Geneva deal on Ukraine unlikely to be implemented soon - Russian envoy to UN
22 April 2014, 20:15 -- Russian permanent envoy to the UN Vitaly Churkin doubts that the agreements on the crisis in Ukraine concluded recently at a Geneva meeting would be implemented anytime soon. 'Surely, it would be naive to expect that all this would happen quickly,' Churkin said in an interview on Rossiya-24 news television channel.
Russian Foreign Minister 'Sergei Lavrov's talks with [US Secretary of State] John Kerry were not in vain, and the Americans are perceiving the incentives coming from Moscow and understand that, in order to prevent the crisis from deepening, some sensible steps should be taken,' he said.
In particular, Churkin mentioned the need to confiscate 3 million firearms that are in the wrong hands in Ukraine now. 'The weapons are in the hands of radical nationalists. If we talk about the disarmament of supporters of federalization and decentralization in eastern Ukraine, then will these radicals who have sometimes been declared the National Guard and so granted official status will be disarmed as well?' he said.
Another question is 'what the current Ukrainian authorities have in the pipeline regarding a constitutional reform,' he said.
Prospect of UN peacekeeping operation in Ukraine unreal - Russian diplomat
A UN peacekeeping operation in Ukraine is unreal, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said. 'I think that this is completely unreal. The UN and peacekeeping operations are unreal,' Churkin said in an interview with the Rossiya 24 (Russia 24) TV channel.
'The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) presence is quite enough,' he said. 'It is important that they realize in Kyiv that it is necessary to implement the Geneva documents and they take real steps to disarm the Right Sector and real steps regarding constitutional reform, then the situation should de-escalate by itself and no peacekeepers will be needed,' Churkin said.
'For now, the UN has not been very successful in Ukraine. It got involved with its human rights structures and started to write reports on the state of human rights in Ukraine and imposed the situation in Crimea in this report, while the political status of Crimea has changed,' Churkin said.
'We will have to work with them to explain the situation better,' he said. 'It seems to me that it is important that people hear that such an organization exists and so that they may address their concerns to this structure, so that the next report they [the UN mission] are to present in May is more objective,' Churkin said.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
