Remarks to the Press by Chargé d'Affaires a.i. Dmitry Polyanskiy
I wanted to draw your attention to two situations that we raised at the Security Council in the afternoon during closed consultations. Both of them are linked with potentially problematic issues which can become hot if nothing is being done.
The first one is concerning Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the President of Republika Srpska, one of the constituent entities the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is being prosecuted because of the decisions of the illegitimate High Representative, somebody called Mr. Schmidt. He is not legitimate because he was not approved by Republika Srpska as it was supposed to happen, nor was he approved by the Security Council. It's an issue that has certain history. It was quite heated in the Security Council at some point, but we warned that his actions would lead the country potentially to big problems, and that's what’s happening right now. So, this situation, when Mr. Dodik is being prosecuted, threatens stability of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and we decided to draw the attention of the members of the Council to this very unhappy development.
The second situation concerns the Republic of Moldova, where Evghenia Gutsul, the head of the Gagauz Autonomous Region, is being prosecuted. She was under pressure for some time, and the accusations towards her varied, but there was something in common with all these accusations – they had no proof. So now she is accused of illegally financing electoral campaign, something like this. She is a mother of two small children, and she is now (after the decision of the court) being put into prison for seven years. This is very cruel and totally reflects the current situation in Moldova. The situation has been developing in a very bad direction after the presidential elections. Now, they [the Moldovan authorities] have plans to conduct parliamentary elections on September 28. They seem very problematic because some of the opposition parties have already been banned from running in these elections for laughable reasons. But the whole situation is far from being laughable. To give you an idea of how serious manipulations at the upcoming Moldovan elections are, I will only illustrate this with one example. There are about from 300,000 to 500,000 Moldovans living in Russia. It is somehow believed in Moldova that they are more inclined to develop good relations with Russia, and they will make a choice towards better relations with my country. So, for this half million of Moldovan citizens, there are only two polling stations foreseen by the Moldovan authorities.
Each polling station can accommodate 5,000 bulletins. It means that out of this half million people, only 10,000 will be able to vote. Just in comparison, the Moldovan diaspora in Italy accounts for 270,000 people, and there are more than 30 polling stations. And there is the same picture in Europe. In Germany there are 27, in every other country there are more than 20. And despite all the calls of the Moldovan opposition, the Moldovan authorities do not want to open polling stations in Russia because they are afraid that the votes cast there will sway the results towards something that they do not want to see. So, we think that both situations deserve attention of the Security Council, which has also a preventive feature. So, we have to prevent problems there. That is why the Security Council members should be kept aware of these very problematic developments.
Q: Those are two interesting issues, but I want to ask you what Russia's aim is in the upcoming talks between President Putin and President Trump. If you can give us any details and tell us whether any meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky is also expected?
A: Well, Russia’s aims are always peace and security in the world. They are not changing. These are the same aims that we pursue in this kind of negotiations. I haven’t heard about any meetings planned with President Zelensky, but I’m not in the loop. I think that these things are now being very actively commented on through the channels of the two presidents, and I don’t want to be in the way there – to distort this information or to give you any speculation in this regard.
Q: Do we have any timeline on when the meeting is possible, and do we have a possible location?
A: As far as I heard, there are a number of locations, but they agreed on something that they don’t want to disclose. The timeline is, I think, next week. But that’s, again, judging from what the presidents said themselves in their comments. It’s not my information.
Q: Ambassador, President Trump said he’s going to impose more economic sanctions on countries who want to import Russian products, like energy products. So, countries like China, like India, will be affected by that. So what’s your response on that? And will President Putin talk about this with President Trump during the summit?
A: Frankly, I lost track at some point of all these statements about sanctions – introduced, not introduced – so it’s very hard for me to follow. I’m rather following the agenda of the Security Council, and these issues are not on the agenda of this body.
Q: What actions are you ready to take? And are you considering sanctions against the government of Moldova?
A: I haven’t heard about anything like this. I know that our relations right now are very shrunk, and at some moments they are even nonexistent. There are a lot of problems in our bilateral relations because of the actions of the Moldovan authorities. I heard about the actions that the Gagauzia parliament is ready to take. I heard that today they adopted a resolution urging the government to promote an international campaign in defense of Ms. Yevghenia Gutul, who is being prosecuted. I heard that this resolution will also be sent to the United Nations, so we will all receive it here.
Q: Regarding Dodik and attempts at his prosecution. Do you intend to have an open Security Council meeting about this, maybe with Serbia and other players in the region?
A: I can’t exclude it. It will depend on how the situation develops there. There are regular meetings on Bosnia and Herzegovina. I think that we’ll try to use them in the maximum way possible. We don’t want to speculate on this, and we don’t want any heated discussion about this in the open right now. We just wanted to raise the awareness of the Security Council members of all the dangers that it entails. We gave some additional information for their consideration that might bring them to the conclusion that they need to keep an eye on what is happening in a more intensive way.
Q: Just to follow up on the next planned UNSC meeting, do you anticipate touching upon the topic of Bosnia?
A: Yes. I think that’s the scenario.
Q: Thank you, Ambassador. Israeli Prime Minister has just announced that Israel will take over all of Gaza. What’s the position now? What can be done here within the UN to stop such a step?
A: Was it announced during our meeting? Because I haven’t heard this news so far. I know that there are plans, but I haven’t heard that there is an announcement. But in any case, I think that our position is quite clear, as it is similar to the position of nearly everybody in the Security Council. We think that this is a very bad step in an absolutely wrong direction, and we condemn this kind of actions. We have done that from the very outset, from the moment when these plans were announced and contemplated. They run counter to all the UN decisions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We think that the only basis for solution to this conflict would be the two-state solution, which has been reconfirmed several times, including during the recent conference in New York that adopted very important decisions.
Thank you.
