A
total of 110,000 Ukrainians who have left for Russia in an attempt to
save their lives probably just want to visit their relatives and then
travel back, State Department
spokeswoman Marie Harf said at a briefing, thus calling into question
the tremendous number of people reported to be now seeking asylum in
Russia. The United States generally doubts the UN figures on Ukraine
refugees, endorsing Petr Poroshenko's decision to
resume the punitive operation in Ukraine's southeast. Meanwhile, the
so-called ceasefire is something that never happened, stresses VR's
expert Francis Boyle, a professor at the University of Illinois College
of Law.
"There
was not much about a ceasefire to talk about, Poroshenko's hostilities
continued, there was firing across the border with Russia."
The
declared ceasefire served as an opportunity, a pretext taken up by
Poroshenko to step up the sweeping military campaign and "bring up
major military forces that we're now seeing unleashed on the Russian
speakers in Donbass."
Mr.
Boyle comprehends these outrageous acts as war crimes, openly calling
these crimes against humanity "verging on genocide." The order
clearly arrived from the US, as despite the preceding four-way talks
between the European foreign chiefs and the agreement President Putin
clinched with his European counterparts, Poroshenko still chose to
persist on with his military campaign.
'We could see the whole thing quite quickly collapsing into outright genocide against cities and people there.'
"It's
clear that he's been ordered to do this by the United States government
just before ending of the so-called ceasefire. President
Putin spoke with France's Hollande and Merkel of Germany and thought
he'd reached an agreement to deescalate the conflict, but apparently the
Americans ordered Poroshenko to go forward with his offensive."
Poroshenko
seems to have been pushed into turning a deaf ear to anything that
Russia's Lavrov has previously worked out with his EU colleagues,
and it's clearly not the decision that Poroshenko took himself. A most
biased approach is all there, the expert concludes, adding the coming
days may see "total hell breaking loose" in the region.
francis a. boyle
