Russia has once more changed the borders in Europe by force, said Jean Asselborn in an interview, one day after president Putin recognised the independence of the two “people’s republics” Luhansk and Donetsk. It is not a coincidence that Syria, Nicaragua and Venezuela have followed suit, says Asselborn. The worst is that the Minsk Agreement has been broken. Asselborn describes it as a “pirate act on land”.
The West has done everything it could, he continues, offering to listen to him and talk on a diplomatic level, but “he knocked over the tray and the table both.” Asselborn can’t see how there can be trust in future to find a solution. “Russia will not become safer, but everything that is not Russia will become much less safe.”
Putin’s statement that four million people in the territories in Eastern Ukraine risked genocide is “insane”, says Asselborn. This has little to do with NATO, but rather, Putin wants a buffer zone he can influence between his country and the West.
Regarding the EU sanctions agreed unanimously on Tuesday afternoon, the Minister said there was a first set of punitive measures, which would be officially decided on Wednesday morning at the latest. They target those who helped organise the move, on a political as well as a military level. This includes two banks, and the economy of both territories.
The problem is, what happens next? Doing nothing is not a solution. The big danger is that rockets could be built in Belarus, perhaps with nuclear heads. “This could become a spiral of rearmament, and this is poison for European life.” For Jean Asselborn, this is the biggest catastrophe he has had to witness as a Minister of Foreign Affairs.
