The deputy prime minister of beleaguered Ukraine said on Thursday that appeasing Russian aggression in eastern Europe could doom world order, but she was careful not to criticize U.S. President-elect Donald Trump over fears he might do just that.
Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze was en route to the annual Halifax International Security Forum, where global security experts and leaders from 60 nations begin meetings Friday.
She called on Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion and others in Ottawa to press Ukraine’s case, two days after 99 nations rejected or abstained from supporting a draft United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and ensuing human rights abuses.
The occupation, which triggered harsh Western sanctions, was followed a month later by the continuing pro-Russian rebel insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
The damage has been staggering: 10,000 civilians and military killed, 22,500 wounded, 1.7 million people internally displaced, 20 per cent of the national economy wiped out, and trade and transit to central Asia restricted through Russia.
Advertisement Tuesday’s UN draft resolution was carried, 76 to 23, with 76 abstentions. Russia, Syria, Iran and China were among the dissenters.
Klympush-Tsintsadze, in an interview with Ottawa Citizen and later remarks to a private gathering of diplomats and academics sponsored by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, called the successful, yet disappointing preliminary vote a warning (a final General Assembly vote is scheduled for December).
It “has to be very attentively explored by all of us, and calls for action on behalf of not only the Ukraine but all civilized nations and definitely Canada,” she said.
She chose her words cautiously on Trump, who suggested during the presidential race U.S. military support for NATO would be conditional on member states “paying their bills,” and he would consider whether the U.S. will recognize Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
The Western military alliance is deploying thousands of troops in the Baltics and Poland to counter the resurgent Russia, including 450 Canadian soldiers to Lativia next year.
But Trump’s NATO comment and other statements have led many to fear he may cozy up to Russian President Valdimir Putin. Klympush-Tsintsadze, a former journalist who studied in the U.S., suggested any such policy leanings by Trump will face pro-NATO, anti-Russian resistance from congressional Republicans and Democrats and the broader Republican Party.
“The U.S. has a pretty solid history and tradition of basing decisions on national interests on the assessments of the threats and challenges they are facing as a country,” she said. “We hope that we will be able to bring our arguments to the new admin and be heard.
“Moreover, the new president will be representing the Republican Party that has a pretty clear tradition of a foreign security policy alliance and I think that will also streamline the decisions that will be made by the new administration.
“I think very quickly and very clearly there will be understanding that Russia has to be deterred in its attempts to ruin the world order that we have built all together the hard way after the Second World
War.”
If not, Canada-U.S. relations could become collateral damage. Canada was quick to condemn the Crimean occupation and pushed for even tougher economic sanctions.
If the Trump White House allows Russia to carve out a sphere of influence in eastern Europe, this could put the Liberal government on a collision course with Washington.
The Ukrainians are also counting on U.S. Vice-president-elect Mike Pence, who split with Trump’s pro-Moscow musings during the campaign, and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
Under that agreement, Ukraine committed to disposing of its huge nuclear arsenal, a relic of the former Soviet Union, in exchange for assurances from the U.S., Russia and Britain to respect the independence, sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
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