"Vladimir Putin and Russia have brutally attacked Ukraine, and it's important that we all condemn such behaviour," Karen Donfried, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, said in an exclusive interview with Kurir.
You said that Serbia's decision to condemn the Russian attack against Ukraine is a powerful message, and that now you expect the fight against disinformation. What did you mean by that?
"When I made that comment, I was talking about the resolution of the UN General Assembly condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine and calling on Russia to withdraw from that country immediately. I think it is powerful that Serbia is one of the 141 countries which supported that resolution. You only saw five countries vote against it. Serbia joined the world and all its neighbours in condemning Russia. It was a clear, strong, unified message that is an affirmation of Serbia's desire to be part of the European community. I welcomed it. On the disinformation point, it is troubling that so much Kremlin disinformation about this war is being amplified by certain media outlets, including in Serbia. That said, there's also been objective and responsible reporting in the Serbian media, including from Kurir. But there is baseless information that's being pushed daily by some media outlets to justify what is really a brutal and inhumane war. Despite what some tabloids are printing, the fact is the Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine, there is nothing humane in what they are doing. And I think it's important that these facts are clear."
Do you expect Serbia to impose sanctions against Russia, bearing in mind that Serbia and other countries in the Western Balkans are dependent on Russian gas and oil? Is that feasible?
"It is for Serbia to decide whether to impose sanctions against Russia. But let me tell you why the United States has placed sanctions on Russia. The United States, together with many of its European allies and partners, have imposed the sanctions against Russia for one reason – we want to stop Putin from continuing this unprovoked war against Ukraine. Putin's blatant violation of international law has to stop immediately. We work closely with the European Union and with the entire international community, to send a strong message that if Russia continues this invasion, it will face massive consequences. The EU has been clear that it expects the countries that want to join this community to align their decision with that of the member states. The United States supports Serbia's path to the European Union, so I know those decisions will face Serbia. I want to say that all of us who put in place the sanctions against Russia are facing some form of blowback from that, and we've tried to work to mitigate some of the consequences, but there will be impact on all of our economies from these sanctions. That said, the impact on the Russian economy has been quite striking, and we can see the Russian markets close and the rouble is at a fraction of its earlier value. There's no question that these sanctions are affecting Russia negatively."
Are you planning new sanctions against Putin and Russia? A few days ago the US Senate condemned Putin as a war criminal.
"The Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February resulted in multiple sanctions packages being released. We imposed some of the sanctions immediately, but we didn't stop with that. We are continuing to roll out sanctions against Russia because the brutal invasion continues. We're seeing Ukrainian civilians being killed every day, every hour, and that is not acceptable. We will continue to put in place tough measures against Russia."
How do you define China's position at the moment?
"It's an important question. You no doubt saw that President Biden had a two-hour conversation with Xi Jinping on Friday. We had seen the Chinese and the Russians agreeing on declarations during the Winter Olympics. We have seen alignment of positions with regard to Ukraine. President Biden wanted to be very clear with Xi about how the US sees the conflict in Ukraine, that Russia is the aggressor, that Russia is the one who has violated international law. China has traditionally given support to the important principles of national sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries, and the United States would like to see China continue to stand up for those principles and be clear with Russia that it needs to stop its invasion and its violence. We think that China has an important role to play here in helping to being about peace on the European continent. We will be watching China closely. President Biden also made clear that if China does provide support for Russia in the context of this invasion, it will affect the United States' relationship with the PRC."
We hear every day that international law has been violated. Was it also violated in 1999, when the FR Yugoslavia was attacked without an approval of the UN Security Council?
"I believe that these two cases are different in fundamental ways. I don't want to debate the 1990s, but I think that the international community's actions to end well-documented state-sponsored violence and ethnic cleansing against civilians in Kosovo by the Milošević regime were fundamentally different than what the international community is doing today to stop Russia's war in Ukraine. I think we saw this start in 2014, when Russia seized the Crimea peninsula, and we've seen it continue in a brutal fashion starting on 24 February. This violates the basic principles of the international law and the UN Charter. That's why it is important for all of us to stand up and condemn this behaviour. This is why I think it is powerful that Serbia is part of this global consensus in the UN General Assembly."
Did you expect the attack to be swift, and did Putin surprise you?
"It may have been even more surprising for Putin that the invasion hasn't ended as swiftly as Putin thought it would. It does seem that the Kremlin is frustrated by the inability of the Russian forces to achieve many of the objectives that Putin has set out in Ukraine. We are all inspired by the resistance shown by the people of Ukraine. I can't remember now who said it, but I remember someone saying that it turned out that the Russian army isn't just facing the Ukrainian army in Ukraine, but 44 million Ukrainians who are fighting for the sovereignty of their country. We've seen Russian forces suffer significant losses, both the lives of Russian soldiers and the military equipment. We can see that the Ukrainian are fighting hard to defend their country. We see that the Ukrainian army is much stronger and capable than it was in 2014. We in the United States are proud to be helping Ukraine defend itself at this moment."
Could the US, the EU, and NATO have supported Ukraine more? The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has said that he is disappointed with the support of the West.
"I'm not President Zelensky, but I understand why he's asking all of us to do more. I understand that, but I also want to say how remarkable it is that the United States and our allies have provided support for Ukraine. We continue to ask every day for Putin to choose the path of diplomacy, but as long as he is choosing war, we are going to provide as much security assistance to Ukraine as we can. We had seen that before the conflict, and we've seen it continue during the conflict. We have provided a remarkable level of security assistance. It's been over three billion dollars since 2014, just last week saw another 800 million, and the US Congress has approved a package of 13.6 billion dollars for Ukraine. Yes, Zelensky can and should ask for more, but I think that what we have done so far is extremely significant and unprecedented. We will continue to provide support on the economic side and on the humanitarian side."
When will this war come to an end? In your opinion, how long will the conflict last and what will the world look like afterwards?
"There is one person in the world who knows that, and that person is Vladimir Putin. This is a war of choice, and it is Putin who chose this war. It is wrong in every way. There are principles that we are defending here. The principles about the right of each country to choose its policy, the principles about not changing borders by force, the principles of state sovereignty. There is the reality of the innocent Ukrainian civilians who are dying because President Putin has chosen this war, chosen to attack his neighbour. On every level, this war is wrong. This explains why so much of the international community has come together to condemn it. But Vladimir Putin can end this war today if he wants to. And we all should be calling on him to do that."
Kurir.rs/Boban Karović, Zoran Mihajlović