More than 20 migrants or refugees were rescued and one child died Thursday on a Greek island after the boat they set sail in overnight from the nearby Turkish coast either capsized or sank, Greek authorities said.

A vessel from the European border agency Frontex patrolling the area initially picked up six people – one man, two women and three children – it spotted in the sea off the small southeastern island of Kastellorizo in the early hours of Thursday, the Greek coast guard said. The six were transported to land immediately because one of the children, a 9-year-old girl, needed medical attention, but she later died, the coast guard said. Another four of the survivors were hospitalized.

Greek authorities launched a search operation with patrol boats and a helicopter, and crews later found and rescued another 20 people – five children, two women and 13 men – who had managed to swim to a rocky coast on the island. One of the group was also hospitalized.

It was unclear what type of vessel the migrants had used and whether it sank or capsized. The coast guard said all on board had been accounted for and there were no missing people reported. Those injured were being transported to a hospital on the island of Rhodes.

Greece was the preferred route for refugees and migrants fleeing war and poverty in their homelands to seek access into the European Union until last year, when an EU-Turkey deal drastically reduced the number of people heading to Greek islands from the Turkish coast.

Despite the deal and the overcrowded conditions in the camps on the Greek islands, hundreds still make the journey every week, using often unseaworthy and overcrowded inflatable dinghies or small wooden boats.
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A top Moldovan official says its parliament plans to amend the constitution to explicitly state that joining the European Union is a key goal for the ex-Soviet republic.

Moldova, located between Ukraine and Romania, has been divided between moving closer to the EU and returning to the Russian orbit.

Parliament speaker Andrian Candu acknowledged that Moldovans lost confidence in pro-European politicians after some of them were accused of involvement in the looting of $1 billion from Moldovan banks in 2014. But he says trust is slowly being restored with a series of anti-corruption measures.

The ruling Democratic Party says changing the constitution will clarify Moldova’s future regardless of election results and other developments.

Many Moldovans favor closer relations with Russia. Pro-Russian President Igor Dodon was elected last year.

 
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Catalonia’s foreign affairs chief has appealed for support from the European Union before a disputed referendum calling for independence from Spain.

Raul Romeva, speaking to journalists Thursday in Brussels, said that EU institutions need to “understand that this is a big issue.” Romeva spoke a day after Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont accused the EU, in an interview with The Associated Press , of “turning its back” on Catalonia in its conflict with Spain’s central government.

Romeva accused the Spanish government of a “brutal crackdown” on Catalan officials to try to prevent Sunday’s referendum, which Spain considers to be illegal, and that it’s “generated an unprecedented level of shock.”

He said that he doesn’t expect violence, because “it’s not in the Catalan DNA to use violence to solve political problems.”

 
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In a sign of rapidly deepening ties, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will welcome his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to the presidential palace in Ankara Thursday for talks on Syria and a growing range of other issues that are prompting the two to set aside their differences.

A packed agenda is testament to an improved and growing relationship between the two countries. “Talks will focus on the Turkish decision to buy a Russian made S400 anti-missile system, but it’s not limited to that; the future of Syria will be discussed,” said Sinan Ulgen, an analyst at Carnegie Europe in Brussels. “The consequences of the Kurdish regional government independence referendum will be discussed. There are also large projects, one being Russia’s building of Akkuyu nuclear power plants in Turkey,” Ulgen said.   

Turkey last month announced the purchase of the S400 system, raising concerns among the country’s NATO partners. Adding to those concerns is the speed of the courtship. Bilateral relations were in a deep freeze following Turkey’s downing of a Russian bomber that was operating from a Syrian airbase in 2015.

Signals to NATO and Washington

Rapprochement efforts with Moscow coincided with Ankara’s growing disenchantment with some of its Western allies, especially Washington. “Erdogan will want to use Thursday’s meeting (with Putin) to demonstrate, to its partners in the West, that Turkey has the option of becoming more convergent with Russia if the relationship with the West continues to be under duress,” Ulgen said.

Washington’s support of the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG in its fight against Islamic State militants remains a major point of tension with Ankara. The Turkish government considers the Kurdish militia terrorists who are linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a separatist group that has been waging a decades-long war in southeastern Turkey.

The Syrian civil war will be the focus of Thursday’s talks between Putin and Erdogan. While Ankara and Moscow are backing rival sides in the conflict, the two sides are increasingly cooperating. Erdogan and Putin are expected to discuss the enforcement of last month’s three-way deal with Iran to introduce a de-escalation zone in the Syrian Idlib region, the last major center of opposition.

A pragmatic approach

What matters for Turkey is avoiding what Ulgen said could be a nightmare scenario in the region.

“The nightmare scenario is (if) Russia-backed regime forces would attack Idlib. Turkish forces would be faced with a quandary: some of the forces that Turkey backed in the past have now found refuge in Idlib; either Turkey would have to move into Idlib to protect them or open its border to save some of these people,” Ulgen said. “At the same time, Ankara knows full well that most of these people are affiliated with groups of extreme Islam, radical Islam, so Ankara doesn’t want to open its border to these people,”  he said.

Many observers see Moscow as having the upper hand in its relations with Ankara, something that will be put to use as Russia seeks to protect significant commercial interests in the region. They say Putin will want to use his leverage to defuse growing tensions following the Iraqi Kurds’ referendum vote in favor of independence this week. Erdogan has condemned the poll and warned that Turkey may close an oil pipeline that carries Iraqi Kurdish oil to world markets via the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

“Russia has become the No. 1 partner of Iraqi Kurdistan,” said Aydin Selcen, a former senior Turkish diplomat, pointing to lucrative deals between Iraqi Kurds and the Russian state-owned oil firm Rosneft. “Rosneft boss, Mr. Igor Sechin, is one of the closest allies to Putin and the (Iraqi Kurds).”

Analysts said Thursday’s meeting, and the images of two leaders getting along, suit the current agendas of both men. “This is a pragmatic and transactional relationship which we see,” Ulgen said, “but with a political underpinning, where both leaders Putin and Erdogan are almost instrumentalizing this relationship, to demonstrate and to make a point to the West.”
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Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday that Russia would destroy all its chemical weapons on this day, hailing the move as a “historic event.”

“Today the last chemical ammunition from Russia’s chemical weapon stockpile will be destroyed,” Putin said in a televised address. “This is a huge step toward making the modern world more balanced and safe.”

Noting that Moscow managed to destroy the ammunition three years ahead of schedule, Putin went on to criticize Washington for not following suit.

The U.S. “unfortunately is not carrying out its obligations when it comes to the timeframe of destroying chemical weapons — they pushed back the liquidation timeframe already three times,” Russian news agencies quoted Putin as saying.

Putin said the United States cites a lack of financial resources for pushing back its timeframe.
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A court on Wednesday found a Crimean dissident opposed to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea guilty of separatism and sentenced him to two years in a prison colony, a punishment supporters said amounted to a death penalty for such an ill man.

Ilmi Umerov was deputy head of the Crimean Tatars’ semi-official Mejlis legislature before it was suspended by Moscow after it took control of the peninsula in 2014, a move condemned by the West and Ukraine.

State prosecutors had accused the 60-year-old of making statements that undermined Russia’s territorial integrity by calling in an interview for an end to Russian control of Crimea.

Umerov, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease and attacks of high blood pressure, said he did oppose Russia’s annexation but that the interview which prosecutors objected to had been badly translated and his words distorted.

His lawyer, Mark Feygin, said on social media that he would appeal Wednesday’s verdict which was delivered by a court in Simferopol, the Crimean capital.

Feygin said he hoped Western countries would put pressure on Russia to try to quash the verdict. “His dispatch to a prison colony would mean his death,” he said of his client.

The Tatars, a mainly Muslim community that makes up about 15 percent of Crimea’s population, have largely opposed Russian rule in the peninsula and say the 2014 annexation was illegal, a view supported by the West.

Moscow says the overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to join Russia in a proper and fair referendum.

Feygin, Umerov’s lawyer, posted a video on social media in which his client said he still thought Crimea should be returned to Ukraine.

Ahtem Chiygoz, another Crimean Tatar leader, was found guilty of stirring up anti-Russian protests earlier this month and jailed for eight years, a move Ukraine’s president called an act of Russian repression.

A U.N. human rights report said on Monday that Russia had committed grave human rights violations in Crimea, including its imposition of citizenship and by deporting prisoners. Moscow said it deemed those allegations “groundless”.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has come out unequivocally in favor of Spanish unity, just days before voters in the Catalan region are slated to vote on independence from Madrid.

At a joint news conference Tuesday with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a sweltering White House Rose Garden, Trump said he would bet most Catalonians want unity.

“I’m just for a united Spain,” Trump said. “I really think the people of Catalonia would stay with Spain. I think it would be foolish not to.”

Trump’s comments appear to go against official U.S. government policy. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said this month the United States would not take a position on the Catalan vote.

The Catalan government is pushing ahead with preparations for Sunday’s vote, even after the government declared the balloting illegal and Spain’s Constitutional Court suspended the referendum law.

The Spanish leader, speaking after Trump, cautioned Catalan separatists not to push ahead with their independence plans.

“The decision to unilaterally declare independence is not a decision I would make,” Rajoy told reporters. “It’s a decision which will have to be made or not by the Catalan government. I think it would be very wrong.”

The prime minister said holding a referendum next Sunday would be impossible.

“There isn’t an electoral committee, there isn’t a team at the Catalan government organizing the referendum, there aren’t ballots, there aren’t people at the voting stations — so it’s just crazy,” he said.

Rajoy said under those circumstances, the result would not be valid, and would only be a distraction.

“The only thing it’s doing is generating division, tensions, and it’s not contributing in any way to the citizens’ situation,” he said.

Trump said he could not predict whether the referendum would be held, even as he follows developments in the independence-minded province.

“I’ve been watching that unfold. But it’s actually been unfolding for centuries and I think that nobody knows if they’re going to have a vote,” he said.

“I think the president [Rajoy is considered president of the Spanish government] would say they’re not going to have a vote, but I think that the people would be very much opposed to that,” Trump told reporters. “I can say only speaking for myself, I would like to see Spain continue to be united.”

Catalonia divided

Opinion polls suggest that Catalonia’s population of more than 7 million is divided on the independence question. Catalan officials have said they would declare independence within days if voters approve the referendum.

At Tuesday’s news conference, Rajoy, whose country was victimized by an Islamic State-sponsored attack in August that killed 16 people in the Catalan capital, Barcelona, said he and Trump had spent a considerable amount of their meeting talking about terrorism.

“We’ve been hit by jihadi terrorist attacks on our soil,” he told reporters, noting that the two countries cooperate closely on anti-terrorism strategies. “We still need to do a lot in the area of intelligence, we need to improve coordination mechanisms in the area of cybersecurity or preventing recruitment and financing of terrorists.”

Rajoy also expressed support for Trump’s tough response to North Korea’s provocative nuclear missile tests, despite fears in some quarters that it could lead to war.

“No one wishes war anywhere in the world,” Rajoy said. “But it’s true that the recent events in North Korea, with implications in the neighboring countries, very important countries, it means that we all have to be forceful.

“Those of us who defend the values of democracy, freedom and human rights have to let North Korea know that it isn’t going anywhere in that direction,” the Spanish leader said.
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As China battles the twin challenges of rapid city growth and extreme weather, it is adopting a new tactic: turning its cities into giant sponges.

Thirty pilot cities in the country are trying to trap and hold more water to deal with such problems as flooding, drought, extreme heat and pollution.

The effort, launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping, relies on a range of innovations, such as green roofs on buildings and more urban wetlands. It is already being hailed as a bold step to solve some of the environmental problems plaguing the world’s most populous country.

“It’s a timely reminder that dealing with urban climate challenges requires a holistic approach,” said Sunandan Tiwari, a sustainable urban development expert at ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), a global network of 1,500 cities, towns and regions.

People and water

Like many other large urban areas, Chinese cities are grappling with both rapid urbanization — more than half of the country’s population lives in urban areas — and extreme weather, such as severe floods, water shortages and heat waves.

Both problems can leave more people at risk,but the sponge city effort, launched in 2015, aims to reduce the threats.

The pilot cities have been charged with finding ways to absorb, store, filter and purify rainwater, retain it within their boundaries, and release it for reuse when needed instead of channeling it away through sewers and tunnels.

The cities, including Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai, receive funds and practical help to redesign their urban areas in a water-sensitive way, with the aim of turning 80 percent of China’s urban areas into sponges by 2030.

Flood control and water conservation, among other issues, are at the heart of the ambitious push.

But sponge cities have another benefit that looks set to become a major plus as urban areas in China and around the world get hotter: They can reduce the impact of heat waves, which are more pronounced in built-up areas, where concrete and asphalt trap heat.

Trees and other plants absorb water and then release it through evaporation. That creates a cooling effect, in the same way that sweat evaporating from skin cools people.

“Cooling is largely seen as a co-benefit of sponge cities. But with record temperatures in China and many parts of the world, it is becoming a key element in planning for climate-resilient cities,” said Boping Chen, China director at the Hamburg-based World Future Council, a think tank.

Getting hotter

Shanghai, China’s most populous city with 24 million people, baked under a record high temperature of 40.9 degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit) last July, even as southern China was hit by torrential rain and floods.

Efforts to build sponge cities aim to deal with both problems, and improve life for city residents.

“It’s not just about limiting the damage of flooding, it’s also about coping with rising temperatures, improving urban biodiversity, better public health and quality of life,” Tiwari, of ICLEI, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Measures taken in sponge cities include covering buildings with green roofs and facades and creating urban wetlands and trenches to filter runoff water that can be used to replenish aquifers, irrigate gardens and urban farms, flush toilets and clean homes.

The government has allocated each pilot city between 400 million yuan and 600 million yuan ($60 million to $90 million) each year for three consecutive years, and cities are encouraged to raise matching funds through public-private partnerships and other financial ventures, according to a 2017 study in the journal Water.

Lingang, in Shanghai’s Pudong district, has invested 800 million yuan in a 79-square-kilometer (30-square-mile) area it hopes will become China’s largest sponge city — one that experts say could be a model for other cities lacking modern water infrastructure.

Lingang aims to cover rooftops with plants, create wetlands for rainwater storage, and create permeable pavements that store runoff water, allowing it to evaporate to moderate temperatures.

Shanghai also announced last year the construction of 400,000 square meters of rooftop gardens, alongside other measures to green the city.

“Many of the sponge cities have done really well, but it is a long-term task that needs to be done in a systematic way,” said the World Future Council’s Chen.

Forest cities

While China faces formidable financial and logistical challenges to creating sponge cities, Italian architect Stefano Boeri has plans to make “forest cities” in the country.

Boeri, who made headlines when he covered two residential tower blocks in Milan with 800 trees, 4,500 shrubs and 15,000 other plants, has won planning approval to build a forest city in Liuzhou in southern China.

Conceived as a green metropolis, the city will house 30,000 people, and all its buildings will be covered entirely with plants and trees, said Boeri, who declined to give a cost estimate for the project.

In total, Liuzhou’s forest city aims to host 40,000 trees and almost 1 million plants from more than 100 species, planted over buildings to improve air quality, decrease temperatures and contribute to biodiversity, Boeri said.

The city is expected to absorb almost 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide — the equivalent emissions of 2,000 passenger cars driven for a year — and 57 tons of pollutants per year. The greenery will also produce 900 tons of oxygen every year, Boeri said.

He is working with botanists and engineers to create a high-nutrient soil mixture able to retain water while still keeping weight to a minimum.

“Bringing forests into the city is one of the most radical and efficient ways to deal with climate change,” Boeri told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“We sometimes joke and say we’re building houses for trees,” he said.

To increase energy self-sufficiency, solar panels on the roofs will collect renewable energy to power the buildings, while geothermal energy — heat and cooling drawn from constant temperatures underground — will power air conditioning, adding to the project’s green appeal.

Boeri also aims to build vertical forests, similar to the one in Milan, in Nanjing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in China and in other parts of the world.

Nature at work

While China’s sponge city program is the most ambitious of its kind, urban planners have embraced nature-based solutions to heat and water worries in other parts of the world, too.

The sponge city initiative takes inspiration from the North American concept of low-impact development, sustainable urban drainage systems in Europe and water-sensitive urban design in Australia and New Zealand, all of which mimic nature’s water cycle.

The southern German city of Stuttgart, prone to high summer temperatures and air pollution, also has been a pioneer of using nature to adapt to climate change.

Officials there published a climate adaptation plan in 2012, but planners have been thinking about the valley city’s microclimate as far back as 1938, according to Hans-Wolf Zirkwitz, head of Stuttgart’s Office for Environmental Protection.

“Even before we knew about climate change, our planning has been optimized with regards to the climate and improving air quality, because of our local climate conditions,” Zirkwitz told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in emailed comments.

City officials, for instance, have created green ventilation corridors to enable fresh air to sweep down from the city’s surrounding hills and building regulations that aim to keep these corridors free from new construction.

Thanks to a combination of mandatory building requirements and subsidies, the city of about 600,000 people also is a European green roof pioneer, with more than 60 percent of its area covered by greenery to absorb pollutants and reduce heat.
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Spain’s government said on Tuesday police would take control of voting booths in Catalonia to help thwart the region’s planned independence referendum that Madrid has declared illegal.

The dispute has plunged Spain into one of its biggest political crises since the restoration of democracy in the 1970s after decades of military dictatorship.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has said the referendum is against the law and the constitutional court has ordered it be halted while its legality is determined. Catalonia’s separatist government, however, remains committed to holding it on Sunday.

Rajoy, speaking on Tuesday alongside U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, said it would be “ridiculous” if the affluent northeastern region declared independence from Spain.

Trump said he opposed the referendum and wanted a united Spain. “I really think the people of Catalonia would stay with Spain. I think it would be foolish not to,” he told reporters.

Senior Spanish government officials said on Tuesday authorities had done enough to prevent a meaningful referendum as Catalonia lacked an election commission, ballot boxes, ballot papers, a transparent census and election material.

Logistics have been dismantled

“Today we can affirm that there will be no effective referendum in Catalonia. All the referendum’s logistics have been dismantled,” the Spanish government’s representative in Catalonia, Enric Millo, told reporters in Barcelona.

Catalonia’s prosecutor has ordered the regional police — known as the Mossos d’Esquadra — to take control of any voting booths by Saturday, a spokesman for the Madrid government’s Catalan delegation said.

In an order to police issued on Monday, the prosecutor’s office said they would take the names of anyone participating in the vote and confiscate relevant documents.

Anyone in possession of the keys or entrance codes to a polling booth could be considered a collaborator to crimes of disobedience, malfeasance and misappropriation of funds, the order said.

Unrelenting opposition

The Madrid government has in recent weeks taken political and legal measures to prevent the referendum by exerting more control over the use of public funds in Catalonia and arresting regional officials. Hundreds of police reinforcements have been brought into Barcelona and other cities.

Madrid has also threatened fines against bureaucrats working on the ballot, including the region’s election commission, which was dissolved last week.

These actions have provoked mass demonstrations and drawn accusations from Catalan leaders that the Madrid government was resorting to the repression of the Franco dictatorship.

Catalan government to hold election

A “yes” vote is likely, given that most of the 40 percent of Catalans who polls show support independence are expected to cast ballots while most of those against it are not.

But the unrelenting opposition from Madrid means such a result would go all but unrecognized, potentially setting up a new phase of the dispute.

The Catalan regional government, which plans to declare independence within 48 hours of a “yes” victory, maintained on Tuesday the vote will go ahead and it sent out notifications to Catalans to man polling booths across the region.

Many had not yet received information about where or when they would be working after the state-run postal service was ordered to stop all mail related to the vote, a parliamentary spokeswoman for one separatist party said.
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Russia’s proposal for United Nations peacekeepers to be sent to Ukraine shows that the Kremlin is interested in negotiating a resolution to the three-year-old conflict, said the United States special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker.

“I take the point of view that Russia would not have proposed anything if they weren’t prepared to get into a negotiation about it,” said Volker in an interview Monday with VOA’s Ukrainian Service chief Myroslava Gongadze.

“They haven’t done anything for three years on this. They haven’t proposed a peacekeeping force before. As recently as a couple weeks ago, they were saying that they would never want the U.N. there. So, the fact that they opened this conversation, to me, is an indication that they are willing to discuss it.”

The Ukraine crisis began in March 2014 when Russian special forces took over Ukrainian military bases in Crimea. Subsequent Russian military support for Russia-leaning separatists in eastern Ukraine fueled an ongoing conflict with the Ukrainian military that has so far left more than 10,000 people dead.

Russia’s proposal earlier this month at the U.N. called for peacekeepers along the line of conflict in eastern Ukraine, but not along the Russia-Ukraine border where weapons and fighters can easily cross.

Volker called it a “very narrow concept” that would have the effect of dividing the country even further.

“That’s not acceptable to anybody and does not restore the territory,” he said. “On the other hand, if we can establish a peacekeeping force and build that concept into one that is covering the entire contested area, that is containing heavy weapons and that is controlling the Ukraine-Russian border from the Ukrainian side, then there is a lot of promise in that.”

“That’s where both governments are right now seeing whether it is possible to expand this concept into one that would be truly meaningful and helpful,” he added.

Russia’s growing costs

Russia’s costs for maintaining the conflict in Ukraine have only gone up while benefits the Kremlin may have expected have not panned out, said Volker. Russia has lost influence in Ukraine while Western support for Kyiv has increased along with sanctions against Moscow.

“So, for all of these reasons, the costs are increasing. Even the financial costs of just maintaining the Donbas, and they’re not getting anything out of it. So, that at least opens the door to thinking maybe Russia would like to try something else,” Volker said.

“Ultimately, I think it really boils down to Russia’s decision-making,” he added. “Do they want to resolve the crisis in Ukraine, get their forces out, and re-establish Ukraine’s territorial integrity or, do they not want to do that? If they want to dig in and create another Abkhazia [breakaway region of Georgia supported by Russia], they can do it. But, that’s a very costly proposition for Russia.”

A 2015 peace deal Russia signed with Ukraine, Germany, and France in Minsk has failed to come to fruition as Kyiv and Moscow blame each other for not moving on the plan.

“The problem with the Minsk agreement is that it was becoming a circular argument that was going nowhere,” said Volker. “The Russians are saying ‘no, Ukraine has to do the political steps.’ Ukraine says, ‘it can’t do the political steps because it can’t even access the territory.’ And, then how can we go to the Rada [Ukrainian parliament] and get a vote when nothing has happened on a ceasefire in three years. So, it’s stuck that way and I think, in some respects, some of the actors found that to be conveniently stuck.”

Volker said the U.S. role was to try to unstick the Minsk deal.

“If we can get to a more strategic level of decision-making with Russia and, frankly, with our European partners and with Ukraine, then if we can create political will, Minsk is a perfectly fine vehicle for implementation,” he said.

In August, the U.S. envoy met with Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov in Minsk.  Surkov is considered the architect of Russia’s strategy on Ukraine and its military backing for separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Status quo:  Bad for all

“When we met in August, one of the things we agreed is that the status quo is not good for anybody,” said Volker. “It’s not good for Russia, it’s not good for Ukraine, it’s not good for the people of the Donbas. So we should be exploring to see if there is something else that would be better.”

More than 10,000 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatists broke out in early 2014.

Volker said the U.S. is still considering supplying lethal, defensive weapons to Ukraine’s military forces.

“I don’t have anything new to say on timing of this sort of thing [possibly selling lethal, defensive weapons to Ukraine],” he said. “But, I can say that it’s taken very seriously in the administration and there are people working very hard at it.”

Volker said the U.S. would seek progress in eastern Ukraine separate from the issue of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in March 2014.

“If we are able to make progress in one area  the Donbas  let’s do it. Let’s make progress, let’s see if we can get that territory back,” he said. “At the same that doesn’t change at all our refusal to accept the annexation of Crimea and grant any legitimacy to Russia’s actions.”

Budapest memorandum

The U.S. envoy acknowledged more should have been done to back up the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which was signed when he was a mid-level diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest and should have prevented Russia taking Crimea.

“The only country violating the Budapest Memorandum is Russia. So, France didn’t invade Ukraine. U.K. didn’t invade Ukraine. Only Russia invaded Ukraine,” Volker said.

Ukraine agreed to give up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in return for guarantees of territorial integrity and sovereignty under the deal signed by Russia, the U.K., and U.S. But, when Russian forces began taking over Ukraine’s Crimea military bases, none of those who signed the memorandum attempted to stop them.

“We should have done more immediately,” said Volker. “It’s important for Ukraine itself. It’s important for the principle that it establishes about non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. And, so, unfortunately, when Russia invaded, we didn’t do enough on that.”

The U.S. envoy said all that can been done now is go forward to help restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity. “If we do that, we’ll be taking a step towards the fulfillment of Budapest,” he said.

Peacekeeping Forces

Volker, who President Donald Trump made special envoy in July, shot down suggestions that Russians could be among any peacekeepers deployed to Ukraine.

“I think the U.N. standards themselves are that neighboring countries should not be involved in peacekeeping in neighboring states,” he said. “And, certainly in this case since Russia has been a party to the conflict it would clearly not make sense.”

Despite much evidence to the contrary, the Kremlin maintains it is not involved in the military conflict in eastern Ukraine, known as the Donbas.

VOA’s Myroslava Gongadze contributed to this report.
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