VILNIUS, Lithuania – The Kremlin should pay war reparations to Ukraine after it has ended its occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea and its war on Ukraine in the Donbas, a group of Russian liberal intellectuals and opposition figures agreed at a meeting in the Lithuanian capital on Dec. 7-8.
The 6th Free Russia Forum in Vilnius, organized by Garry Kasparov, the former chess grandmaster and a leader of the Russian opposition, gathered politicians, journalists and activists from both Ukraine and Russia for a two-day conference to talk about Russia, its political future, and its military aggression in Ukraine.
It came just two weeks after the Russian military, already covertly at war with Ukraine for nearly five years, carried its first attack on Ukrainian forces under the Russian flag: On Nov. 25 Russian forces captured three Ukrainian navy vessels and their 24 crew in the Black Sea near the Kerch Strait, between Russia and Ukraine’s Crimea, which is currently under Russian occupation.
Looking forward to an end to Kremlin aggression against Ukraine, the delegates at the forum supported the idea that Russia would have to pay reparations after the war is over.
Russian politician and a former member of the Russian State Duma Ilya Ponomarev, who now lives in exile in Ukraine, raised the issue during the forum’s economics panel.
“It’s hard to acknowledge the fact (that reparations must be paid), but what was destroyed (by us) has to be rebuilt,” Ponomarev said.
“We’ll have to take an active part in rebuilding Donbas, for sure.”
Andrey Illarionov, a Russian political expert and former adviser of Russian President Vladimir Putin, focused his attention on the current ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine over the Kerch Strait. Illarionov stated that Russia’s Crimea bridge, built across the straits illegally and opened in May, should be dismantled. He said its only purpose is to halt Ukrainian trade through the Azov Sea ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk.
“The bridge was build with an unnaturally low arch, to prevent cargo ships from passing through the (Kerch) Strait,” said Illarionov.
“The bridge is lower than all similar projects, and prevents 44 percent of ships from passing under it,” he added.
But Aivaras Abromavičius, a businessman and the former Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine, said that the process of paying reparations has effectively already begun.
“Naftogaz’s case against Gazprom, the Oshadbank case, show that the process (of paying reparations) has begun from the economic side, even without Russia,” said Abromavičius.
Ponomarev also said that the countries that signed the Budapest Memorandum, a treaty signed on Dec. 8, 1994, by Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom giving security assurances to Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its arsenal of nuclear weapons, (then the world’s third largest), must take an active role in rebuilding Ukraine after the war.
“They have failed Ukraine,” said Ponomarev.
