“…Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine demonstrates the need for us to redouble our OSCE efforts. As we have said on many prior occasions, the United States denounces Russia’s lawless actions in Ukraine. They are flagrant acts of belligerence.
“We witnessed an escalation on November 25, when Russian vessels rammed and fired on Ukrainian ships. This was the continuation of a pattern. Russia’s repeated aggression contravenes all 10 foundational principles of the Helsinki Final Act – a document to which Russia itself is committed. …
“In the past four years, Russia has precipitated Europe’s largest humanitarian crisis in a generation – one that has cost more than 10,000 casualties in eastern Ukraine, and displaced more than 1.5 million people from their homes. Ukrainians have been imprisoned, tortured and killed. Crimean Tatars and others who resist Russian rule are arbitrarily prosecuted. The OSCE should not mince words when assigning responsibility for these acts.
“As Secretary [Mike] Pompeo made clear last summer in the Crimea Declaration, the United States will continue to impose consequences on Russia until Moscow fully implements the Minsk agreements and returns control of Crimea to Ukraine.
“We call on Russia to end its aggression in Ukraine, to release the detained sailors and their vessels, to return control of Crimea to Ukraine, and to stop harassment of unarmed, OSCE civilian monitors.
“Nearly 70 of those monitors, I should add, are American citizens. The United States is the single largest contributor to the Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, which acts as our eyes and ears in the conflict zone. …”
– A. Wess Mitchell, assistant secretary, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, U.S. State Department, speaking on December 6 at the 2018 Meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Milan, Italy.