Comment du Jour

UN Assembly Rebuffs Russia on Ukraine

In a resounding rebuff to Russia, the UN General Assembly has reaffirmed Ukraine’s territorial integrity and has called the recent referendum which incorporated the Crimean peninsula into Russia as “invalid.”  While President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty joining Crimea with Russia, the Kiev government has committed itself never to accept Crimea’s independence nor annexation.

Ukraine’s acting Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia told assembled delegates

“many still struggle to grasp the reality;  it happened in Ukraine, in the very heart of Europe.   It happened in the 21^st century.”  He added, “After two weeks of military occupation in integral part of Ukraine has been forcibly annexed by a state that had previously committed itself to guarantee, the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of my country.”  

The resolution was passed by a powerful vote of 100 countries backing Ukraine including the USA, Canada, the European Union states, and many countries throughout Asia and Latin America.  

Russia was backed by eleven countries among them Belarus, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.  

Significantly 58 states abstained including Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Iraq, Pakistan and  South Africa.   China posed the most curious abstention. 

More than a score of countries in the 193 member Assembly did not participate at all including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Israel, Islamic Republic of Iran, Morocco and Serbia.  Indeed many of these states face active or dormant territorial disputes. 

  

The non-binding Assembly resolution stresses that the referendum held in Crimea has no validity and calls on states to “desist and refrain” from any actions aimed at the disruption  of Ukraine’s  national unity “including any attempts to modify Ukraine’s borders through the threat or use of force or other unlawful means.”    

The Obama Administration, given its ambivalence towards Central Europe and Russia until the recent crisis, has now compensated with rhetorical barrages and threats of wider economic sanctions on Russia.

Since the Crimea crisis has begun to unfold, Vladimir Putin has pledged Moscow’s support to  ethnic Russian communities  throughout the former Soviet Union in places ranging from the Baltic states to Georgia and Moldova.  The Kremlin’s later day irredentism  recalls a bygone era in which seemingly “threatened” ethnic communities  were cause for intervention by powerful neighbors. 

“The European Union firmly believes that there is no place for the use of force and coercion to change borders in Europe or elsewhere in the 21^st century, “ added EU Ambassador Thomas Mayr-Harting.    

Though diplomacy appears to be keeping Moscow on the defensive, it’s the threat of serious economic sanctions and ostracism from global trade that may turn the tide. 

So will Moscow’s hyper nationalism cause an economic backlash against Russia?

And as significantly after Crimea, will Putin pause before his next move?