2015-06-12 08:51
The White House. (Susan Walsh, AP)
Kiev - Washington's UN envoy accused Russia on Thursday of spinning "outright lies" on Ukraine designed to hide the Kremlin's direct involvement in a war it launched to thwart Kiev's pro-Western drive.
Samantha Power's address to a crowd
of hundreds in Kiev delivered one of Washington's toughest messages to Moscow
since the warring sides grudgingly signed off on a loosely defined truce in
February that threatened to collapse last week.
Her emotional 70-minute speech also
came a year into a presidency Petro Poroshenko has used to try to wipe out
decades of crippling corruption and anaemic economic growth that left Ukraine
reliant on Russian help.
Power said Russia launched the war
in Ukraine's vital eastern industrial heartland 14 months ago in order to drain
the new government's remaining financial resources and undermine its public
support.
She charged that the Kremlin then
tried to disguise its agenda through a torrent of media propaganda and
disingenuous speeches at global venues such as the United Nations Security
Council, messages that helped President Vladimir Putin's domestic support touch
record highs.
"The focus on Ukraine in the
Security Council is important because it gives me the chance, on behalf of the
United States to lay out the mounting evidence of Russia's aggression, its
obfuscation, and its outright lies," said Power.
Putin has resolutely denied sending
special forces into Ukraine's battle-scarred Donetsk and Lugansk provinces, a
predominantly Russian-speaking region with ancient cultural links to Moscow.
'Call of the heart'
The Kremlin strongman has called
armed Russians discovered in the war zone "volunteers" and patriotic
off-duty soldiers who were answering "a call of the heart".
That message has been rejected by
Washington and its EU allies.
Leaders of the G7 group of the
world's richest nations threatened on Monday to toughen their economic
sanctions on Russia should the bloodshed grow any worse.
But Moscow had viewed a rare meeting
between Putin and US Secretary of State John Kerry, held in what both sides
described as a constructive atmosphere last month as a sign of the West
gradually softening its tone.
Power's public appearance worked in
part to dispel that speculation and reassure increasingly-disenchanted
Ukrainians that Washington remained firmly on their side.
"You are still living in the
revolution, and delivering on its promise will require all the resilience,
smarts and compassion you've got," said Power.
"And that was before Russian
troops occupied Crimea [in March 2014], something the Kremlin denied at the
time, but has since admitted, and before Russia began training, arming,
bankrolling, and fighting alongside its so-called separatist proxies in eastern
Ukraine, something the Kremlin continues to deny," Power added.
"The Ukrainian people, stay
engaged in the reform process," she urged.
Rattling nerves
Last week's fighting, which was
along the twisting line splitting the rebel-overseen region of around four million
from the rest of Ukraine, killed more than 30 people and rattled the nerves of
EU powers Germany and France.
The two countries were instrumental
in forging the so-called Minsk Agreements that aimed to finally settle one of
Europe's most destabilising conflicts in decades.
But a quiet spell at the start of
the week was followed by a new day of fighting that officials from both sides
said claimed the lives of two soldiers and four civilians.
The United Nations estimates that
the entire campaign has killed nearly 6,500 people and driven more than a
million from their homes.
But Ukrainians' frustration with
seemingly ceaseless warfare has been compounded by a growing list of economic
problems that have left Ukraine's state coffers barren and the lives of many
much worse off than they had been in years past.
Kiev has warned that its inability
to win any relief from its private lenders may force it to stop servicing its
outstanding debt payments as early as next week.
Such a decision would push Ukraine into
a technical default and make its return to sustainable growth even more
complex.
Ukraine's main private creditors
warned on Thursday that they were "deeply concerned" by Kiev's
current debt negotiating position.
It "is not in the interests of
Ukraine," they said in a joint statement.
The International Monetary Fund has
said, however, that it could continue to support Ukraine with bailout funding
even if Kiev does not reach a debt restructuring deal with private creditors.
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