The United States named the conditions for canceling sanctions and called to keep ratcheting up the pressure on Russia to make it meeting Minsk commitments.
“We remain prepared to roll back sanctions if the fighting stops, the border is closed, the foreign forces and equipment are withdrawn, and hostages are released. We have said all along that there is no military solution to this crisis. The solution, as has been said by the OSCE here today and the United Nations, must be political,” The U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Samantha Power, said at U.N. Security Council meeting.
“The problem is – and as it has long been throughout this crisis – you cannot reach a political solution if only one side is committed to forging it; and you cannot effectively implement a road map with parties who – like the Russians and the separatists they back – so consistently fail to keep their word,” she said.
“We have seen Russia’s playbook in Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Crimea. So the question is not what Russia will try to do in eastern Ukraine. The question is what we, the international community, will seek to do to prevent yet another frozen conflict in Europe, manufactured by Russia,” Power said.
“Russia has not earned the good faith that we would wish to bestow, and even when Russia claims, as Foreign Minister Lavrov did today, “the inadmissibility of disrupting the implementation of the Minsk ceasefire agreements” – actions are all that matter. And actions, alongside these words, show intentions,” she said.
“What we can do – what we need to do – is keep ratcheting up the pressure on Russia until it abides by Minsk and chooses the path of de-escalation,” Power said.
