By Vestnik Kavkaza
Elimination of anti-Russian sanctions will depend on the country's activity in the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine, a representative of the State Department of the U.S., Jen Psaki stated yesterday, commenting on a report by the Russian Central Bank on scenarios of economic development of the Russian Federation. There are two scenarios. The first one requires that sanctions will continue till 2017. The second one is that they will be eliminated in the third quarter of 2015.
“If Moscow continues ignoring its liabilities, according to the Minsk agreements, and continues its destabilizing and dangerous activity, it will have to pay an even higher price for this,” Psaki warned, commenting on rumors that Russia supplied militants in Donbas with armored vehicles.
“In recent days observers of the OSCE mission reported on big Russian armored columns moving toward the front line and intensification of fighting near Donetsk airport and the village of Debaltsevo, where militants seem to be trying to occupy new territories, violating the Minsk agreements. Russia should withdraw its soldiers and armored vehicles from Ukraine,” Psaki stated.
“For clear reasons our positions don’t coincide with the American ones concerning the events in Ukraine,” the Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov stated. “If Washington is interested in a settlement of the situation, the creation of conditions for a dialogue between Kiev and the militants’ leaders, the heads of the LPR and DPR, I think it would be the right step. The main thing is not following Kiev’s ideas on accumulating forces and returning to violent methods of settling the conflict,” ITAR-TASS cites Lavrov.
After his meeting with Lavrov, the US State Secretary John Kerry urged the West to normalize relations with Moscow, if “it is ready to take the necessary steps.” “It is better for all of us if Russia, Europe, the U.S., and Canada unite to solve global problems, such as extremism, proliferation of nuclear weapons, and epidemics,” Kerry noted.
Anton Finko, political scientist and an expert of the Kiev Center for Political and Conflict Research, is glad that after the consultations with the American side some common ground was found on the question that a resumption of violence and military action in Donbas is unacceptable: “A lot depends on the agreements between the Russian and the American sides, especially at the highest level. This is the key moment here. I would like to remind you of the initiative of President Petro Poroshenko, who proposed returning to the Geneva format of negotiations, as he believes that the US should be included in the negotiation process, this would be logical and consistent. With all due respect to our European colleagues, we need to understand that we can have dialogue with them for a long time, we can receive various missions of the OSCE and PACE, create new formats, but it does not bring us any perceivable results. We do not lose hope that the Russian-American dialogue on this issue will resume, because without it I generally don't see any prospects of a positive resolution of the existing conflicts."
