“I’m afraid that what we’re seeing is an escalation of the
crisis by the United States government. President Putin ordered the
150,000 troops right off the border of Ukraine on war manoeuvres to
stand down. I thought that was a positive sign and yet immediately NATO
responded by deploying new forces to Russia and the Baltics despite the
fact there’s no threat to Russia and the Baltics. Now as we’re seeing
today – these new sanctions. I’m afraid that rather than pick up on the
opportunity offered by President Putin standing down, Kerry’s just
escalating.”
“That
meeting he had with Foreign Minister Lavrov, he brought along Arseniy
Yatsenyuk, but Lavrov made it very clear that he did not consider him to
be democratically elected at all and he wasn’t going to meet with him. I
think if Kerry were serious, he would go to Moscow and meet with
President Putin and attempt to negotiate a way out of here.”
“I
don’t believe that at this point in time Russia should annex Crimea. It
would only exacerbate the situation. I do have to say that under the
relevant standard of international law given what’s going on here,
certainly under the Declaration on Principles of International Law and
the Advisory Opinion of the World Court on Kosovo’s declaration of
independence, the people of Crimea have a right to secede if they want
to and I’m not saying they should. But even if they vote in this
upcoming referendum, I would think the prudent thing to do for the
Russian parliament is to sit on it and not do anything right now, and
see if we can negotiate a way out of this dilemma.”
francis a. boyle
the voice of russia