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Среда, 06 сентября 2017 10:50

RUSSIAN 'PEACEKEEPING': PUTTING A BLUE HELMET ON INVASION

Michael MacKay, Radio Lemberg, 06.09.2017 
 
Putin just ramped up Russia’s invasion of Europe in Ukraine. On September 5, the Kremlin boss threatened that if the United States arms Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons he would use his army of Russian regular and irregular troops now in combat in Donbas to launch greater attacks across Ukraine. He also made a proposal for United Nations peacekeepers that – if implemented as he intends – would freeze the Russo-Ukrainian War and lock-in de facto possession of Russia-invaded Europe, which is Crimea and parts of Donbas. 
 
President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, has already made a proposal for UN peacekeepers which Putin summarily rejected. Poroshenko proposed that UN peacekeepers supervise the return of over 400 km of Ukraine-Russia border to its proper international status. This is something Russia agreed to do in the Minsk accords. Despite that, the Russian army bars the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine from getting anywhere near the international frontier in Donbas. Across this uncontrolled border, Russia sends limitless supplies of weapons, ammunition, fuel, and matériel to its invasion army. 
 
Rather than be put in the position of vetoing Ukraine’s worthy proposal in the UN Security Council, Putin tried on September 5 to preempt it. But the Russian proposal, if accepted as is, would destroy the whole concept of UN peacekeeping and damage the reputation of the United Nations irreparably. 
 
Outrageously, Putin proposes that Russia itself - the instigator of the conflict - participate in the UN peacekeeping mission. Imagine a Russian soldier shooting at Ukrainians one day, and then putting on a blue helmet and doing “peacekeeping” the next! Real peacekeeping has to start with accurate identification of the warring parties. In Russia’s invasion of Crimea and Donbas, the warring parties are Russia and Ukraine. Russia can have no part in any UN peacekeeping mission. 
 
Putin proposes that the peacekeepers be stationed at Russia’s invasion battlefront, which he hopes will allow him to keep his conquests. This would condemn Ukrainians in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk and the many towns and villages around to the status of hostages – captives of Russia’s terrorist groups, the so-called “DPR” and “LPR.” A real peacekeeping mission separates the warring sides. That proper separation is at the Ukraine-Russia border: between Luhansk oblast (UKR) and Rostov oblast (RUS); between Donetsk oblast (UKR) and Rostov oblast (RUS); and between the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (UKR) and Krasnodar oblast (RUS). 
 
The flaw in any UN peacekeeping proposal is that the United Nations Security Council is foundationally corrupt. The permanent seat and veto power held by the Russian Federation actually belongs to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The seat and the veto should never have been given to Russia in 1991. Russia was not then and is not now a Great Power. It is a perversion of the words and intent of the UN Charter, signed in 1945, that rump Muscovy is allowed to call itself a successor to the Soviet Union and usurp a seat that was never meant for it. The United Nations was meant as a force for peace, but it cannot possibly be that when decent proposals for UN peacekeeping like Poroshenko’s have no chance due to Russia’s veto. The UN becomes a perversion of its founders’s intent when the UN considers a proposal for “peacekeeping” from Putin that is actually a tool for war-making and furthering Russia’s invasion of Europe in Ukraine. 

 

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