, 2014. This is very important, since it was precisely on that day that Mr. Putin asked the upper house of Russia’s Parliament for permission to deploy forces in Ukraine. This was supposedly “in connection with the extraordinary situation in Ukraine and the threat to the lives of Russian citizens.” Permission was swiftly provided.
During a press briefing on March 4, 2014, Mr. Putin stated the following: ”What could serve as grounds for the use of the armed forces? This is, of course, an extreme situation, simply extreme. It is firstly an issue of legitimacy. As you know, we have a direct appeal from the current and legitimate, as I have already said, President of Ukraine Yanukovych, about the use of armed forces for the defense of the life, freedom and health of Ukrainian citizens …And, if we see that this lawlessness is beginning in eastern regions, if people ask us for help, and we already have an official appeal from the current legitimate president, we reserve the right to use all means at our disposal to protect these citizens. And we consider that this is entirely legitimate. That is an extreme measure.”
All of this came just days after Russian soldiers without insignia seized control in Crimea. Russia long denied that the soldiers were Russian, then Mr. Putin himself admitted that the plans for “intervention” had begun many days earlier.
Mr. Yanukovych fled Kyiv in the evening of February 21, 2014, and is now in hiding in Russia, where he is periodically brought out to parrot the Kremlin line on developments in the Donbas and Ukraine in general. Ukraine’s Parliament recently passed a flawed bill enabling the ex-president to be tried in absentia, and one of the pieces of evidence of treason that Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has cited is the alleged letter to Mr. Putin.
The “proof” of the letter had, in fact, always seemed questionable, since Ukraine received only a faxed copy, which had been passed by Mr. Churkin to the U.N. office. TASS reports that, in an interview on February 22, of this year, Mr. Yanukovych denied having asked Russia to send in forces, though in fact he does not deny writing something, saying: “It firstly wasn’t a letter, but a statement…”
Now the Kremlin is denying receiving anything – whether letter or statement.
Ambassador Churkin is dead, and therefore conveniently unable to confirm or deny anything.
He was, however, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. throughout this period, and the claims he made and the document he brandished about were widely published by Russian and pro-Russian media. The Kremlin-funded Russia Today, for example, gave it very considerable coverage on March 3, reporting that Mr. Churkin showed and read out excerpts of the letter.
Russia Today reported: “Vitaly Churkin says ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has sent a letter to Putin asking him to use military force in Ukraine to restore law and order. ‘Under the influence of Western countries, there are open acts of terror and violence,’ Churkin quoted the letter from Yanukovych to Putin in the third emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. ‘People are being persecuted for language and political reasons,’ Churkin read. ‘So in this regard, I would call on the president of Russia, Mr. Putin, asking him to use the armed forces of the Russian Federation to establish legitimacy, peace, law and order, stability and defending the people of Ukraine.’ After reading the letter, Churkin held up a copy of the original letter from Yanukovych to Putin for council members to look at.”
News of the Yanukovych letter, real or fictitious, was carefully timed to coincide with a carte blanche given to Mr. Putin to send troops, without any declaration of war, into another country’s sovereign territory.
It should be noted that the theme of such “calls to bring in troops” has emerged many times over the last three years. Embarrassing details about how the calls were organized can be found in the “Glazyev tapes.” These are intercepted calls between Sergei Glazyev, a senior Putin advisor, and various individuals, including some “pro-Russian activists” discussing the organization of pro-Russian uprisings.
Mr. Glazyev, and it is recognizably him, can be heard clearly articulating the position that all uprisings need to appear to come from locals, with it particularly desirable for councils, etc. to appeal to Russia to intervene.
One of the conversations on the situation in Odesa is with Denis Yatsyuk, one of the people ready to storm the administration and appeal to Russia for “help”. Mr. Yatsyuk tells Mr. Glazyev that there are people, but they need guarantees, and is told by Mr. Glazyev not to worry, because the Council of the Federation (the Russian Parliament’s upper house) has just rubberstamped Mr. Putin’s decree. It is clear from Mr. Glazyev’s reassurances that the decree allowing deployment of troops is meant. He stresses that there need to be mass appeals directly to Mr. Putin asking him and Russia to defend them. They must, however, also organize a decision from an extraordinary session of the regional council.
This was exactly what the activists attempted to do. The attempt failed, thanks to pro-Ukrainian deputies, but the evidence all clearly shows that they were trying to produce the scenario that Mr. Glazyev had outlined.
The Yanukovych letter was equally part of an orchestrated plan. Certainly if Mr. Yanukovych’s signature could be proven on a letter received by the Kremlin, it would be a huge indictment against him – whether or not he had written it under Mr. Putin’s dictation. It seems unlikely, however, that it is Mr. Yanukovych that the Kremlin would be seeking to protect.
Mr. Churkin died extremely suddenly on the eve of his 65th birthday, on February 20. The cause remains unclear, though the official version appears to be heart failure.
Update: A day after Mr. Peskov publicly stated that no letter “or any similar document” had been received by the Kremlin, Marina Zakharova, spokesperson of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, presented a new version of the facts. She claimed that there was no letter, just a “statement” that Mr. Yanukovych had never denied signing. The semantics here are difficult to take seriously, especially given that Mr. Putin clearly stated that Russia might use troops and be justified since there was an appeal (обращение) from Mr. Yanukovych.
The article above was originally published on the information website of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG.org).