Statement By First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy at the plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly on agenda item 31(а) “Prevention of Armed Conflict”
Mr. President,
The General Assembly takes action on resolutions that generally fall into three groups.
The first group is consensus resolutions. They emerge out of tough work. Member states coordinate their positions, often they have to go for uneasy compromises, because they understand that such collective decisions send very powerful signals. Fortunately, the majority of resolutions belong with this group.
The second group is resolutions that for some reasons cannot be supported by some member states. As a rule, such scenarios also result from painstaking expert work. The General Assembly seeks to avoid such results, because non-consensus character of a resolution brings down the effectiveness of its implementation.
And finally, there is the third, least numerous group of resolutions. It comprises resolutions that are put forward out of political considerations and have nothing to do with reality. Usually such resolutions are supported by approximately one third of member states that are guided by the “bloc discipline”. The majority of delegations normally either vote in abstention or take no part in the vote, thus showing their real attitude to such initiatives. As a rule, there are no expert consultations on such resolutions, because those who put them forward have no objective to achieve consensus or win the majority of votes. Such resolutions have one distinctive feature – right after the vote, their authors, in defiance of elementary arithmetic and common sense, start “yelling” about alleged significant support from the global community. Certainly, no one ever doubts lameness of such propositions.
Today we have to do with a resolution that clearly belongs with the third group. It is hard to comprehend what goals the authors of this draft are guided by, if they insist that for the second year in a row we should waste our time on considering a politicized and provocative text that is based on allegations, speculations, and distortions of facts. People of Crimea have long made their choice: exposed to a threat of a “blood-drenched massacre” that was coming from nationalists who came to power in 2014, they decided to re-unify with Russia. History has proven that this was a far-sighted step and a right thing to do, because people of Donbass who only proposed to Kiev to discuss some issues of concern with regard to the new state policy, were welcomed by bombs, shells, and bullets. As a result, the ongoing internal conflict in Ukraine has killed, wounded, and badly injured thousands of people, and turned millions more into refugees and IDPs. By various estimates, in Russia alone there are from 3 to 4 millions of Ukrainians who either have to live or earn their living there. This is a national tragedy, and the “Maidan” authorities and their Western sponsors try to hide it under the guise of mythical “Russian aggression”.
Mr.President,
The draft resolution before us is based on a bare-faced lie and assertions that things look bad for Crimeans, that they are languishing against the Russian annexation and occupation. It is quite indicative, that in order not to let people realize the absurdness of this “Maidan” propaganda, one of the resolution’s provisions suggests that everyone should keep from visiting the Russian Crimea. To include this paragraph was a wise thing to do for the authors of the draft resolution, because everyone who goes to Crimea, gets back with conclusions and assessments that are totally opposite to this and that make the entire concept that the resolution rests upon collapse just like a house of cards. It would suffice to ask the opinion of the tourists, who have numbered 7 million this year, one million of them to have come to the peninsula from Ukraine. They do not conceal what they think and readily share their impressions both in interviews and in social media.
The content of the Ukrainian “resolutional hearsay” is something one would not like to dwell on, because it is a thick pack of lies and fables. Even the title is a lie. There is no problem of “militarization of Crimea”. Just for reference: under Russian-Ukrainian agreements, before 2014 Russia had the right to deploy up to 25 thousand of military personnel in Crimea. In reality there were only 12 thousand of them against 15 thousand Ukrainian. Now they are even fewer, and we openly inform the global community about it.
I feel somewhat awkward about the colleagues in this room, whom the Permanent Mission of Ukraine is again dragging in fatuitous, politicized and provocative propaganda show. I say “Permanent Mission of Ukraine” and I mean it, because, to be frank, the true position of Ukraine is not clear to us. Today a meeting of the “Normandy Quartet” is held in Paris. In anticipation of this meeting our Ukrainian colleagues did their best to create a favorable background – both in words and in deeds. Adoption of this resolution was meant to impair the constructive course of the Paris meeting. Authors of the draft took pains to take out of the “closet” all the “skeletons” that Ukrainian electorate had decided to commit to history when they voted for President Volodymir Zelenskyy and his party.
By the way, as today’s meeting in Paris was being arranged, the President of Ukraine told us and all the others many positive and inspiring things today. In any case, what he said is absolutely incompatible with the “spiel” that the Mission of Ukraine now puts to your consideration. A question keeps popping up: Whose instructions do our Ukrainian colleagues carry out? Those of the Ukrainian people who are firmly committed to rapprochement with Russia and peace in their country or those of the “party of war” that does not wish to give up its positions and therefore keeps Ukraine in a state of chaos, civil war, misery and poverty?
Dear colleagues, we would like you to ask these questions to yourselves, that is why we ask to put to vote the draft resolution proposed by Ukraine, Western countries, and their satellites. For obvious reasons, we call to vote against it. In order not to have any doubts ever with regard to falsehood of allegations of our Ukrainian colleagues, do come to Crimea and see everything for yourselves. Neither us nor Crimeans have anything to conceal, but we have very much to be proud of!
Thank you.
