YouSaid · the spoken record

Szamuely

lines on the record

19

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2023-09-12

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2023-09-12

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1

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un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

1. “They doubled down on the policy when they supported the overthrow of an elected Government in 2014, then compounded their errors by pouring in weaponry for eight years, refusing to implement the Minsk agreements and ignoring Russian warnings about red lines. Now they are keeping a war going, even as casualties continue to mount and the dangers of world war — and therefore of nuclear conflict — continue to escalate.”

   2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

2. “For less than 3 per cent of our nation’s military budget, we have enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half. All without a single American servicewoman or man injured or lost.” Senator Mitt Romney said that the money spent on Ukraine was the best national defence spending the United States had ever done, losing no lives while diminishing and devastating the Russian military. And of course, it was Senator Lindsey Graham who famously chirped, “Russians are dying.… Best money [we have] ever spent.” To sum up, the NATO Powers embarked on a deliberately provocative policy back in 2008 when they offered NATO membership to a country that was not interested in it.”

   2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

3. “A peace agreement was in the offing, but then Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv and urged Zelenskyy to drop the idea. Putin was a war criminal, Johnson said. He should be crushed, not negotiated with. Even if Ukraine were ready to sign a deal, Johnson told Zelenskyy, the NATO powers were not. Following the collapse of the talks, Türkiye’s Foreign Minister declared: “There are those within the NATO member States that want the war to continue and Russia to get weaker.” The truth is that key NATO Powers want to keep the war going because Russians are dying, and military contractors and their lobbyists are getting rich. United States politicians are at least honest about admitting this. Just listen to Senator Richard Blumenthal, who said, “We are getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment.”

   2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

4. “Does anyone seriously believe that, as soon as Ukraine makes serious gains, the NATO Powers will decide to call it a day and demand that Ukraine head towards the negotiating table? Of course not. Any Ukrainian success would immediately be touted as a reason for stepping up military deliveries. That is why today there is no diplomacy and no negotiating table. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has disclosed that he came close to reaching a peace agreement within a few days of the start of the war. As Bennett described the agreement, Ukraine would pledge not to join NATO, and Russia would abandon its goal of the so-called demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine. However, according to Bennett, Western leaders — Boris Johnson in particular — blocked the deal. The pattern was to be repeated in Istanbul at the end of March.”

   2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

5. “Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said the objective is to degrade Russia’s military capability. United States National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says that it is all about not “letting Russia run roughshod over Ukraine”, something that would allegedly place the continent of Europe at military risk. United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken claims that investing in Ukraine’s strength paves the way for diplomacy. Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom James Cleverly claims that “giving the Ukrainians the tools they need to finish the job is the swiftest path to peace.” NATO’s Stoltenberg says, “the more gains Ukraine makes, the stronger their hand will be at the negotiating table”. None of that makes the slightest sense.”

   2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

6. “The list is mind-blowing — shoulder-fired man-portable air defence systems, anti-ship missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, Stinger missiles, tanks, armoured personnel carriers, fighting vehicles, attack helicopters, howitzers, multiple-launch rocket systems, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, drones, anti-tank missiles, patriot missile systems, long-range cruise missiles, depleted uranium shells and cluster munitions. Ukraine is now promised F-16 fighter aircraft and long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems. In addition, NATO countries, particularly the United States, have provided tactical intelligence to Ukraine, enabling it to target and kill Russians. What the NATO Powers have notably failed to do is offer a convincing explanation as to what they are trying to achieve. President Biden once suggested that the goal was regime change.”

   2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

7. “Indeed, the Ukrainian army was completely different from that of 2014. It was better trained and equipped. It is the merit of the Minsk Agreements to have given the Ukrainian army this opportunity”. From 2014 onwards, the NATO Powers continued to pour arms into Ukraine, pretending to be interested in implementing Minsk, while in reality encouraging Ukraine to resolve the problem of Donbas by force. The result was some 14,000 deaths in Donbas. Since February 2022, NATO countries have continued pouring weaponry into Ukraine.”

   2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

8. “We win eight years to restore the economy”. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also admitted that Minsk was never anything more than a mechanism to buy time for Ukraine. As Merkel told the weekly Die Zeit last December, “The 2014 Minsk Agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time ... It also used this time to become stronger, as you can see today”. And she went on, “It was clear to all of us that this was a frozen conflict, that the problem had not been solved, but that is precisely what gave Ukraine valuable time”. In other words, she pretended to go along with Minsk even though she had not believed in it for a second. Former French President François Hollande echoed Merkel. As he told The Kyiv Independent last December, “Since 2014, Ukraine has strengthened its military posture.”

   2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

9. “The Minsk accords constituted a step-by-step reconciliation process, signed by the Kyiv Government and the representatives of the breakaway regions, which would have led to their reintegration into Ukraine. The key condition was to be a constitutional amendment granting the breakaway regions special status. France, Germany and Russia served as guarantors. The Security Council endorsed the Minsk accords in 2015, in resolution 2202 (2015). We now know that neither Kyiv nor France nor Germany took their pledges seriously. Former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko, who signed the Minsk Agreements on behalf of Ukraine, has admitted that he never had the slightest intention of fulfilling their terms. What is the result of the Minsk agreement? As he boasted a few months ago, “We win eight years to create an army.”

   2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

10. “Just listen to the words of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: “NATO allies have supported Ukraine since 2014. We did not wake up in February 2022. The Ukrainian armed forces are much better equipped, much better trained, much larger and much better commanded in 2022 than in 2014, not least because of the support, the training and the equipment they have received for many years from the NATO allied countries”. Note his words. NATO was pouring in weaponry and providing training to the Armed Forces of Ukraine from 2014 onwards. What was supposed to be happening during those years? Of course, it was the implementation of the Minsk accords.”

    2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

11. “Let us also not forget that, as its first order of business, the coup regime, in order to demonstrate its respect for diversity and European values, scrapped a minority language law, passed by Ukraine’s Parliament in 2012, that had granted regional language status — meaning that it could be used in courts, schools and Government institutions — to Russian and other minority languages in any region where a minority exceeded 10 per cent of the population. That was obviously a matter of some concern to the Russian- speaking residents of Donbas. Not surprisingly, the disenfranchised rebelled against Ukraine’s new rulers, who responded to that act of defiance with overwhelming force. NATO responded by going all-in to support the rulers in Kyiv as they waged a war against their own people.”

    2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

12. “The most important consequence of the coup was the disenfranchisement of the people of the east and the south-east of Ukraine — Yanukovych’s base of support. Much like sovereign people anywhere else in the world, they did not appreciate the violent overthrow of the leader for whom they had voted, and they refused to accept the legitimacy of the coup regime. Today the United States is sending people to prison for decades for calling into question the integrity of the 2020 election. And yet the people of Donbas were supposed to sit quietly and accept an illegal seizure of power, one that was, at least in part, orchestrated from abroad.”

    2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

13. “Ukraine and the EU agreed to “promote gradual convergence in the area of foreign and security policy, including the Common Security and Defence Policy”. The Common Security and Defence Policy, of course, is a backdoor into NATO. President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy issued a statement congratulating the people of Ukraine for taking to the streets and using violence to ensure that the Association Agreement was signed. “The refusal to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union created a popular uprising, a political and cultural shift. We pay tribute to those who gave their life for freedom”. And he went on to say, without a trace of irony, that the Agreement “recognizes the aspirations of the people of Ukraine to live in a country governed by values, by democracy and the rule of law”.”

    2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

14. “Just as soon as there is someone at the end of the telephone, we will be there with a cheque-book to help the people of Ukraine rebuild their country”. The European Commission announced that it was ready to conclude a trade deal with Ukraine and offer aid once a new Government was formed. In reality, no one was waiting for any elections. On 21 March, one month after the coup and before any elections had been held, the illegally constituted regime in Kyiv and the European Union signed the EU Association Agreement, the very Agreement that Yanukovych, in accordance with his legally defined powers, had decided to delay signing. One should add that the Association Agreement had a strong security and defence component.”

    2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

15. “Within two days, EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton was in Kyiv to discuss EU support for a “lasting solution to the political crisis and measures to stabilize the economic situation”. A couple of days later, it was the turn of Deputy United States Secretary of State William Burns, who, according to the State Department, went to consult on United States support for Ukraine’s efforts to secure a stable, democratic, inclusive, prosperous future. United States Treasury Secretary Jack Lew encouraged the new leaders to begin discussions with the International Monetary Fund on an assistance package. The United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, immediately offered cash, stating “We are ready to help.”

    2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

16. “The coup d’état was actively supported by the United States and the European Union (EU). That is no conspiracy theory. We need just to recall the leaked phone call between Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and United States Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. During the call, which took place weeks before the coup, the two United States officials happily discussed who would and who would not be part of the post-Yanukovych regime. How did the NATO Powers react to the coup? The very same countries that today vent their fury at those who ousted the legally elected Government of the Niger exulted in the toppling of the legally elected Government of Ukraine.”

    2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

17. “A May 2009 Gallup poll showed that Ukrainians were more than twice as likely to see NATO as a threat than as a source of protection. A September 2009 Pew Research Center survey found that 51 per cent of Ukrainians opposed NATO membership, with only 28 per cent in favour. In February 2010, Viktor Yanukovych ran for the presidency of Ukraine on a platform pledging not to join NATO or any military alliance. Following his election victory, Yanukovych submitted a bill to Ukraine’s Parliament barring Ukraine’s membership in any military bloc. In other words, through the democratic process, Ukraine had declared itself a militarily non-aligned State. That all changed following the illegal and violent overthrow of the elected Government of Yanukovych on 22 February 2014.”

    2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

18. “There are many countries in the world, even in Europe, that do not join military alliances. Russia was not demanding a military alliance with Ukraine but merely requesting that its neighbour, with which it shared a centuries- long history, not join a hostile military alliance. Neither the United States nor NATO deigned to respond to Russia’s proposals. Let us recall that in its 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty, Ukraine avowed its intention of becoming “a permanently neutral State that does not participate in military blocs”. We should also recall that although at its 2008 Bucharest summit NATO had promised membership for Ukraine and Georgia, there was no desire on the part of the people of Ukraine to join NATO.”

    2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source

19. “Mr. Szamuely: I thank you, Madam President, for giving me the opportunity to address the Security Council. This is a war that could easily have been avoided. On 17 December 2021, Russia published two draft proposals outlining a new security architecture for Europe — one for the United States and one for NATO. The proposed framework recalled the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, in which the mutually antagonistic parties of the Cold War agreed to recognize one another’s security concerns and pledged not to enhance their own security at the expense of their purported adversaries. At the heart of Russia’s proposals was a commitment by NATO to no further expansion, and in particular to no NATO membership for Ukraine. There was nothing unreasonable about the demands that could not have been addressed with a little deft diplomacy.”

    2023-09-12 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9415 (2023) · source