REFERENCE: The Ukrainian Demands (Part II)

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The following references are associated with Part II - The War » The Futility of Peace Talks » The Ukrainian Demands

NARRATIVE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Kherson_counteroffensive#November

On 11 November, Ukrainian troops entered the city of Kherson. The troops were met by crowds chanting "Slava Ukraini!" and "ZSU!" (Zbroini syly Ukrainy, Armed Forces of Ukraine).

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/we-will-have-fight-longer-liberate-ukrainian-land-says-zelenskiy-2022-11-15/

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Tuesday called on the Group of 20 (G20) major economies meeting in Indonesia to step up their leadership and stop Russia's war in his country under a peace plan he has proposed.

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-is-zelenskiys-10-point-peace-plan-2022-12-28/

Zelenskiy first announced his peace formula at a November summit of the Group of 20 major economies. The plan calls for:... ... Russia rejected Zelenskiy's peace proposal this month and Moscow reiterated on Tuesday that it would not give up any territory it has taken by force, around a fifth of Ukraine, which it says it has annexed. ... The Western world's support for Ukraine's military has run into billions of dollars, led by Washington, and nations have rushed to help Kyiv with demining and fixing power infrastructure. But the response to Zelenskiy's peace plan and his proposed peace summit has been more cautious.

 

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/11/15/7376378/

Zelenskyy said that the positive experience with the implementation of the tripartite Black Sea Grain Initiative, in which the three parties are: the UN; Ukraine, Türkiye and the UN; and, on the other side, Russia, Türkiye and the UN. He believes that each of his 10 propositions can be implemented in a similar fashion, with different states prepared to take the lead in different areas becoming parties to the arrangement.

 

Point 1 - radiation safety

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_occupation_of_Zaporizhzhia_Oblast

On 4 March, the city of Enerhodar and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant came under a Russian military occupation.

 

https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/chernobyl-bg.html

On April 26, 1986, a sudden surge of power during a reactor systems test destroyed Unit 4 of the nuclear power station at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union. The accident and the fire that followed released massive amounts of radioactive material into the environment.

 

Point 2 - food security

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/europe/russia-resumes-ukraine-grain-deal-intl/index.html

Ukraine plays a key role in the global food market, so Russia’s suspension of the deal sparked major concerns over global food supply – at a time when the world is already facing a growing hunger crisis. According to the UN, Ukraine normally supplies the world with around 45 million tons of grain every year. It ranks among the top five global exporters of barley, corn and wheat. It’s also by far the biggest exporter of sunflower oil, accounting for 46% of the world’s exports. In normal times, Ukraine would export around three-quarters of the grain it produces. About 90% of these exports have previously been shipped by sea from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, according to data from the European Commission. But when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in late February, it effectively imposed a blockade on ships leaving Ukraine’s ports. The impact of the war on global food markets was imminent and extremely painful, especially because Ukraine is a major supplier of grain to the World Food Programme. The Food and Agriculture Organization, an UN body, said that as many as 47 million people could be pushed into “acute food insecurity” because of the war.

 

Point 3 - energy security

https://www.voanews.com/a/un-half-of-ukraine-energy-infrastructure-destroyed-by-russian-attacks/6874897.html

The United Nations reports Russia has destroyed 50% of Ukraine's energy infrastructure, putting millions of people at risk of sickness and death as temperatures continue to plunge.

 

Point 4 - prisoners and deportees release

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64985009

Russia's forced deportation of Ukrainian children to areas under its control amounts to a war crime, UN investigators have said. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said there was evidence of the illegal transfer of hundreds of Ukrainian children to Russia. ... Ukraine government figures put the number of children forcibly taken to Russia at 16,221.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/explainer-know-russias-deportation-ukrainian-201417973.html

In March, the International Criminal Court made a historic ruling: It issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian official overseeing the forced deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia. The statement by ICC says that Putin is "allegedly responsible" for the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.

 

Point 5 - restoration of Ukraine's territorial integrity

https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-key-condition-russia-talks-resume-is-restoration-territorial-integrity-2022-11-08/

KYIV, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council said on Tuesday the main condition for the resumption of negotiations with Russia would be the restoration of Ukraine's territorial integrity.

 

Point 6 - cessation of hostilities

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/05/06/ukraine-threatens-russias-vital-bridge-to-crimea/?sh=560b5ae45d77

The Kerch Strait bridge connecting Russia with the Crimea is extremely important, both strategically and politically. Stretching for more than ten miles, it is the longest bridge in Europe, and was constructed after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and opened in 2018 at a cost of over $3 billion. Putin himself drove a truck across to open it. It is a huge and obvious target for a Ukrainian strike, and now seems to be under threat with a new doomsday clock supposedly counting down to the bridge’s destruction.

 

Point 7 - justice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian authorities and armed forces have committed multiple war crimes ... Because of the backload of cases in Ukrainian courts, which as of June 2022 have more than 15,000 pending cases, and the number of international bodies and foreign countries cooperating in the investigations of war crimes in Ukraine, there were calls to create a special hybrid court to centralize domestic and international efforts.

 

https://www.axios.com/2022/11/08/zelensky-peace-talks-putin-war-criminals

The bottom line: No serious negotiations look likely for the time being. In the meantime, the Biden administration says its focus is to strengthen Ukraine militarily so it will enter a future negotiating table with the most possible leverage.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-s-defence-minister-believes-russia-will-receive-signal-to-give-up-revenge-and-collapse/ar-AA1aAyfc

At the latest Ramstein meeting the so-called Nuremberg-2, a military tribunal for the Russian leadership, was discussed.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials

Between November 20, 1945, and October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) tried 21 of the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany in the political, military, and economic spheres, as well as six German organizations. The purpose of the trial was not just to convict the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, offer a history lesson to the defeated Germans, and delegitimize the traditional German elite.

 

Point 8 - ecocide

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/20/ukraine-war-cost-for-nature-russia

But extensive investigations by Ukrainian scientists, conservationists, bureaucrats and lawyers are now under way to ensure this is the first conflict in which a full reckoning is made of environmental crimes, so the aggressor can be held to account for a compensation claim that currently stands at more than $50bn (£42bn).

 

Point 9 - guarantees for Ukraine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances comprises three substantially identical political agreements signed at the OSCE conference in Budapest, Hungary, on 5 December 1994, to provide security assurances by its signatories relating to the accession of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The three memoranda were originally signed by three nuclear powers: the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents

 

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraines-forgotten-security-guarantee-the-budapest-memorandum/a-18111097

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the eastern European country inherited 176 strategic and more than 2,500 tactical nuclear missiles. Ukraine at that point had the third-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world after the United States and Russia. But Leonid Kravchuk, then the president of Ukraine, told DW that was only formally the case. De facto, Kyiv was powerless. "All the control systems were in Russia. The so-called black suitcase with the start button, that was with Russian president Boris Yeltsin."

 

https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-zelenskyy-urges-nato-security-guarantees/a-65336215

Ukraine has sought to join the military alliance for years, but in February, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said, "Ukraine will become a member of our alliance, but at the same time that is a long term perspective." Zelenskyy wants accelerated accession to the alliance. However, a prerequisite for joining NATO is that the candidate country must not be involved in international conflicts and border disputes.

 

Point 10 - confirmation of the war's end

https://theconversation.com/putins-ukraine-invasion-do-declarations-of-war-still-exist-177880

Notably, Putin never formally declared war on Ukraine, calling the invasion a “special military operation.” He may have stopped short of a full declaration because under international law it’s a communique between sovereign states, a status he is keen to deny Ukraine.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/06/europe/ukraine-russia-drone-attacks-qa-intl/index.html

A series of attacks deep inside Russia this week have raised the stakes for Moscow at a time when its war on Ukraine is faltering. Russia has said that Ukrainian drones carried out three strikes on its air bases, yet two of the targets are hundreds of miles inside Russian territory and beyond the reach of Ukraine’s declared drone arsenal.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States

The last time the United States formally declared war, using specific terminology, on any nation was in 1942, when war was declared against Axis-allied Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, because President Franklin Roosevelt thought it was improper to engage in hostilities against a country without a formal declaration of war. Since then, every American president has used military force without a declaration of war.

 

PICTORIAL