Twenty-five years ago, on January 11, 1995, Ukraine’s former President Leonid Kravchuk, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and prominent Kazakh author Olzhas Sulimenov, were invited by the Chechen national coordinating council, Maslaat, to serve as mediators in the armed conflict in Chechnya and the surrounding region.
Two of the invited leaders consented to attend, while President Carter had not indicated his decision.
President Kravchuk said, “We must do everything possible for the world to know the real tragedy of the Chechen people. Innocent people, civilians, are dying every day.” The events in Chechnya, “are not accidental,” he said. “This is real implementation of the new Russia policy, the restoration of a united and indivisible Russia, one that is resuming its expansionist aspirations.”
Mr. Kravchuk described the conflict in Chechnya as a defeat for the Russian leadership and its policies.
Mykhailo Ratushny, who was in Shali, on the outskirts of Grozny, said on January 9 that “the Russians are eliminating the Chechens as a nation.” His humanitarian aid delegation visited the Petropavlovsk regions, where Ukrainians have lived for centuries. “It is the civilians pollution that suffers first at the hands of the Russians,” he said, noting that there were “hundreds of [dead] Russian soldiers on the streets,” and the Russians refused to call a truce event for the Chechens to bury their dead.
“The events in Chechnya will lead to Russia’s collapse,” he said, adding that Russia has proven that it wants to remain an imperialistic state.
Mr. Ratushny noted that there were not many Ukrainian volunteers who were fighting on the side of the Chechens. He underscored that they were not mercenaries.
Ukraine’s Parliament protested the events in Chechnya by sending a memo to the Russian Duma signed by 105 lawmakers, and appeals were sent to the U.N. General Assembly to review the situation.
Mr. Kravchuk underscored that Chechnya would not receive fair treatment at the U.N., and cited the threat of separatism in many countries, including Ukraine, with Crimea in our backyard. He advised the Ukrainian state not to make public declarations about the Chechen situation.
Source: “Chechen council seeks mediation by Kravchuk, Carter, Kazakh leader,” by Marta Kolomayets, The Ukrainian Weekly, January 14, 1995.