Yesterday President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko stated on his Twitter account that “decisive steps by Ukraine on implementation of the Minsk Agreements and reconstruction of territorial integrity are widely supported by our partners in the UN Security Council.” However, according to the Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, Nikolai Patrushev, Ukraine has established a full blockade of Donbas, making the residents of the region, who have Ukrainian passports, starve, instead of fulfilling all its responsibilities on the Minsk Agreements.
At the same time, at a press conference on the results of 2015, Sergey Lavrov, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, called the Minsk Agreements of February 12th 2015 ‘last year’s spectacular achievement’: “During the entire subsequent period we persistently worked to achieve a conflict settlement in Ukraine, based on implementing precisely those commitments that are contained in the Package of Measures. As you may know, not all of the agreements have been implemented; I’d even say far from all of them, and above all those related to Kiev’s commitments to establish a direct dialogue with Donetsk and Lugansk in order to address the political aspects of the Ukrainian crisis. For that reason, it was decided to continue this work in 2016. But the goals remain unchanged, and all of them have been unequivocally included in the Minsk documents. We will urge their meticulous implementation in keeping with the additional agreements and efforts that have been undertaken, specifically, within the framework of the Normandy Quartet leaders’ meetings. Generally, we will still be committed to a comprehensive and exclusively peaceful solution to the internal Ukrainian crisis and will continue helping the Ukrainians restore national harmony and return to the path of normal, sustained development.”
According to Lavrov, along with a build-up of costs resulting from some of our partners’ confrontational policies and with the expansion of problems in world affairs, Moscow’s consistent course facilitated last year a heightened understanding by all parties to international intercourse that there is no alternative to broad-based cooperation in searching for a way out of crises. “But it is not a fast or simple process. There are still inertia-driven attempts to contain Russia, even though this policy should have long ago been consigned to the archives of history, to derive unilateral advantages, and even to punish us for our independent foreign policy.
Of course, we take this into account in our actions and will do so in the future. This is not our choice. We are ready for the closest and most constructive cooperation with our Western partners, including Europe and the United States, and are open to a progressive development of cooperation with them. But solely and exclusively on an equitable and mutually beneficial basis, with parties refraining from interference in each other’s internal affairs and respecting each side’s fundamental interests,” the Foreign Minister said.
Sergey Lavrov believes that, in relations with the West, a story is beginning that can only develop on the basis of equality and all the other principles of international law: “Our Western colleagues sometimes say testily that there will be no “business as usual” with Russia. I am certain that this is the case, and we agree with them on this point: indeed, there’ll be no “business as usual” when they attempted to impose on us agreements that heeded primarily the interests of either the EU or the US, and sought to persuade us that this would not harm our interests. This story is over.”
So far, however, Lavrov noted the continuation of a highly unconstructive and dangerous policy with regard to Russia, as I said, including the strengthening of NATO’s military potential in the vicinity of our borders and the creation of European and Asian segments of the US global missile defence system, an effort joined by European and South-East Asian countries. “We regard these actions as destabilising and short-sighted. Attempts to rethink this situation do occur, but their results, regrettably, are unimpressive. For example, a year ago the OSCE established a Wise Men’s Group that presumably should have coordinated recommendations on how to revive the spirit of the Helsinki Final Act and return to the principles of equal and indivisible security. Regrettably, nothing came of that. The Western experts were toeing their governments’ official “contain Russia” line, for which reason the Russian expert had to distance himself from that document. Nothing good resulted from what was on the whole a sound idea. Nevertheless, we hope that the OSCE is not an entirely lost organisation. It is operating actively in Ukraine, it’s got a second wind, and it has chances to conform to its original intended purpose. We hope that the search for truly collective, equitable approaches to putting into practice the ideals of European security will begin after all,” Lavrov stated.
