Obama denounces Russian ‘aggression’ in Europe
US President Barack Obama denounced Russian aggression in Europe at the United Nations yesterday, but proferred a hand to Moscow by offering to lift sanctions if Russia changes course.
“Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition,” Obama told the General Assembly with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the audience.
“Russia’s actions in Ukraine challenge this post-war order,” said Obama, denouncing Crimea’s annexation by Moscow and Russian support for armed separatists in Ukraine.
“We will impose a cost on Russia for aggression,” he said. But the US president said a recent ceasefire agreement in Ukraine offers an opening towards diplomacy and peace.
“If Russia takes that path — a path that for stretches of the post-Cold War period resulted in prosperity for the Russian people — then we will lift our sanctions and welcome Russia’s role in addressing common challenges.”
He said Russia and the United States had cooperated in the past, from reducing nuclear stockpiles to removing and destroying Syria’s declared chemical weapons.
“And that’s the kind of cooperation we are prepared to pursue again — if Russia changes course,” Obama said.
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UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon alluded in his own speech to East-West tensions over Ukraine, saying that “Cold War ghosts have returned to haunt our times.”
Ukrainian peace efforts stalled yesterday after pro-Russian insurgents called their own elections in defiance of a deal under which they and the Ukrainian army began withdrawing heavy weapons after five months of war.
Separatists in the Russian-speaking industrial east Tuesday brushed off President Petro Poroshenko’s limited self-rule offer and announced plans to set up independent parliaments in self-organised polls on November 2.
The declaration amounted to a slap in the face of Poroshenko — a pro-Western leader who since his May election has been trying to quell a revolt that has devastated Ukraine’s economy and revived a Cold War-era mistrust between Russia and the West.
The 48-year-old chocolate baron has issued no comment since seeing his high-stakes plan to resolve a crisis that has killed more than 3,200 people so openly challenged just a week from the day it was unveiled.
Poroshenko had proposed that rebel-held parts of the industrial east hold local council elections on December 7 that would help war-scarred towns and cities restore basic services but not push ahead with any independence claims.
Both Kyiv and its Western allies fear the Kremlin is trying to turn the east of Ukraine into a “frozen conflict” similar to those that have already given Moscow effective control over parts of the ex-Soviet nations Georgia and Moldova.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was expected to raise these concerns when he addresses the UN General Assembly in New York later yesterday.