“Another week has passed during which reports from eastern Ukraine remind us of the true costs of this Russia-manufactured conflict. On October 1, the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) reported that three children were killed and one injured in a mine blast at a railyard near Horlivka. These three boys, aged 12 to 14 years old, will be remembered, along with the more than 10,000 others killed in since 2014, as the victims of Russian aggression in Ukraine. The United States mourns their loss and insists that Russia’s proxies in eastern Ukraine refrain from blocking humanitarian demining efforts. …
“The United States calls on Russia and the forces it arms, trains, leads and fights alongside to uphold their commitments to withdraw troops and heavy weapons from the line of contact and to halt exchanges of fire. Russia is the aggressor in the conflict and so we, along with the rest of the world, expect Moscow to take the first steps to improve security conditions on the ground and end the bloodshed. …
“The deplorable conditions in Crimea continue to attract the world’s attention. …The United States calls on Russia to respect its OSCE commitments and end its occupation of Crimea.
“The United States fully supports Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders. We do not, nor will we ever, recognize Russia’s purported annexation of Crimea. We join our European and other partners in affirming that our Minsk-related sanctions against Russia will remain in place until Russia fully implements its Minsk commitments. The separate, Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine.”
– October 4 statement by the U.S. Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as reported by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress Daily Briefing.
“The United States reiterates its strong support for religious freedom and the freedom of members of religious groups, including Ukraine’s Orthodox community, to govern their religion according to their beliefs, free of outside interference.
“We support Ukrainians’ ability to worship as they choose and hope this will be respected by all. Tolerance, restraint and understanding are key to ensuring that people with different religious affiliations can live and prosper together in peace. We urge Church and government officials to actively promote these values in connection with the move towards the establishment of an autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”
– Press statement by U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, released on October 19.