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MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

The Star on 57th Street New York

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New York Gift wrapped for the Holidays!

                                                Merry Christmas!!!

                                                   Tiffany Glitters!

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Beaujolais Nouveau! 

The Beaujolais Nouveau wines have arrived.  As is the tradition
in mid-November, the "New Wine" arrives from France for the 
tasting!

And as is the annual tradition here, we are among the First to sip
the new harvest here in New York at Sherry Lehmann Wines on
Park Avenue.

Here Franck Duboeuf scion of the venerable wine family is here to
offer a taste and an autograph on the individual bottles!

A Votre Sante!!


                                           

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                    Autumn in Vermont!   

                Colorful Fall foliage creates a splendid landscape.  

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New York's Steuben Day Parade

The 60th annual German/American Steuben Day parade marched up Fifth Avenue in New York.   The parade honored the famed Prussian officer General von Steuben, a key foreign participant in training the fledgling American army during the Revolution 1776-1783.

The parade involving thousands of marchers both from Germany and Austria not to mention the
German/American and Austrian/American communities went up the Queen of Avenues and then
turned on 86th Street and into Yorkville, once a hub of "Little Germany."

Grand Marshals of the Parade were Admiral Manfred Nielson of the German Navy and Heinz Buck a German/American personage.

The festivities are all part of events during German/American Friendship Month.

Yes, there were the beloved and trademark Brass Bands.

And the theme floats.  This one form the German Embassy reminded us that the
bicycle was invented in Germany 200 years ago!!   Amazing!

Of course the Beer Floats!!!

Not everybody rides in a BMW or a Mercedes!

The German International School White Plains New York joined many of the German language schools also in the parade.

Taking a break during the Parade.   It was hot outside!!

Auf Wiedersehen until next year!!!

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“Lafayette, We are Here,” Commemorating U.S. Entry into WWI

St. NAZAIRE, France—“Lafayette, We are Here,” became the clarion call upon the arrival of the American Expeditionary Force to France in 1917. The USA had just entered the hostilities, three years into the Great War, and the commanding battle hardened General John Pershing was in a sense returning the favor of French military assistance during the American Revolution.  

On 26 June 1917, a flotilla of American troop ships arrived in the Atlantic port of St. Nazaire, a well situated staging center situated hundreds of miles from the Front.  Over the next few years 198,000 Americans would disembark here. 

The Sammies, as they were affectionally called by the French as a play on the words Uncle Sam, were also known as the Doughboys in the USA.

President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to join the Allies after 32 months of  neutrality was as  controversial as it was militarily complicated.  On the one hand, the young American Republic had by choice stayed away from European conflicts and overseas engagements. On the more practical side, when Wilson declared war on Germany in April 1917, the regular U.S. army stood at an understaffed 140,000 troops and with an additional 200,000 in the National Guard.

Mobilization would be nothing short of extraordinary with a combination of mass conscription and an amazing American industrial might to support the war effort.  

After all it was U.S. military assistance which decisively tipped the military balance on the  Western Front, the site of three years of unmitigated carnage for the French and British forces facing Imperial Germany.  The battles of Verdun, the Somme, Passchendaele, and Vimy Ridge were nothing less than a grinding abattoir of killing; all sides were literally bled white and      exhausted. 

Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare and the Russian Revolution decisively changed the political calculus. The Allies; the British Empire, France and Russia were slogging it out with the Central Powers; Germany, Austria/Hungary and Turkey.  Once the Czar was overthrown, Russia would later withdrew from the war and the balance of power decisively tipped against France in the West.  

As 1917 wore on, American troops flooded into France, first through St. Nazaire which became a

logistical hub which saw delivery of 2 million tons of equipment ranging from disassembled steam locomotives from Philadelphia, to cars, trucks and horses.   The logistical genius of the U.S military was on display with more than 500 transport ships bringing everything from tons of beef to cigarette rations for the troops.  Supply depots and bases dotted the Loire River region.

On a lighter side, the Sammies would introduce the French to basketball, chewing gum,  the    infectious Jazz music, and the “American Way of Life.”   

The American Expeditionary Force would see action mostly in 1918 during the bloody battles of 

Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood among countless others.  When the hard won victory came with the Armistice in November 1918, over 53,000 Americans were killed and 210,000 wounded in this War to End all Wars.  

Tragically, the Peace of Versailles, signed a few years later, would merely set the stage for the Second World War.  

A century has passed since the Sammies disembarked at St. Nazaire and elsewhere in France.  Two million American troops were sent to France during the relatively short but sharp U.S.   intervention. 

While the centenary of America’s entry into WWI is being acknowledged in the USA, in France its meaning is far deeper with a year of commemorations and exhibits which highlight a friendship through conflict now usually only recalled by the mournful statue of a French soldier, a Poilu which graces every village with the words “Died for France.”

At the end of the war, the region commissioned a beautiful statue by the American artist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney which showed an American Doughboy gracefully arriving, sword in hand, on the spread wings of an eagle.  That statue was destroyed by the Nazis in 1941.  In 1989,  a replica of the monument was placed back in the harbor where it majestically stands today. 

On 14 July, the French National Day, President Donald Trump visited Paris for the annual      military parade which featured some U.S. military units marching in WWI uniforms.  Weeks  earlier in St. Nazaire, the Cunard ocean liner Queen Mary 2,  made a transatlantic voyage to New York commemorating the “Bridge” linking France and America. 

Today, little strings of American and French flags drape towns in this region in tribute to 1917.   Yet, sadly forgotten in the pages of a turbulent history, the Sammies of the Great War still stare out to us from the faded black and white photos. But few remember them.

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In wake of Barcelona...

France Calmer, Safer Year After Terrorist Attacks

A year ago France was on edge.  Islamic Jihadi terrorists had killed 86 people with a truck ramming incident at a Bastille Day celebration in Nice.  Shortly thereafter a elderly priest was murdered as he said Mass.  These attacks following a spate of earlier shootings in Paris killing over 130 put the country on edge.  The tension and expectation impending attacks        enveloped France like the hot and humid summer air.  

A year later France feels calmer.  Camouflage-clad Soldiers still patrol in the airport and train terminals and on some boulevards but there far less tension and nervousness.  Both the Parisians and throngs of foreign tourists feel far more secure in Cafes and the crowded streets.

The good news is that the French security services seem to have broken or at least neutralized many of the terrorist networks which have often been linked to the radicalized foreign fighters in  Syria.  Most of the “home grown” terrorists were French born and coming from rundown      suburban towns les banlieue, where a toxic mix of petty crime, drugs, and radicalized mosques have served as a breeding ground for radicals.  This is not an entirely new phenomenon but has been supercharged by the “cause” and the war in Syria.  

Intelligence estimates that 25,000 foreign fighters are in Syria.  West European militants be they from France, Belgium or Germany have become both radicalized and more importantly have learned deadly military skills while fighting in the Middle East.

Equally the political climate has changed.  The drawn out Presidential campaign contest ended in 

May with the improbable victory of Emmanuel Macron, a young, dynamic and totally different figure from the staid French political class.  Macron represents far more of a populist movement than a traditionally rigid right/left political ideology.  Still just months after his landslide election victory, Macron’s poll popularity has fallen below 40 percent. 

Paris has been selected as the site of the 2024 Summer Olympics. Significantly the Olympics present an extraordinary plus for Paris and naturally the image of France.  Interestingly the Games will coincide with the centenary 1924 Paris Olympics.  Yet the majority of Parisians are not in favor of the sporting spectacular; they fear cost overruns, widening traffic gridlock, and making themselves a terrorist target.  

President Macron will be phasing out the emergency imposed after the bloody 2015 attacks.   Operation Sentinelle, the domestic deployment of the  Army inside the country for security     details, represents the military's largest operation anywhere. 

Nonetheless the terrorist threat has hardly passed.  As Islamic State is being defeated in Iraq and Syria by a U.S. backed military coalition, the shattered remnants of the foreign fighters may drift back into Western Europe posing a clear and present danger to states from where they came.

Vigilance remains prudent.

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Happy 4th of July!!


Freedom, Liberty and Friendship with our
Transatlantic Partners!

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Helmut Kohl—Architect of German Unity 

Thirty years ago this week in 1987, President Ronald Reagan visiting Berlin, made his famous challenge,  “Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall.”  Alongside the American President stood German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. 

A few years earlier I met Helmut Kohl campaigning in his native Rheinland.   Kohl, a towering but slightly awkward provincial politician, was often described to Americans as an amicable Gerry Ford type-character, evoking our own president of a decade earlier.  It was not totally a compliment.  Yet through perseverance and fate, this man from a small Western German city became a statesman on the world stage not just because of German unity, but because that singular achievement came about in peace, liberty and freedom. Kohl has died at the age of 87.

His formal election as Chancellor came in early March 1983.  I vividly recall watching the fog lift over the river Rhine in the great Cathedral city of Cologne that Sunday election morning.  By evening in Bonn the capital, I witnessed the landslide of his Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Free Democrats (FDP) which ushered in the opening act of the Helmut Kohl era.  His  political tenure would continue through sixteen years. 

Kohl was deeply committed to the Atlantic Alliance.  Yet standing shoulder to shoulder with the USA in NATO in the early 1980’s was not as popular as it was assumed either inside Germany or on the American Left where a loud minority “Peace movement” created an atmosphere where many people viewed the U.S. as looking to start a nuclear war.   Kohl stood fast against left wing political theatrics. 

Though the summer and fall of 1989 saw political rumblings in the Soviet Empire in Hungary and Poland, even otherwise hardline East Germany witnessed large and vocal  demonstrations against the ruling communist regime.  

Yet it was in Berlin where the anvil of freedom would strike against the Soviet Imperium.   The Joshua trumpet which sounded in 9 November 1989 heralded the historic events which would release a tsunami of liberty sweeping across Central Europe.  By the end of 1989, it  had torn through the old Iron Curtain and had shed the bright light of freedom. 

But contrary to the accepted narrative, the fall of the Berlin Wall did not see the immediate demise of the  “German Democratic Republic” whose Stasi and Soviet enforcers did not disappear with the November mist.   Kohl advanced a democratic ten-point plan for reunification.  Ambitious and costly yes, but one which would integrate 17 million East Germans as equals.     

Kohn’s miscalculation was that he said basically the old East Germany would need a fresh coat of paint and before long the landscape would be blooming.  But decades of socialist mismanagement and  repression had created a deeper challenge.  Over the past quarter century since, the cost of reunification  has been over a trillion dollars in massive infrastructural and social benefit transfers.

Chancellor Kohl was the architect of German unity on 3 October 1990, but the supporting cast included statesman and women who allowed it to happen.  George H.W. Bush, Francois Mitterrand. Margaret Thatcher and Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev.  In other words, the allies of WWII, who had defeated the Nazi regime in 1945, had to legally sign off on the occupation and allow the reunification of both West and East Germany.  The Cold War had ended.  

Here at the UN, reunification meant that the two German delegations awarded membership in 1973 representing two separate states, namely the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, would merge into one representing a united German nation.  

After reunification Kohl kept close links with the USA and especially stressed the importance of Transatlantic ties through NATO.  Within Europe Kohl was close to French President Francois Mitterrand and is well remembered for a moving and mournful ceremony in Verdun, the killing field of the First World War.    

He was especially committed to Germany’s European identity within the emerging economic and political power of the European Union (EU).  His protege Angela Merkel became Chancellor in 2005.

Helmut Kohl’s bold decisiveness and political vision helped achieve both German and indeed European unity.  These extraordinary events,  now a generation ago, were underscored by former President George H. W. Bush who called Kohl “One of the greatest leaders in post-war Europe.”

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May Day for Britain's Theresa May

It’s political May Day for Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May after what appeared as a massive miscalculation in calling a general election which she narrowly won.  

Though the ruling Conservative party gained the largest share of seats and votes in the 650 seat Parliament,  the party fell sadly short of a majority, thus causing the “Hung Parliament” in which a coalition must again be formed. 

Theresa May’s roll of the political dice to call for early elections were based on her gamble to win a powerful majority strong unified government which was needed in the wake of last year’s still reverberating BREXIT vote for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.  BREXIT talks on the UK/EU separation begins in mid-June amid an uneasy instability in London. As May predicted prior to the vote, “Now more than ever, Britain needs a strong and stable government to get the best deal for our country.” Indeed, but now there’s more confusion both in Britain and throughout the European Union concerning the complicated pattern of EU separation. 

Tragically Theresa May’s snap election was shadowed by the specter of terrorism, both the appalling attacks in Manchester and London in which Islamist jihadi terrorists hit soft, civilian targets killing 30.  Concerning the terrorists she said, “They are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division and promotes sectarianism…Defeating this ideology is one of the great challenges of our time.”

The Conservatives won 318 seats but that’s eight seats short of a majority.  The Labour Party, which has lurched dangerously leftwards under current leader Jeremy Corbyn gained seats and now has 262, a gain of 31 seats.  Labour has posted the most socialist and left wing manifesto since the early 1980’s prompting even many former luminaries such as former Prime Minister Tony Blair to distance himself from the current party.  

Theresa May will forge a “Government of Certainty” with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).  Yet May’s call for a “government of certainty” somehow lacks the ring and the rhetoric of steely Thatcherite resolve or for that matter anything more than a stopgap solution for a very complicated political problem of her own making.   She is viewed as “a weak and wounded leader” according to a good source in London.  Her credibility even among the Tories is weakened and recriminations abound. 

So what does the Hung Parliament realistically mean for Britain and her standing abroad?  Again the albatross of BREXIT talks begins with a shadow over the outcome of the proposed break.  Yet while the UK may be formally renegotiating its trade patterns with the continent, Britain has striven for reinvigorated bi-lateral trade pacts with many key nations European states such as France and Germany as well as with countries such as India.

Yet, May’s conservatives hardly possess the political gravitas of the former Thatcherite party which was far more philosophically wedded to free markets than to wider governmental regulation.  

When it comes to NATO and defense the current government will hold to the agreed 2 percent GNP military spending.  Interestingly Labour supported this point as well.  The government will equally keep its high levels of overseas development aid spending at 0.7 percent making Britain one of the highest foreign aid donors in the world.  

Britain will remain a strong player in the United Nations.

There’s no question that May will remain close to the USA and shall be a reliable partner in the international arena.  That’s the good news. 

But will Theresa May’s “Government of Certainty” bring the needed stability and confidence both to markets and to citizens?  Sadly, I feel the UK may be facing another election before too long.  

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JFK Airport/JFK Anniversary

Opened as New York International Airport in 1948, was commonly known as Idlewild Airport.
Following the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, the airport
was renamed JFK Airport a month later.

Given this is the 100th anniversary of President Kennedy's birth, signs at this global transportation portal commemorate its namesake.

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Old TWA Terminal to Become NEW TWA Hotel

The iconic TWA Terminal at New York's JFK International Airport
closed since 2001, stands as a silent reminder of air travel in another age.
The Terminal was a busy hub for TWA's domestic and European flights.



Trans World Airlines (TWA) , the building's owner ceased operations in 2001.

Now the  modernistic Terminal built in 1962 by renown Finnish architect Eero Saarinen,
ushering in the jet age, will soon reopen in 2018 as the TWA Hotel.
The Terminal was closed for fifteen years  but the facility stood alongside Jet Blue's expanding operations.

Yet, fortunately the facility was given NYC Landmark status and later listed on the Register of Historic Place, so the building avoided being demolished.

Foresight and entrepreneurship is working to restore the building to a 505 room full service hotel.  The $285 million project is focused on providing 40,000 sq. feet of event/meeting space.
 

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European Union Commemorates Treaty of Rome


At a spectacular gala reception for the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the European Union
celebrated in New York.

Here UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is seen with the EU UN Ambassador Joao Vale de Almeida . Both the UN SG and Ambassador are from Portugal.

The reception at the Italian Cultural Institute on Park Avenue was also attended by the EU's
Foreign Affairs Suprema Federica Mogherini who delivered uplifting remarks on the enduring importance of the multinational organization.


                                                 

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April Showers bring May Flowers!! 

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French Elections in New York City/Round One

French citizens voting in Carroll Gardens Brooklyn.


French around the world voted in their homeland's hotly contested national elections. 
In the first round of voting more than ten candidates from the political mainstream 
to the nut fringe were ballot choices.  

In the New York area there were 9 polling places to cast the ballots.

As in France itself, center Left candidate Emmanuel Macron came in first;
here in New York local voters gave him 52 percent of the total.
Conservative candidate Francois Fillon came in second in America with 
29 percent but failed to place in France for the upcoming second  round.

Marine Le Pen the nationalist firebrand placed second in France but 
barely scored in the USA garnering a mere 3 percent of the vote.  

This is the first time in the history of the French Fifth Republic in that candidates from the major parties are not represented in the Second Round of voting.

Macron faces off against Le Pen in the runoff on 7 May.   

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Sultan Erdogan’s Uneasy Turkish Turban

There’s troubling news from across the Bosphorus, the narrow slip of water separating Europe from Asia-minor.  In a decisive but dividing referendum, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan narrowly gained the political blessing he sought by winning 51 percent of the nationwide vote.  Erdogan’s divisive victory (51/49 percent), allows the increasingly authoritarian Turkish ruler to gain sweeping powers to change the constitution and to allow him near unrivaled power until 2029.  

Turkey remains a key piece on the geopolitical board linking Europe to the Mid East and the Mediterranean to the Black Sea.  But its strategic situation has been sadly compromised by its border with Syria whose civil war continues to spill over into Turkish territory both in terms of violent terrorism and humanitarian hosting of nearly three million refugees.  

Contrary to many assumptions, Turkey’s economy in recent years was strong and growth- oriented.  Turkish tourism was booming and deservedly so.   The Syrian crisis changed the equation dramatically.  Tourism has taken a dive downwards. 

The once staunchly secular Turkish Republic of Kemal Ataturk was founded in 1923.  The new 18  article constitutional changes focus on granting of executive powers to an elected President and the abolition of the Prime Minister.  Equally Cabinet Ministers can be chosen from outside the Parliament.  The ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) has changed the rules of the game. Erdogan became Prime Minister in 2002 and was elected President in 2014. 

So who backed Erdogan in this controversial vote?  While the ruling AK pressed for a Yes vote,

the “No” vote prevailed in Istanbul and Ankara the capital.  In coastal Izmir, a secular stronghold No gained 69 percent.  Equally the restive ethnic Kurdish regions voted No.  

Yet in the vast Islamic religious Anatolian interior and the Black Sea, Erdogan’s support was rock solid.  A commentator dubbed it “Anatolia versus the Metropolis.”   

Tragically Turks apparently voted to elect a dictator. 

Crucial to the campaign was Erdogan’s lobbying the 5 million plus Turkish vote overseas, mostly in Europe and especially in Germany and the Netherlands.  Tensions were high as Erdogan’s minions shamelessly campaigned in Europe; in the Netherlands the Yes reached 71 percent, France 64 percent and in Germany 63 percent.  

The Turkish vote in the USA on the other hand, was resoundingly against Erdogan with 83 percent voting NO!

During the heated campaign President Erdogan’s gloating rhetorical rants against European democracies as “crusaders” and “Nazis and fascists” reminded Euro-skeptics of their initial reservations about Turkey’s fitness to join the European Union.  Erdogan’s unalloyed authoritarianism is often masked through using Islam as a legitimizing force to rule.

Hurryiet Daily News columnist Semih Idiz opined, “Turkey’s parliamentary system of 94 years has been replaced with a presidential one that is not restricted by any checks and balances. This can’t be reversed…  This hardly augers a good start for a Turkey visibly divided along active social, religious and ethnic fault lines.”

Sultan Erdogan has been emboldened but remains nervous over his slim mandate. So did Turks choose to elect a dictatorship?   Turkey’s populism has been unleashed but its outcomes are decidedly unpredictable.  Despondingly, Turkey’s once staunchly secular state has morphed into an increasingly authoritarian Islamic system which has apparently chosen to look more like the Middle East than Europe.

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St. Patrick's Day Parade/NYC


A sea of Green flooded Fifth Avenue for the 255th annual St. Patricks Day Parade.
Just days after a debilitating blizzard and ice storm which slammed the metropolitan area,
City sanitation crews swept the Queen of Avenues clean for the annual parade honoring Irish
Americans.

Bagpipes and marching bands from the New York Police and Fire Departments were joined from marchers across the country and world, including Ireland, France and Spain, in the Big Apple's biggest parade.  The New York State Police marched honoring its centenary of service.

The parade which traces its roots to 1762 or more than a decade before the American Revolution, celebrates   Tradition and Irish Pride.

As a  particularly poignant part of the Parade,  the New York City Fire Department (NYFD) 
 marched with 343 American Flags, each banner honoring one firefighter killed during the 
September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks on America.  

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New York Antiquarian Book Fair

The 57th annual Antiquarian Book Fair in New York

The mid March event brought together over 200 American and international book dealers

for an extraordinary four day event . Held at the venerable Park Avenue Armory, the Fair attracted an overflow and enthusiastic crowd of patrons from the USA and Europe.

   

One of the amazing selections came from New York dealer Seth Kaller, with an
ALEXANDER HAMILTON collection of important original letters, documents and
imprints from this key figure in the American Revolutionary period and the early
American Republic.  Material relating to the Revolution, the Federalist Papers, and
Hamilton's key role in the Founding of the Republic are in the collection. So too is a
Hamilton love letter to Eliza Schuyler.

 
Whitmore Rare Books from California brought along an edition of Casino Royale
the early Ian Fleming spy thriller.  Beyond being a coveted First Edition, the book
has a rare dust jacket which was sparingly used in the first printing.  Very rare, quite
pricey.


European dealers, especially from Britain, France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands were a mainstay of the show.

Equally sellers from as far away as Australia again rejoined the show with fascinating selections. 
Asian Bookroom, Canberra, Australia


Naturally the Fair is renown for its sweepingly beautiful maps and color volumes,  which are presented below.

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Ukraine's Smoldering Conflict

 The rumble of artillery and the cracks of Kalashnikovs shatter the Winter chill.

The refugees, the displaced and the injured have become part of the broken landscape which reflects the agony of previous battles. Yet the wider silence is broken by the unwavering voices who remind us that this is not beleaguered Syria in the Middle East nor Sudan in Africa but Ukraine in Europe.

Russian backed rebels have attacked Ukrainian government positions along the unstable ceasefire line. A ranking UN official asserts, there’s been a “dangerous intensification of the conflict.”Ukraine’s smoldering conflict has flared up again with a sharp upsurge in fighting in the disputed Donetsk region in the east of the country.

A Security Council meeting, sponsored by Ukraine, set the stage. Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko, who serves as the Council’s President for February, stated “Altogether 20 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 134 were wounded by the Russian hybrid forces and Russia-backed militants since the beginning of this year in the area around Avdiyivka.” He stressed that Moscow-backed forces had broken the Minsk ceasefire accords and were destabilizing Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Russia blames Ukraine for starting the recent round of fighting.

Nearly 10,000 people, military and civilians have been killed since the conflict began in 2014.

U.S. Ambassador Haley ’s debut address before the UN Security Council condemned Russia’s “aggressive actions” in eastern Ukraine and warned: “Until Russia and the separatists it supports respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, this crisis will continue.”

Amb. Haley lamented that it was “unfortunate” that she had to condemn Russia during her first Security Council appearance, adding “we do want to better our relations with Russia.”

Significantly, the recent flareup up in Ukraine comes amid moves by the Trump Administration to improve relations with Russia.

Some analysts question why Moscow would wish to reignite a conflict which would immediately put it at loggerheads with the new American Administration.

Russia suggests that Ukraine plans to present itself as the victim to precisely forestall U.S./Russian rapprochement. A third option may involve the vodka soaked separatists themselves who want to keep the pot boiling to avoid being sacrificed as part of a Putin political deal with Washington.

Improving the severely strained USA/Russian relationship should not come at the expense of a sovereign Ukraine.

In earlier comments to the press, Ukraine’s Ambassador Yelchenko stated that Nikki Haley, the new U.S. Ambassador, was well-informed about the situation in his country.

“She had confirmed that the United States would continue to support Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he added.

Indeed during Ambassador Haley’s strong condemnation of Russian actions in eastern Ukraine she added, “The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea. Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine.”

Importantly according to a story in Politico, President Donald Trump promised Ukrainian opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko that the U.S. won’t lift sanctions on Russia until it pulls out of Ukraine.

Nonetheless despite the renewed geopolitical posturing, the continued conflict in Ukraine’s eastern regions has created a terrible and growing humanitarian crisis.

Stephen O’Brien, the UN’s Humanitarian Chief told the Council, “Over three years into the conflict in eastern Ukraine, in what has become yet another protracted humanitarian crisis, we are now faced with a significant deterioration in the situation following the sudden and recent escalation in violence… The current escalation in violence is causing severe damage to critical infrastructure, water, electricity and heating. Combined with low winter temperatures, the result is a deteriorating humanitarian situation.”

Tragically, O’Brien added, “This latest escalation in violence is exacerbating the ongoing needs of an estimated 3.8 million civilians who continue to bear the brunt of this protracted conflict… There are 700,000 more people in need this year compared to 2016.

More than 60 per cent of those in need, reside in non-government controlled areas.”

Civilians on both sides of the artificial divide are suffering from the conflict.

Britain’s Ambassador Matthew Rycroft admonished: “The responsibility of the inception and continuation of the conflict in eastern Ukraine lies squarely with Russia and the separatists it supports.”

Ukraine’s delegate Yelchenko summed up the situation: “The remedy to stop this Russian aggression against my country and to avoid further civilian sufferings is rather simple. What the international community needs to do is to step up pressure on the aggressor and urge Russian Federation to get out of Ukraine.”