KYIV – Russian President Vladimir Putin emerged from the United Nations on September 28-29, having successfully shifted the world’s attention away from the Russian-backed military occupation of the Donbas and Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, Kyiv experts said.
That’s despite the fact that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told the U.N. of the thousands dead due to “the treacherous Russian annexation of Ukrainian Crimea and aggression in Donbas” and called for “the need to counteract ongoing Russian aggression.”
Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Vitaly Churkin left the General Assembly hall in protest. The entire Ukrainian delegation, led by Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.N. Yuriy Sergeyev, responded in kind when Mr. Putin took to the podium.
Mr. Poroshenko underscored that the Donbas war had created 1.5 million displaced persons domestically and has cost his government $5 million per day. (Extensive excerpts of Mr. Poroshenko’s address can be read on page 7.)
In his address to the U.N. General Assembly on September 28, U.S. President Barack Obama referred to “Russia’s annexation of Crimea and further aggression in eastern Ukraine” and emphasized, “we cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated.” Mr. Obama also noted, “we continue to press for this crisis to be resolved in a way that allows a sovereign and democratic Ukraine to determine its future and control its territory.”
While in New York for the opening of the 70th session of the U.N. General Assembly, Mr. Poroshenko met with British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said the illegal elections planned by the Russian-backed forces for October 18 and November 1 will undermine the Minsk accords. Mr. Poroshenko called for new sanctions to be imposed as the consequence for holding these elections. Mr. Cameron reiterated British support for Ukraine, including military instructors and targeted aid for the military.
In a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr. Poroshenko discussed the remaining measures for launching the Free Trade Area with the European Union on January 1. The two leaders also prepared for the scheduled October 2 talks in Paris in the Normandy format, where Mr. Putin will meet individually with Ms. Merkel and French President François Hollande, reported the RIA Novosti news agency. No such meeting has been scheduled thus far with Mr. Poroshenko.
Ukraine hopes to become a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council next year, Mr. Poroshenko said in an interview with Ukrainian journalists broadcast on September 26. The General Assembly will vote on October 15 for new non-permanent members and “I think our diplomatic efforts, my work in this direction will bear fruit,” he said.
During his appearances at the U.N., Mr. Poroshenko also called for reforming the world body “to return its historical mission as a mechanism for global security,” a reference to the Russian vote to undermine creation of an international tribunal to establish those responsible for attacking Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
The French leadership has called for restricting the veto power of the Security Council’s permanent members, Mr. Poroshenko noted. The need to reform the U.N. Security Council was echoed by Ms. Merkel, as reported by Reuters.
After returning to Moscow, President Putin gained support from the Federation Council on September 30 to use Russian armed forces in Syria. That same day, Russian warplanes targeted U.S.-backed anti-Assad forces in northwestern Syria that were reportedly not part of the Islamic State, against which Mr. Putin said a global coalition must be formed.
“In order to distract attention from its crimes in Ukraine, the Kremlin is committing new crimes in Syria,” said Volodymyr Horbach, a political analyst with the Institute of Euro-Atlantic Cooperation. “When it will be necessary to distract attention from crimes in Syria, the Kremlin will start a new war, even worse than the prior ones. Russia can no longer stop that kind of logic of events.”
Mr. Putin’s sudden actions shocked the U.S. leadership, which was caught off guard, in the view of observers worldwide. As for Ukraine, its problems largely disappeared from the attention of diplomats gathered at the U.N.
Indeed, Mr. Putin devoted most his U.N. speech on September 28 to the need to create what he called “an international coalition against terrorism,” directly referring to the Islamic State. Numerous Western media described this as a snub to the U.S. leadership, which had launched a coalition to combat the Islamic State in September of last year.
Next, on September 30, the Kremlin demanded that the U.S. refrain from military operations so that Russian armed forces could take the lead. That prompted a scene that would have been considered unlikely following the verbal sparring that occurred between Russia and the U.S. at the United Nations.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on September 30 issued a statement standing alongside Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov, announcing that they were working on “a military-to-military de-confliction discussion” and “a number of different ways to try to address the conflict itself.”
In view of both American and Ukrainian observers, such appearances have enabled the Russians to create the impression that they have U.S. approval for their intervention and are working together as partners. The Russian leadership is hoping such cooperation could extend to Ukraine, observers said.
At the U.N., “Putin offered the West a very favorable deal,” said Petro Oleshchuk, a political science lecturer at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. “They promise him not to support any more revolutions, and he’ll join the fight against the terrorism in the Middle East that he created himself. It could very well go through.”
However, that won’t happen soon, he added, echoing a view widely held in Washington.
“Out of his own considerations, President Putin decided to shift attention from Ukraine towards Syria, but that doesn’t mean that the West will respond by sacrificing the interests of Ukraine,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer said on September 30, as reported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Indeed the first signs following the U.N. General Assembly speeches indicated that the U.S. government would continue to offer support to Ukraine in its current framework.
On September 29, U.S. President Barack Obama signed a memorandum authorizing the U.S. State Department to grant up to $20 million in defense items and services to Ukraine, including military education and training. The memorandum also allocates $1.5 million in non-lethal items and services.
The aid came after President Obama criticized Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity during his remarks to the General Assembly on September 28.
“If that happens without consequence in Ukraine, it could happen to any nation gathered here today,” he said. “That’s the basis of the sanctions the U.S. and our partners impose on Russia. It’s not a desire to return to a Cold War.” Those sanctions have led to capital flight, a contracting economy, a fallen ruble and the emigration of more educated Russians, President Obama said.
The U.S. wants to resolve the crisis in Ukraine “in a way that allows a sovereign and democratic Ukraine to determine its future and control its territory,” he said, “not because we want to isolate Russia – we don’t – but because we want a strong Russia that’s invested in working with us to strengthen the international system as a whole.”
The U.S. president also made an indirect reference to Mr. Putin when stating there are those who believe “that power is a zero-sum game, that might makes right, that strong states must impose their will on weaker ones, that the rights of individuals don’t matter and that in a time of rapid change, order must be imposed by force.”
In what Kyiv political expert Volodymyr Fesenko described as a verbal boxing match, Mr. Putin used his remarks, which were not as long as Mr. Obama’s, to accuse the West of pursuing a logic of confrontation that sparked a grave geopolitical crisis, criticizing the expansion of NATO and its military infrastructure to former Soviet states.
“This is exactly what happened in Ukraine, where the discontent of the population with the current authorities was used and the military coup was orchestrated from outside — that triggered a civil war as a result,” Mr. Putin said.
With those words, the Russian president set off a series of comments on Ukraine that were replete with distortions and inaccuracies, as has typically been the case with the statements by Russian authorities.
In fact, no military coup occurred in Ukraine. Former President Viktor Yanukovych himself made the decision to flee the country. And the Euro-Maidan protest was not orchestrated in the U.S., but organized by the joint cooperation of Ukrainian politicians and activists, some of whose projects were long financed by Western NGOs.
Meanwhile, the war in the Donbas has been fueled by the Russian government from its very start in April 2014 and is not a “civil war,” as there’s abundant evidence of the presence of Russian armed forces in the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
In his standard manipulative style, Mr. Putin then cast himself as the defender of peace and stability in Ukraine. “We’re confident that only through the full and faithful implementation of the Minsk accords of February 12 can we put an end to the bloodshed and find a way out of the deadlock,” he said, overlooking the fact that the Russian-backed terrorists were responsible for most of violations of the accords’ provisions and cease-fire conditions.
“What is needed is a genuine consideration for the interests and rights of the people in the Donbas region and respect for their choice,” Mr. Putin said. It must be noted, however, that legitimate elections in accordance with Ukrainian law have yet to be held in the occupied territories.
The world waited for what Mr. Putin would say, “yet he didn’t say anything different than the news announcers and anchors of Russian television – ‘color revolutions,’ the treacherous builders of a unipolar world, NATO aggression and global terrorism,” Mr. Oleshchuk observed. “Putin repeated the whole array of clichés from his own propaganda.”
Often depicted as the modern-day Hitler, Mr. Putin turned the tables by casting himself as the leader an international coalition against the Islamic State. “Similar to the anti-Hitler coalition, it could unite a broad range of forces that are resolutely resisting those who, just like the Nazis, sow evil and hatred of humankind,” he said.
Later in the day on September 28, Mr. Putin met with Mr. Obama for talks that were scheduled for 55 minutes yet extended an extra 30 minutes. Kremlin officials claimed the two leaders mainly discussed Syria, while White House officials said Ukraine was the main topic, though they confirmed that no progress was made in regard to either conflict zone, the liga.net news agency reported.
Mr. Obama reportedly reminded Mr. Putin that two months were left in the year to fulfill the Minsk accords, which he said was quite enough time. The provisions include giving OSCE monitors full access to checkpoints, removing Russian soldiers from the occupied territories and returning control of the border to the Ukrainian government.
Mr. Obama reportedly warned Mr. Putin that sanctions won’t be loosened if the Donetsk People’s Republic follows through with its plans to hold local elections on October 18 and the Luhansk People’s Republic holds its elections on November 1. “Moreover, the sanctions inevitably will be extended and enhanced if the Russian Federation continues to go down the path of undermining the agreements,” the liga.net news report said.
Mr. Putin offered his latest view on the Donbas on October 1 when addressing a Russian human rights council meeting. “We’re still far from a resolution, but there are things that provide certainty that the crisis can be overcome,” he said, as reported by the RIA Novosti news agency.
“And the main thing is that there’s no shooting currently. We will count on the dialogue being positive between these unrecognized republics and the Kyiv government, and that the main condition for achieving any compromise will be achieved, which is direct dialogue,” he said.