Don't rewrite history on Russia, Crimea

Vladimir Polenov, Guest Columnist

In The Sunday Gleaner of April 6, 2014, a poem titled 'Putin's problem' was published and attributed to Tresha-Gaye Ustanny.

We regret the insulting expressions about the head of a foreign state that lost 27 million of its people by protecting the world from Hitlerism and total enslavement, and that for almost 40 years is friend and partner of Jamaica.

Of course, not everyone is given to fully understand the cobwebs of events, multi-path combinations of the geopolitical games, and propaganda cliches from the Cold War era.

One must see that reunification of Crimea with Russia happened against the background of tragic events in Ukraine. With the support from outside, a coup d'état took place in Ukraine. Even today, acts of violence are committed every day by nationalists-radicals, anti-Semites and other extremists, on whom the new powers are leaning.

In many ways, even these 'brave people' are the ones who did everything to split the country. One must remember the tragedies for Europe and the whole world, which were the result of de facto pandering to Nazists by some powers.

Violence and threats, mass violations of human rights in Ukraine, including discrimination and persecution on the grounds of national origin and identity, language and political convictions, made impossible the existence of Crimea within the Ukrainian state. More than 96 per cent of Crimean citizens made this decision during the referendum and demonstrated their inalienable right of self-determination.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed in his speech in Moscow on March 18, 2014, "We want to be friends with Ukraine and we want Ukraine to be a strong, sovereign and self-sufficient country. Most important, we want peace and harmony to reign in Ukraine, and we are ready to work together with other countries to do everything possible to facilitate and support this."

Now, it is necessary to stop the activities of extremists, support the organisation in Ukraine in open-mode, generally accepted con-stitutional reform, which would serve, through federalisation, the interests of all regions of the country maintaining its neutral status, fixing the special role of the Russian language. Without this, it is difficult to rely on long-term stabilisation of the Ukrainian state.

Let us note that the Russian side has recently confirmed once again its offers of international assistance in establishing genuine national dialogue between all political and regional forces of Ukraine. Russia is ready to participate in these efforts along with foreign partners, including the ministers of foreign affairs of state that testified to an agreement on settling the crisis in Ukraine on February 21, 2014.

We hope that Ustanny will find the strength to carefully read the speech of President Vladimir Putin (available on the website of this embassy in English) and look into the history books in order to eliminate obviously existing gaps.

Skewed history

One cannot but also mention that we are puzzled by a guest column ('Stand united against Russia') in The Gleaner dated April 7, 2014 by Elizabeth Lee Martinez, chargé d'affaires at the United States Embassy in Kingston, with a very peculiar presentation of the history and consequences of the Ukrainian crisis, and the events in the Crimea and role of our country against this background.

Like other countries, we cannot compromise our national interests. We do not want confrontation with anyone. We are interested in maintaining and deepening good-neighbourly, friendly and mutually beneficial relations with all partners - geographically close and geo-graphically distant - in an interdependent world of today.

We highly value cooperation with states that are pursuing a responsible, thoughtful, self-reliant, open and honest foreign policy, and we are confident that such an interaction has the most favourable prospects.

This is, in our opinion, the true unifying framework that allows us not to build, as in the 19th century, alliances and coalitions against whoever it may be, not to compel uniform thinking, but shape, by joint effort, the world without barriers, for the benefit of large and small, developed and developing countries, in the interests of all peoples and nations.

Vladimir Polenov is ambassador of the Russian Federation to Jamaica. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.