Kremlin’s Strikes 'Can Break Neither Ukraine’s Spirit, Nor Our Support' — Karen Donfried

The Kremlin’s recent strikes against Ukraine "can break neither Ukraine’s spirit nor our resolve to support Ukraine," the State Department's top diplomat for Europe said on Tuesday, sending a clear message that the United States 'will never' recognize Russia’s purported annexation of any territory it illegally seized from Ukraine, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

Karen Donfried, assistant secretary for Europe and Eurasian affairs, was talking to reporters during a briefing organized by the Department's Foreign Press Center.

Speaking about last week’s UN vote on Ukraine, the diplomat said it "demonstrated clearly" that Russia’s ongoing invasion is not acceptable to the world: 143 nations voted against Russia and condemned the Kremlin's illegal attempt to annex Ukrainian territory by force. With that vote, Donfried said, "the vast majority of the world stood at the side of freedom, sovereignty, and territorial integrity."

"We have said it before and we will say it again: Russia cannot erase a sovereign state from the map, change borders by force, or seize another country’s territory as its own," she emphasized.

Asked by TURAN's Washington correspondent what lessons should the countries in the region, including Azerbaijan, which was absent from the vote, learn from Russia’s annexation of Ukraine, Donfried drew attention to the fact that more and more countries around the world "don’t want to live in a world where your bigger, stronger neighbor can just make a decision to try to swallow up your sovereign territory."

"This belief in the foundation of territorial integrity as something the UN Charter defends, I think, is what we saw countries speaking to last week," the assistant secretary said. "And we see that shared belief in an international system that stands up for the territorial integrity of every single UN member state"

For Donfried, Putin’s actions make it clear Russian lives, like Ukrainian lives, "mean nothing to him."

Asked by TURAN about the Kremlin's focus on hitting the energy infrastructure recently, the diplomat said, Moscow, in a sense, is trying to weaponize winter and trying to create a situation where Ukrainians suffer this winter in cold and in darkness.

"But it is clear that the inhumanity and brutality that we have seen in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine we see mirrored in these strikes against civilian infrastructure," she added. "And that is why we will focus so strongly not only on helping Ukraine repair what is being damaged but also put in place air defense systems that will help Ukraine have the ability to shoot down as many of these drones and missiles that are being fired against civilians in Ukraine."

Washington believes that the conflict in Ukraine will end at the negotiation table, however, Russia must show that it is ready to negotiate in good faith. As Donfried put it, "there is nothing in Russian actions to suggest a desire to engage in good-faith negotiations"

Meanwhile, the U.S will continue to stand "with our partners around the world in defending the core tenets of the UN Charter, the underpinning of peace, stability, and prosperity since the destruction and devastation of World War II," the assistant secretary said.

"And we will continue to assist the people of Ukraine and provide them with support to help them defend themselves and their territory against Russia’s illegal invasion. We will do this for as long as it takes. Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.  It is the just, moral, ethical, and simply the right thing to do.  Good will prevail," she concluded.

Alex Raufoglu

Washington D.C.