Постоянное представительство Российской Федерации при ООН

Постоянное представительство Российской Федерации при ООН

Интервью Постоянного представителя Российской Федерации при ООН В.И.Чуркина каналу Си-Эн-Эн

Постоянный представитель Российской Федерации при ООН В.И.Чуркин рассказал каналу Си-Эн-Эн о позиции России в отношении событий на Украине.


Полный транскрипт:

CNN Global Exchange with Jim Clancy 20 February 2014


Q. We are all concerned about the situation in Ukraine. What is your prospective?

Churkin: Well, we are extremely concerned of course. We need a stable and prosperous Ukraine. We think that this attempt to execute a violent coup should stop. Attacks on administrative buildings, apparent preparation for the storming of the Parliament, those things should stop. As President Yanukovich proposed they should continue their dialogue and as I understand it is continued.

Q. If there is a dialogue continuing now, what went wrong? President Yanukovich announced that he was going to unilaterally declare a cease-fire and yet gunshots rang out.

Churkin: I think what’s wrong is that the opposition didn’t really want a dialogue, didn’t want to settle the situation in a constitutional framework. They wanted to take power by force. And it is a democratically elected President who has majority in a democratically elected parliament. And in fact new presidential elections are supposed to take place in 2015, one year from now. Instead of going through political process, the so-called democratic opposition leaders decided to try to take power on the shoulders of radical thugs who had been terrorizing downtown Kiev for the past three months. That needs to stop and then normal political process can continue. We hope that Ukrainians among themselves will reach agreement, which will make it possible to end this crisis.

Q. Do you think that these protesters are terrorists?

Churkin: No, they are clearly radicals. They are fascist inspired. Some of them – as we see it from their slogans – fascist inspired radicals. Of course, there is a large segment of opposition protest among the population but unfortunately it has been taken over in the past months by the radical thugs who have been throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks at police and taking over administrative buildings and creating impossible situation for citizens of Kiev to live in and destabilizing Ukraine. One thing you need to understand. If those so-called democratic opposition leaders succeed and come to power on the shoulders of thugs, that will not produce democracy in Ukraine. It would produce deeply chaotic and split Ukraine. And those radical sentiments would infect Europe as well, which also has this phenomenon of radicalism in its political life. We are facing a very dangerous situation. I hope the European and American officials who are dealing with the situation understand what they are doing. I’m afraid they don’t, because their actions do not reflect the understanding of destabilizing impact of their policy of encouraging the violent opposition to go for a grab of power in Kiev.

Q. The Europeans have little impact with Mr. Yanukovich and his government. You as a Russian ambassador have a very little power to discourage or to advise people in the streets. What can you say to the government about pulling back?

Churkin: About pulling back – I was really amused to read two days ago about Vice President Biden talking to President Yanukovich. According to the press-release Biden asked him to pull government forces back. I wonder if Vice President Biden would give the same advice to President Obama if armed thugs were storming administrative buildings in Washington, D.C. and were preparing to storm the White House and the Capitol. We are not giving any specific recommendations to anybody except the one to stay within the constitutional framework. Even now, president Yanukovich is meeting some European foreign ministers. They should stop putting pressure only on the Government. They should say they disapprove, they don’t accept an undemocratic attempt to carry out a violent coup in a European country, which they want to follow democratic European principles. What kind of democratic principles, what kind of European values are those? Are they going to deal with such kind of situation this way in Paris or in any other European capital? So this is a very dangerous situation.

Q. We already see the chaos on the streets. And the reason is how government is handling things. Let’s hear a doctor speaking about casualties what she has seen in Kiev… She speaks of use of deadly force by qualified snipers and victims are killed instantly. What would you advise the government now?

Churkin: Reportedly 20 policemen were hit today by snipers. And I saw a TV footage today with snipers shooting from a hotel that they took over in downtown Kiev. And of course those are not government troops who took over that hotel. Clearly those are the opposition people. So the violence against authorities - police has taken an unprecedental abuse, unimaginable in the US or in Europe. Can you imagine the police standing under Molotov cocktails for months and tolerating all this. How long would the life expectancy of persons throwing Molotov cocktails at the police be in New York, Atlanta on anywhere else in the US?

Q. President Putin has dispatched an envoy to Kiev. Do you have any knowledge of that?

Churkin: That may be a misinterpretation. Our deputy foreign minister was in Kiev for regular consultations with Ukrainian colleagues but I haven’t heard of any special envoy. Our standard line which we’ve been maintaining is that the only thing we need for Ukraine is to be stable and to go through a political process. President Yanukovich offered the post of prime-minister to one of the opposition politicians and he rejected that. Why? If he wanted to conclude this association agreement with the European Union he could do that and take responsibility for the consequences. And the consequences could have been really dramatic in terms of economic impact. He didn’t want to do that, he wanted to go all the way to take political power undemocratically on the shoulders of those radical thugs. And this is not a democratic mode of behavior. It’s high time the US and the EU act on principle, but not out of some geopolitical ambitions they may be having with detrimental effect on Ukraine and on the stability of Eastern Europe.

Q. Some Ukranian athletes have now left the Olympic village in Sochi to return home. Do you think the Olympic Games and what it means to Russia are being leveraged by the opposition on the streets of Kiev?

Churkin: No, I don’t see any connection at all. The games are a great success and athletes are leaving now Sochi because the games are coming to an end. Overall, I think it has been a very successful celebration of sport and I hope it will continue this way through the weekend.