WARSAW, Poland – Ukraine deserves “the same level of solidarity” as a NATO member in defending itself against Russia’s war, Deputy Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze told an audience on the sidelines of the NATO Summit on July 9.
While Russia is “hopped up on
testosterone and adrenaline” in its quest for conquest, “Europe is filled with
self-doubt” and unwilling to take risks for Ukraine, “what many regard as a
backyard of Russia,” she said during a panel discussion.
The talk took place ahead of this afternoon’s Ukraine-NATO Commission meeting of heads of state, the last formal session of the NATO Summit, followed by a press conference at 5:45 p.m. Kyiv time by President Petro Poroshenko and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Afterwards, Poroshenko is set to meet with the leaders of the U.S., France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy and hold another press conference at 7 p.m. Kyiv time.
Klympush-Tsintsadze said that security for one nation should be
security for all nations. “We have to be strong in confronting the enemy,” she
said. “Russia wans to be great again – it measures its greatness not by the
wellbeing of its people or life expectancy of its people. It measures its
greatness by the greatness of its enemy. It want to be feared and it is getting
what it wants.”
She wants Ukraine to have practically equal status to other NATO allies “without the formal
membership” until “the moment when Ukraine will be ready to meet all the NATO
standards.”
She said that “we have to draw a
very clear line between compromise and capitulation” with Russia. “Capitulation would mean we
are playing by the rules of the Russian Federation,” which wants to re-divide
Europe in spheres of influence, she said.
Credibility and long-term strategic
interests must guide Ukraine’s relationship with the West.
Both sides have to live up to their
commitments to each other, including the European Union’s undelivered promise of visa-free
travel for Ukrainians even after Ukraine met all the requirements.
“Right now Ukraine and Georgia are
waiting for a visa-free regime” that the EU has long promised, she said, but now are hearing about new conditions – such as an emergency mechanism to suspend
visa-free travel — and preoccupation with the “headaches” of Brexit and the Dutch
referendum voting against an EU-Ukraine trade deal.
John Herbst, an Atlantic Council
fellow and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said that the West must help
countries like Ukraine “in the gray zone” between NATO and Russia in three
ways: stopping Kremlin subversion, strengthening democratic institutions and
providing military aid.
Westerners who take a “pro-Kremlin
position” are “ignoring the choices of the people of Moldova, Georgia and
Ukraine,” Herbst said.
Had the West come down harder on Russia after its war against Georgia in 2008, he said, Russia may not have invaded Crimea in 2014.
Eugene Czolij, president of the
Ukrainian World Congress, said Ukraine is fighting the West’s fight and
deserves more support.
“In August of 2014, Ukraine would
have fully regained its territorial integrity had Russia not sent its regular
troops,” Czolij said. “The bad news is that Russia continues to be proactive
and the Euroatlantic community, including NATO, is reactive. More bad news:
Russia continues to demonstrate that Ukraine is not its endgame, with threats
against the Baltic nations and Poland and clearly said Kazakhstan is not a
country, which is certainly a threatening statement when one takes into account in 2008 during the Bucharest (NATO)
Summit that Putin told George Bush that Ukraine is not a country.”
James Sherr, an associate fellow of
Chatham House, said that both Russia and the West still get Ukraine wrong.
Russia mistakenly thinks that it
can pressure Poroshenko into surrendering to the terms of the
Kremlin-backed separatists in the eastern Donbas, where Russia started a war
after annexing Crimea in2014.
“Kremlin perceives that time is on
its side in Ukraine…This is the opposite of reality,” Sherr said. “If President
Poroshenko were to go before the Verkhovna Rada and say it’s time to accept
(Moscow’s) core demands, which would to neuter Ukraine as an independent
state…he would face uproar in the Rada and disturbances on the street.”
Meanwhile, some in the West mistakenly
buy into the Kremlin propaganda’s notion that Ukraine is a failed state and
nobody should bother with trying to help it.
While Ukraine’s state is weak, its
society is strong, Sherr said, while the opposite is true in Russia.
“It is a deficient state and one should not exaggerate the deficiencies,” Sherr said. “But the country is
strong.”
