Russian President Vladimir Putin shamelessly told United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon during a recent phone call that he expected “clear condemnation” of what he characterized as the “anti-constitutional” operation by the Ukrainian central government in Kiev to push back against the armed thugs whom have illegally occupied government buildings in eastern Ukraine.
Any condemnation should be directed at Putin himself. He is taking provocative actions to destabilize eastern Ukraine and set up a justification for direct Russian military intervention to protect Russian-speaking minorities from alleged attacks, much as he did with his illegal military occupation and annexation of Crimea.
A report issued by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on April 15th, which was based on first hand reporting by human rights monitors on the ground in Ukraine including Crimea, exposes the baselessness of the Russian propaganda. The report analyzed events up to April 2nd, using information collected during two missions to Ukraine in March by Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Šimonović and a team of UN human rights monitors on the ground since March 15th. It found that “while there were some attacks against the ethnic Russian community, these were neither systematic nor widespread. There are also allegations that some participants in the protests and clashes in eastern Ukraine were not from the region, and that some had come from the Russian Federation.”
Speaking to the Security Council on April 16th about the report, Mr. Šimonović said the transformation of protesters in eastern Ukraine into “quasi-paramilitary forces must be stopped.”
Russia: A “fire-setting firefighter” engaging in its own “virtual reality”
In an act of desperation, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin attacked the UN report as biased and not “reflecting fairly the state of the Russian-speaking population of the country.” He called the protests of tens of thousands of Ukrainians in Kiev an illegitimate violent coup by “radicals,” even though it had begun peacefully in response to the corruption and mismanagement of the Moscow-leaning government of former Ukrainian President Viktor F. Yanukovych, whom Putin had pressured to reject any economically beneficial relationship with the European Union. These protests turned violent only after a bloody crack-down by Yanukovych’s regime. After defending the armed takeover by Russian-assisted paramilitary forces of government buildings in eastern Ukraine and decrying the current Ukrainian government’s measured responsive actions to restore law and order, Churkin warned of a “very real risk of civil war.”
France’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gerard Araud, had an apt description for the way Russia has been acting vis a vis Ukraine – a “fire-setting firefighter” engaging in its own “virtual reality.”
Ambassador Churkin said that any discussion of Crimea during a Security Council meeting devoted to Ukraine was out of bounds since Crimea was presumably no longer a part of Ukraine. But as the UN human rights report pointed out, the presence of paramilitary and so-called self-defense groups as well as soldiers without insignia, was not conducive to an environment in which the will of voters in the referendum regarding Crimea’s fate could be exercised freely, and the UN Human Rights’ Office delegation had received many reports of vote rigging. The report also noted serious human rights violations in Crimea since Russia’s annexation.
Contrary to Ambassador Churkin’s charge that the UN report was unfairly biased against Russian-speaking minorities in Ukraine, the report also pressed the current Ukrainian government to improve human rights conditions for all Ukrainians. It noted with concern the influence exerted by right-wing groups during the Kiev protests and to some extent continuing thereafter, particularly the “Right Sector,” although it noted that “the fear against the ‘Right Sector’ is disproportionate.” The report recommended that the central government:
- Ensure accountability for all human rights violations committed during the unrest in Kiev
- Ensure inclusivity and equal participation in public affairs and political life
- Prevent media manipulation by issuing timely and accurate information
- Combat intolerance and extremism
- Implement as a matter of priority measures to effectively eradicate corruption
Putin is resorting to Soviet style propaganda and the use of destabilizing techniques, including infiltration of armed provocateurs and incitement to violence, to achieve his ambitions of a resurrected Russian empire. Crimea is effectively gone. Eastern Ukraine is now in the claws of the Russian bear. The meeting today in Geneva of senior representatives from Ukraine, Russia, the EU, and the United States to discuss de-escalation, demobilization, support for elections, and constitutional reform in Ukraine will most likely be no more than a photo-op. The UN human rights monitors are doing their best to document conditions on the ground, but sadly it appears they will be helpless bystanders as Putin’s campaign to dismember Ukraine piece by piece in flagrant violation of international law continues.
