RIA Novosti: USA doesn’t want greater role for EU in Ukraine resolution – Russian diplomat

(RIA Novosti – July 2, 2014) The USA is not interested in the EU participating more actively in settling the Ukrainian crisis and for this reason, among other things, is pushing Europe towards sanctions against Russia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigoriy Karasin said in an interview to state-controlled rolling news channel Rossiya 24 broadcast on 2 July; his remarks were reported on the same day by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti on 2 July.

“The cooling is coming, as it seems to us, not only from European capitals: the hand of our American partners is felt in this, who are not interested in the European Union participating more actively in resolving the issues connected with the Ukrainian tragedy,” Karasin said.

He added that the USA’s and the EU’s sanction policy against Russia will not work.

“The language of sanctions with reference to Russia is doomed to failure, since our country is quite confident in its powers – both economic and military-political – in order to feel calm, confident and to continue to explain its position,” Karasin said.

Karasin also said that hopes for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine which the international community linked with the election of President Petro Poroshenko have not yet been justified.

He said that all contacts with the Ukrainian side with the participation of Russia and other countries are not leading to specific results. “This is lamentable,” he noted.

“It would seem that hopes have gathered for some acceptably peaceful solution to these acute problems of the intra-Ukrainian crisis, but, alas, the first contacts have shown that the sides (in the Ukrainian conflict) cannot come to an agreement; Kiev is not able to understand the problems, the tragedy which the southeast is currently enduring,” Karasin said.

Speaking about the annexation of Crimea, Karasin said that, in the circumstances, Russia could not have acted differently.

“If at the time, after the coup d’etat which occurred in Ukraine on 22 February, we had taken no notice of people, Crimeans, had not reacted to the calls for common sense, the staging of the referendum, to the requests to us to become a constituent part of the Russian Federation, what is happening at present in the southeast would have happened in Crimea as well, but it would have been even more dramatic and tragic in nature. We are absolutely sure of this,” he said.