United Nations Senior Advisor Robert Serry, whom Secretary General Ban Ki-moon dispatched to Ukraine to conduct a fact-finding mission, was forced to cut short his visit to Crimea because of fears for his personal safety.
Mr. Serry was confronted earlier today by a group of 10-15 unidentified men, some of them armed, who intimidated him with demands that he immediately leave the region.
“He was met outside the main naval headquarters by a number of unidentified men who were saying that he should leave Crimea and go to the airport,” Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson told UN correspondents in New York via a telephone briefing from the Ukrainian capital Kiev, where Mr. Eliasson has been meeting with leaders of the new central government.
For reasons that the Deputy Secretary General did not explain, Mr. Serry did not have his own UN-provided security protection but relied instead on a Ukrainian security detail. Considering that the Ukrainian military and police have lost control of Crimea to Russian forces and pro-Russian Crimean sympathizers, relying on Ukrainian security officers to protect any UN officials or other visitors trying to conduct an objective fact-finding mission in a conflict zone would appear to have been a bad mistake that could have led to a tragic outcome. Fortunately, Mr. Serry was not abducted nor physically harmed. He is taking a late flight out of Simferopol, the capital city of Crimea, and will shortly return to Kiev to continue his mission there.
When Deputy Secretary General Eliasson will be returning to New York from Kiev is not known at the present time. Meanwhile, yet another high level UN official, Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic, will be arriving in Ukraine this weekend. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced that Mr. Simonovic’s task will be “to visit Kiev and the eastern part of Ukraine, including Crimea, to see and monitor the human rights situation there.”
Without adequate security and full coordination with Russian military officers in Ukraine, based on a direct understanding reached between the Secretary General and Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Russians will guarantee the safety of Mr. Simonovic and all other UN monitors in areas the Russians effectively control, UN presence in the tinderbox of Crimea may do more harm than good. There also appears to be overlapping fact-finding missions without Security Council definition of their purpose and scope, as well as authorization of the necessary security and logistical support.
While Ban Ki-moon declared that “the UN is ready to provide whatever assistance and role to play in first of all defusing these tensions and also help maintain all United Nations Charter principles of unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” its potential role and manner of carrying that role out need to be carefully analyzed before an incident like the one Mr. Serry experienced today ends in tragedy and possibly sparks even more violence.
