The U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt has said that there are no grounds to cancel sanctions against Russia.
If the peace plan is a success and it is implemented, there will not be a frozen conflict, he said in an interview with the Day newspaper published on Sept. 25.
However, constant pressure should be put on Russia, and this is what the United States is doing this week in New York, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is doing now, and the sanctions are important, he said. It is not time to cancel sanctions, Pyatt said.
The U.S. ambassador said that the peace plan of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko foresees the key conditions for settling the situation in the eastern part of the country: the withdrawal of all Russian troops, arms and military hardware from the territory of Ukraine, and the restoration of control on the border with Russia. He said that if these conditions were to be observed, there would not be a frozen conflict, as there would be no Russian troops in Ukraine, while today they are there.
He said that Ukraine would then control its international borders and there would not be any so-called ‘humanitarian convoys’ crossing Ukraine’s border without any control and customs checks.
While these conditions remain unfulfilled, it is not time to cancel sanctions, the diplomat said.
Russia has not remedied the problems that led to today’s crisis, he added.
