Below are excerpts of the statement by Ambassador Karen Pierce, the United Kingdom’s permanent representative to the United Nations, at the Security Council’s February 18 briefing on Ukraine.
…Madam President, the Russian ambassador spoke at length about the failure of others in fulfilling their obligations under the Minsk agreements. His account was largely a falsehood, wrapped in a fiction inside a fairy tale. Rather than enumerate where we believe the Russian account is misleading, I will say simply that I endorse what the German representative said in laying out all those areas of the agreements that Russia has violated. Rather than reigning in its proxies in the non-government controlled areas of eastern Ukraine, Russia has furnished them with arms and personnel. Russia claims to act only in the interests of those Ukrainians living in those areas, but does nothing to ensure the safe delivery of international humanitarian aid so desperately needed by many of the communities there.