Situation in Ukraine (debate Strasbourg) - Hoofdinhoud
Johannes Cornelis van Baalen, on behalf of the ALDE Group: Madam President, first of all, we should salute the Ukrainian people for having organised independent, free and fair presidential elections which brought a clear result: that is the result of democracy. The Russians talked repeatedly about ‘the fascists of Maidan’ and ‘the fascists of the interim government’.
But it was not they who won. The extremist vote was very small and this was a very good election result, given also the fact that Crimea was under Russian rule and Russian was intervening in the eastern part of Ukraine. So let us salute the Ukrainian people and their new democratically elected President.
Secondly, President Poroshenko has his 15-point programme and we should support him in this because he wants to talk with all sections of Ukrainian society. He wants to talk about decentralisation within one Ukraine - the Ukraine we have all recognised, including Crimea and including, of course, the east - and President Putin should now do what he sometimes talks about. He sometimes speaks words of conciliation but his actions are different. If he really wants peace, President Putin needs to stop all help to the separatists - all help. He should patrol his border and he should come to a free and fair agreement with Ukraine on oil and gas. He should also accept international law, and that means that Crimea is not a part of Russia.
Putin now has to accept international law. That is the most important thing, and what we should do is demand Russian action rather than talk and, if the action is not satisfactory, we should impose further sanctions because in the end that is the only way to keep Russia on the right side of the Russian-Ukrainian border.
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Statement Situation in Ukraine