On 23 February, the newspaper Público published an article of the Ambassador of Ukraine in Portugal Inna Ohnivets called “concern about the votes in support of the conviction” (Preocupação pelos votos de condenação). Noteworthy is a rather unexpected Ambassador attempt to teach members of the Portuguese Parliament a history lesson.
Not surprised that dear Inna Ohnivets attributed to the Kremlin of the Soviet era all the atrocities that took place in our history at the time of the country’s total. Referring to the famine in the USSR in 1932-1933, she said nothing about the fact that the victims of this tragedy were Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs and representatives of other ethnic groups (a fact which in 2003 were underlined by the UN General Assembly). She mentions the alleged “death camps” (which are actually the terrible result of Nazi policies during world war II), but does not speak about the mass atrocities of the gang of Stepan Bandera, murderers and the accomplices of Nazism in Ukraine.
The Ambassador decided to omit the historical fact, which, ironically, Ukraine owes its existence as a state: it is silent about Moscow, about the Kremlin, the Communist party and all the “Soviet regime”. Ukraine was going to pieces in Russia. There is no need to dive into the depths of history, to take just one example: in 1654 the Ukrainian land on the Eastern Bank of the Dnieper river (one sixth of the territory of modern Ukraine) has decided to reunite with the Russian Empire. In fact, until the Soviet era Ukraine did not exist on the map as a separate state: this site was located in Kiev province, which was part of the Russian Empire — to use contemporary language, one of the administrative districts of the Empire. And only the Soviet government turned these territories into the Republic — Ukrainian Soviet socialist Republic.
In his article, the Ambassador decided to shed light on the current state of Affairs. It is sad that the words of a respected Inna Ohnivets of diligent performance by the Kiev, the Minsk agreements do not stand up to scrutiny of facts. The Minsk agreement, signed by the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, imply a clear sequence of action: agreement on a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Kiev and Donbass all heavy weapons from the contact line and the monitoring by the OSCE, the adoption of Kiev of the law on the special status of Donetsk and Luhansk — a total Amnesty and an exchange agreement according to the principle “all for all” — local elections — constitutional reform enshrining the special status of Donetsk and Luhansk — and only then restore control of the Ukrainian government over the state border throughout the conflict zone
The regime in Kiev uses every opportunity to evade this sequence of action, thereby sabotaging the political component of the agreement. Has not taken any steps nor to adopt a law on special status of Donbass, nor for the conduct of local elections and constitutional reform. On the contrary, for some time now Kiev does not pay pensions and social benefits to its, as expected, citizens in the Donbass.
Instead, to perform its obligations, the Ukrainian regime is trying hard to resolve the conflict by force: the population of Donbass is under fire, including heavy weapons, prohibited by the Minsk agreements, the region has undergone economic, financial and transport blockade. Nothing remains but to arbitrarily call Russia a “part of the conflict” and in the spirit of the era of postpreda to declare the presence in the Donbass Russian troops, not particularly caring about the evidence.
Those interested in this issue, it would not hurt to refresh your memory of the contents of such documents, as the Minsk agreement and OSCE monitoring in Ukraine — they are all freely available. I understand why the Ambassador is silent about these documents: they reflect the reality is very different from the situation outlined it in the article.
Alexander Bryantsev – the press attache of the Russian Embassy in Portugal
