As the conflict between Ukraine and Russia unfolds, following the invasion of several Ukrainian cities, questions arise beyond borders. How does Russia explain its move and on what grounds did it act? What about the international laws, are they not being violated? In a bid to shed light on the Kremlin’s intervention, Konstantin Klimovskiy, Russian Ambassador to Mauritius, answered a few of our questions.

On the 21/02, Vladimir Putin said he recognized the two ‘independent’ regions of Donetsk and Louhansk and sent troops inside Ukraine. Why?

Recognising the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics was the only solution Russia felt compelled to take. It will guarantee the right of the DPR and LPR residents to live in peace and protect their legitimate rights and interests. This decision took into consideration the fact that the people of Donbass freely expressed their will as per the UN Charter, the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States, the CSCE Final Act, and other fundamental international documents. The President of Russia took this decision primarily on humanitarian grounds and to protect civilians in DPR and LPR, including hundreds of thousands of Russian nationals, from the real threat to their lives and security posed by the current Ukrainian regime, which persists in its attempts to resolve the “Donbass issue” by force.

But still, Ukraine is a sovereign country which has a democratically elected government, isn’t it?

I would like to remind you that eight years ago, the legitimately elected President of Ukraine was removed from office by an armed coup in Kiev. It was preceded by a huge political crisis. In order to put an end to this crisis, the agreement was signed by President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych and representatives of the opposition on February 21, 2014. Germany, France and Poland provided guarantees. This could have helped calm the situation and protect the interests of the people in all regions of that country without exception. But the next day after the signing of the document, the agreement was violated and radical forces came to power which immediately announced their intentions to wage an uncompromising war on the Russian language, to inculcate their ideology of aggressive nationalism and to repress all who disagree. The Maidan insurgents rejected every attempt to achieve a political solution to the internal crisis in Ukraine.

Were the rights of minorities not respected by Ukrainian government?

The radical nationalists who came to power in Ukraine, with the West’s active support, started imposing their law on the country, fighting the Russian language and dissent, promoting an alien ideology, glorifying Nazi accomplices, rewriting history, and turning Ukrainian territory into a NATO bridgehead against Russia. People in Donbass did not agree with this policy and stood up for their legitimate rights and interests. Held on May 11, 2014, two referendums resulted in the proclamation of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Instead of seeking to reconcile with its fellow Ukrainians by political means, Kiev launched a punitive military operation against them, which in fact amounted to unleashing a civil war. Russia has been persisting in its efforts to promote a peaceful, diplomatic settlement from the very beginning of the Ukrainian crisis. The government in Kiev made two unsuccessful attempts to return Donetsk and Lugansk to Ukraine by force. Russia’s proactive engagement alongside other international mediators helped stop the bloodshed. This paved the way to the drafting of the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements of February 12, 2015, approved unanimously by UN Security Council Resolution 2202. This document provided a path to a political solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine and reintegrating the Donbass region.

So, who violated or did not respect the Minsk Agreement?

From the very moment the Package of Measure was signed, Kiev was not ready to implement it, openly stating that the agreements reached in Minsk were null and void and refusing to fulfil them. Warlike rhetoric kept coming from Ukrainian officials who made public statements on refusing direct dialogue with Donbass and stated their intentions to resolve the crisis by military means. In fact, Kiev has long withdrawn from the Minsk agreements by openly sabotaging their implementation. All these years, the DPR and LPR have been living under artillery and mortar fire. Thousands of innocent people, including children, died, and tens of thousands were wounded. Donbass faced an all-out transport and economic blockade, and its residents no longer received pensions or social benefits, many were forced to leave their homes. A complete transport and economic blockade was imposed against Donbass. These actions were nothing short of a genocide against Ukraine’s own people. We have recently witnessed a sharp escalation along the entire line of contact. There were reports of multiple ceasefire violations with shells destroying civilian homes, schools, and other civilian infrastructure facilities.

Is Russia not violating International Law by invading Ukraine?

We would like to remind you that the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the UN Charter, which was approved in Resolution 2625 adopted by consensus at the UN General Assembly in 1970, says on the matter of the principle of sovereign and territorial integrity that it must strictly apply to “States conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples (…) and thus possessed of a government representing the whole people belonging to the territory without distinction as to race, creed or colour.” The government of Ukraine obviously does not meet this description. Over the past 8 years, residents of the DPR and LPR have been living under artillery shelling. The provocations of the Ukrainian authorities went on, while Ukraine continued to be supplied with weapons by NATO member States. Therefore, they did not leave us any other option than to take bold and immediate action. The People’s Republics of Donbass have asked Russia for help.

Is Russia only attempting to protect pro-Russians in Ukraine or is it trying to ‘get back’ the whole of Ukraine?

As it was indicated by the Russian President Vladimir Putin in his address, Russia does not have a plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force. The aim of the military operation is the protection of the legitimate rights and interests of the residents of Donbass and the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.

Your country is not trying to control its ‘zone of influence’?

We have been treating all new postSoviet States with respect and will continue to act this way. We respect and will respect their sovereignty, as proven by the assistance we provided to Kazakhstan when it faced tragic events and a challenge in terms of its statehood and integrity. However, Russia cannot feel safe, develop, and exist while facing a permanent threat from the territory of today’s Ukraine.

If Eastern European countries choose to turn to the West, it is their choice…

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation has accepted new political realities and recognized the sovereignty of newly independent States, including Ukraine. Since 1991 our country has maintained friendly relations with Ukraine and treated its sovereignty with respect and dignity. The dynamics of bilateral cooperation varied subject to the political forces that came to power at different periods of the history of the Ukrainian state. In 2011, the bilateral trade turnover exceeded $ 50 billion.

I note that the volume of trade between Ukraine and all EU countries in 2019, before the pandemic, was inferior to this indicator. Moreover, according to expert estimates, which are confirmed by a simple calculation of prices for our energy carriers, the volume of preferential loans, economic and trade preferences that Russia provided to Ukraine, the total benefit for the Ukrainian budget for the period from 1991 to 2013 was about $ 250 billion.

Nevertheless, over time, there was a growing understanding that the authorities in Kiev were trying to use the dialogue with Russia as a pretext for bargaining with the West, blackmailing it with rapprochement with Moscow, knocking out preferences for themselves: they say, otherwise Russian influence on Ukraine will grow.

Why then blame the West for what is happening in Ukraine?

The United States, the Great Britain and the European Union with the help of an extensive network of NGOs and special services cultivated in Ukraine their clientele and promoted its representatives to power and sponsored the activities of radical nationalist groups, which in 2014, taking advantage of the situation, turned public speeches into a bloody coup.

Why, in your opinion, the United States and the other members would want to expand NATO to the East?

In 1990, when German unification was discussed, the United States promised the Soviet leadership that NATO jurisdiction or military presence will not expand one inch to the East and that the unification of Germany will not lead to the spread of NATO’s military organization to the East.

Later, they began to assure us that the accession to NATO by Central and Eastern European countries would only improve relations with Moscow, relieve these countries of the fears steeped in their bitter historical legacy, and even create a belt of countries that are friendly towards Russia.

However, the exact opposite happened. The governments of certain Eastern European countries, speculating on Russophobia, brought their complexes and stereotypes about the Russian threat to the Alliance and insisted on building up the collective defense potentials and deploying them primarily against Russia. Worse still, that happened in the 1990s and the early 2000s when, thanks to our openness and goodwill, relations between Russia and the West had reached a high level.

Why do Russians feel insecure about NATO’s expansion to the East?

It is because of the overt support for terrorists in the North Caucasus, the disregard for our security demands and concerns, NATO’s continued expansion, withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and so on. Today, one glance at the map is enough to see to what extent Western countries have kept their promise to refrain from NATO’s eastward expansion. They just cheated. We have seen five waves of NATO expansion, one after another – Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary were admitted in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004; Albania and Croatia in 2009; Montenegro in 2017; and North Macedonia in 2020.

But the West did not invade any country like this, isn’t it?

May I remind you that the West conducted a bloody military operation against Belgrade, used aircraft and missiles in the very center of Europe. And that, without having any UN Security Council sanction.

Then it was the turn of Iraq, Libya, and Syria. The illegitimate use of military force against Libya, the distortion of all the decisions of the UN Security Council on the Libyan issue led to the complete destruction of the state. A huge hotbed of international terrorism arose, the country plunged into a humanitarian catastrophe, into the abyss of a multi-year civil war that has not stopped until now. The tragedy to which hundreds of thousands, millions of people were doomed, not only in Libya, but throughout this region, gave rise to a mass migration exodus from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe.

A similar fate was prepared for Syria. The military actions of the Western coalition on the territory of this country without the consent of the Syrian government and the sanctions of the UN Security Council are nothing but aggression, an intervention.

One must not forget, neither, the invasion of Iraq, carried out without any legal or security grounds. As an excuse, they chose the allegedly reliable US information on the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. To prove this publicly, in front of the whole world, the US Secretary of State shook some kind of test tube with white powder, assuring everyone that this is the chemical weapons being developed in Iraq.

We, Mauritians, do not understand the mistrust and hostility between the West and Russia in spite of the fact that there is no more ideological difference between them, with the end of the communist system in Russia. Why this continued hostility?

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, ideological contradictions disappeared, but the desire of the United States to maintain dominance in all regions of the world remained and multiplied. In turn, regional centers of power that have chosen their own path of development, which does not fit into the American understanding of the world order, are stigmatized as threats via mass media, social networks and other forms of “new media”. This artificially developed image of the aggressor becomes the basis for legitimizing sanctions, using deterrence strategies and, if the country is unable to provide proportionate resistance, the introduction of troops, bombarding and the overthrow of local authorities. Thus, the only goal of NATO is to create a military infrastructure near the Russian borders for the subsequent organization of political pressure.

Russia has been on the side of colonized countries since the revolution. Does it still support the third world as it did during the Cold War?

The reason for such an aggressive policy of the United States and the European Union, at the exception of Hungary, towards Russia is the unwillingness to accept the fact that it is impossible to preserve a unipolar world based on the dominance and hegemony of Washington. More and more new regional centers of power are appearing on the map, which are choosing their own path of development, different from the Western one, incompatible with the unified liberal values imposed by Washington and its allies, rejecting the national, economic and historical features of the development of certain States.

Russia, in its turn, continues to increase the cooperation within the framework of BRICS, SCO, G20 Summit and other multilateral dialogue formats. Russia cooperates actively with the States of the Asia-Pacific region within the framework of the Russia-ASEAN Dialogue Partnership, conducts an active dialogue with the countries of the Arab League, strengthens ties with the African Union and cooperates on an ongoing basis with other regional integration groups.

With the Russia-Africa Summit, a number of bilateral and multilateral cooperation programs are already being implemented between our country and many African States in a number of areas. At the same time, it is worth emphasizing that all contracts, agreements and arrangements are concluded without any preconditions, which European countries cannot boast of. They dictate preconditions to their “partners” within the framework of the notorious conditionality.

Bearing the above in mind, I can firmly state that throughout its history, Russia has supported and will continue to support the “third world” in its broad sense.