Recently (July 16th), on the NATO’s website, a document named “Russia’s accusations – setting the record straight (July 2014)” was posted in order to deal with the current Russian political rhetoric against the western military alliance. Pointing out that Russia bears the whole responsibility of international isolation due to its “aggression against Ukraine”, several key issues considered by Moscow as representative for blaming western countries and the authorities from Kiev are analyzed, proving the “misrepresentation of the facts” of the Russian case against its opponents. Some of the key issues are highlighted bellow.
Between them a special emphasis was put on the illegitimacy of Ukrainian authorities, Russia ignoring the fact that the Russian Foreign Ministry declared the elections from October 2012 as being held “peacefully…in line with generally-accepted standards”. In other words the parliament, elected then, previously declared as legitimate could not be called illegitimate now. Russian claims about the legal status of Crimean referendum are contradicted by the Ukrainian constitution which specifies that any questions regarding “altering the territory of Ukraine are resolved exclusively by an All-Ukrainian referendum”. Also, seizing government buildings by Russian armed forces and subsequently installing a “self-proclaimed Crimean leadership” compromised any legitimacy in a referendum process. The “claim that Russia had to act to stop NATO from basing missiles and ships in Sevastopol” was dismissed by NATO representatives as being “total fantasy”. In the absence of any evidence of plans or intentions about installing a NATO military base, the only person who was identified as talking about “this ludicrous claim” was Vladimir Putin.
Another accusation was based on the presumed threat of NATO missile defense system against Russia. On one hand, the transparency policy, including the proposal of creating two NATO-Russia joint missile-defense centers was declined by Moscow. On the other hand, Russian claims regarding the undermining role of the antimissile system on “Russia’s strategic deterrence capabilities” were found to be based on “arguments that ignore laws of physics”, opinion backed by some of the Russian military experts as well. Another issue in the Crimean path to independence was its apparent similarity to the case of Kosovo. Thus, Russia considered its intervention in Crimea as fully justified, the same way as the International Court of Justice agreed on separation of Kosovo from Serbia. NATO argued that the above mentioned institution specified that if any claim of independence is “connected with the unlawful use of force”, the case of Crimea, such enterprise would be illegal.
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The declaration deals with other issues as well: continuous efforts of NATO in escalating the crisis, the threat to Russia induced by a growing western military alliance, the claimed promise of NATO not to extend itself towards East… all being dismissed as false. Generally, the above mentioned document underlines a certain lack of objectivity in the view of Russian policy makers regarding this highly unstable international incident.