KYIV, Ukraine — Before solemnly laying a bouquet of red carnations metres from where many Ukrainians died last month during bloody fighting with security forces near the capital’s iconic Independence Square, Stephen Harper announced Saturday that the first security monitors from Canada would arrive in Ukraine on Sunday.
There had been “dark days” in Ukraine after Russia seized Crimea and the country “now faced an even greater test,” Harper said during a joint news conference with Ukraine’s acting prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, alluding to Russia’s military invasion of Crimea and hints that it may be thinking to do the same in eastern Ukraine.
“It is for Ukrainians and Ukrainians only to decide their future. In this principle we will not waver.”
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]There would be “no return to business as usual with Putin until such time as the occupation ends,” he said.
By sending troops to Crimea and then annexing the peninsula to Russia, its president, Vladimir Putin, had broken a promise that Russia made in 1994 to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity in return for it relinquishing what had been the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal at the time.
Switching to French, he compared Russia’s conduct to “the law of the jungle.”
Yatsenyuk called the agreement signed by Russia in Budapest in 1994 “notorious.”
“Russia makes an armed robbery of Ukrainian territory that has undermined global security,” Yatsenyuk said. “My message to the G-7 is: It’s time to build up a new global security system as soon as possible.”
Referring to Canada, Yatsenyuk said the two peoples were very close, despite the vast distance between the countries, “because the Ukrainian diaspora is so active in Canada.”
Harper is the first world leader to visit Ukraine since former president Viktor Yanukovych was toppled in a coup on Feb. 22. The main purpose of this trip, according to the prime minister’s office, was to express Canada’s solidarity with Ukraine and underline its commitment to the Ukrainian independence.
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]During his six-hour day trip to the Ukrainian capital on the warmest day so far this year, and ahead of an emergency G-7 in the Netherlands to discuss ways to respond to Russian aggression in Crimea, Harper and Justice Minister Peter MacKay announced that Canada would assist the Ukrainian government with its anti-corruption drive and would be providing counsel about ways to give the country an independent court system. Canada was also urgently reopening suspended free trade talks with Ukraine.
Canada’s monitors will be part of a team being assembled by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Their work is to be paid for with a $775,000 contribution from Canada’s global peace and security fund.
Canada is committed to helping #Ukraine chart a new course in history. Read more: pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2014/… #cdnpoli—
Stephen Harper (@pmharper) March 22, 2014
The OSCE monitors will be assigned to observe and report on security and human rights in the Black Sea port of Odessa and the eastern Ukrainian cities of Dniperpetrovsk, Luhansk and Donetsk. Agreement with Russia on the observers’ entry into Ukraine was reached only on Friday. But Moscow still refuses to let the OSCE work in Crimea, which it occupied militarily three weeks ago and formally took total control of on Friday.
Clashes between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian supporters, some of them violent, have taken place across eastern Ukraine for several weeks. But there have been far fewer incidents since Crimea’s ethnic Russian majority voted last weekend to secede from Ukraine and join Russia.
Russia has been conducting military exercises for the past week with at least 20,000 troops near the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian government has claimed the Russian forces were poised to invade. Washington expressed similar concerns Friday, but said an attack does not appear “imminent.”
Putin said on Tuesday that his country had no plan to seize any more Ukrainian territory, but reserved the right to intervene if Russian interests or Ukrainians of Russian descent were threatened. A similar pretext was used to justify sending Russian army and Marine units into Crimea, although there was no threat whatsoever to the large ethnic Russian majority on the peninsula.
Canada, as well as the U.S. and the European Union have banned travel by several Russian business and political leaders and have imposed limited economic sanctions, with the threat of much stiffer actions if Russia continues with its military adventurism.
Without saying what the West might do next to try to modify Russian behaviour, Harper said: “We need to take strong, co-ordinated action and be prepared to do so for a long time.”
It is expected that Russia, which was to host the next G-8 summit in Sochi this June, will be kicked out of that organization when leaders of the world’s seven largest western economies meet in the Netherlands. While not being drawn on that question, Harper said: “It does not take much imagination to understand what my position is.”
