Last year, on March 31, during the NATO-Ukrainian Commission meeting in Brussels, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson underscored that the U.S. and NATO “stand firm in our support of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and underscored, “We do not, and will not, accept Russian efforts to changes the borders of the territory of Ukraine.”
Mr. Tillerson continued: “Three years ago, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine shook the very foundations of security and stability in Europe. Today, Russia’s ongoing hostility and occupation is compromising our shared vision of a Europe that is whole, free and at peace.”
He thanked Germany and France for their determination to find a diplomatic solution to the ongoing crisis in eastern Ukraine under the Normandy format, highlighting the necessity of NATO solidarity to finding a political solution to the conflict.
“We continue to hold Russia accountable to its Minsk commitments. The United States sanctions will remain until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered our sanctions,” Mr. Tillerson noted, adding, “Russia must understand there is no basis to move forward on the political aspects of the Minsk agreements until there is visible, verifiable and irreversible improvement in the security situation.”
Mr. Tillerson spoke about how the humanitarian cost of the war in the Donbas had elevated due to the repeated targeting of civilian infrastructure by Russia-led forces. These same forces, he said, continue a campaign of attacks and intimidation against the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He continued: “The OSCE must be able to fulfill its mandate which included monitoring throughout the conflict zone and to the international border.”
Crimea-related sanctions should remain in place, he said, until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine. Mr. Tillerson lauded Ukraine’s recent reform successes, but noted that Ukraine needed to implement challenging reforms, increase the transparency of the judiciary, strengthen the banking sector, and pursue corporate governance reform and the privatization of state-owned enterprises. Anti-corruption efforts should be made a top priority for Ukraine. The U.S., he said, would continue to support Ukraine in its modernization of it armed forces according to NATO standards by 2020, including goals laid out in the Strategic Defense Bulletin by President Petro Poroshenko at the 2016 NATO summit in Warsaw.
“Russian aggression has not abated. This meeting is a clear demonstration of NATO’s political support for Ukraine. I encourage you to make that support tangible by maintaining solidarity on sanctions, and by contributing individually to NATO-Ukraine Trust Funds [including the Partnership for Peace Trust Fund and the Trust Fund of Countering Improvised Explosive Devises].”
Moscow, in its response, accused NATO of spreading “the myth of a ‘Russian threat’” and the “slander of ‘Russian aggression’” as a way to unify its members. “The U.S. and its allies are obsessed with building up their military presence on our borders, justifying it with the need to ‘restrain Russia,’” the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement.
Source: “Tillerson at NATO-Ukraine Commission: Our ‘support for Ukraine remains steadfast,’” The Ukrainian Weekly, April 9, 2017.