Seanad debates
Wednesday, 3 May 2023
Reykjavik Summit of the Council of Europe: Statements
1:30 pm
Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source
Maybe it is. On each occasion, there has been somebody with misguided opinions on the other side. The point I want to make about this debate is that recommendation 2245, which is contained in paragraph 8.1, calls on the heads of state and government of the Council of Europe to, "affirm their unwavering support for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders and stand in solidarity with Ukraine and Ukrainians". The reason I have picked that sentence in particular is that a reference was made to how we should have welcomed interventions from certain people in this debate. The difficulty that arises is that those interventions call for peace talks and ceasefire talks. On the face of it, that sounds reasonable. We all want peace and for the fighting, killing and bloodshed to stop, but we also must look at the consequences of that.
The invasion of Ukraine did not start in February 2022. It started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the sham referendums in cities like Yalta and Sevastopol, which established some kind of quasi-legitimacy, in Russian eyes only, because nobody else was fooled by it, for a Russian takeover of Crimea. The latter is located within the internationally recognised borders of Ukraine. It was the first part of Ukraine to be taken over by Russia, albeit in a relatively bloodless way compared with what happened last year. The fighting continued and, in the second wave, Russia attacked on 24 February last year, thus beginning a brutal, bloody and illegal war in Ukraine to further its goal of taking over that country. The difficulty with proposals for peace talks at this stage is that they consolidate the Russian position. They say that everybody is to lay down their weapons and stop where they care. When that happens, we are faced with a situation where Russia is already illegally occupying large parts of Ukraine. The difficulty with proposing that we consolidate that position is that it offends the rule of law.
When I said that I visited Kyiv and spoke to parliamentarians there who talked about winning the war, I am genuinely convinced that they have the capacity to do it in a way that none of us understood prior to their fightback against the Russian army. The difficulty for us is defining what winning means. Does it mean going back to the borders from 24 February of last year or to the internationally recognised, legitimate borders of Ukraine that existed in 2014? The answer is to go back to 2014. How does one do that? Russia has comprehensively planted or colonised the Crimean section of Ukraine as it is, so even for the most optimistic scenarios for Ukraine, taking back that land means displacing all those Russian citizens who have been planted into that territory by Russia, nefariously, in no uncertain terms, with the goal of making it almost impossible for Ukraine to take it back. If Ukraine marches into Sevastopol, Yalta or wherever it might be in Crimea and displaces those Russian citizens, it will do so in contravention of international law. That creates a major difficulty.
This is where the Council of Europe has real power, as an international organisation representing 46 countries, and not Russia, which has been expelled, to say that we do not accept those borders or that annexation, and that we recognise that Russia's actions, with every step, shot fired and blow struck, have been illegal and unjustified. That is where we must go. We must not compromise. We must not sell our Ukrainian colleagues down the river in order to get a badge for successfully promoting peace talks, which means nothing if they do not recognise the international laws that have been broken, the rights of the Ukrainian state and the borders of the Ukrainian state, which were long-established before Russia, with its avarice, decided it was going to take them. That is where the strength of the Council of Europe comes in.
I will conclude with this, which is maybe not directly related to the report.
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