Moscow Sought To Use Frozen Conflicts To Its Own Strategic Advantage — State Department

The United States is 'cognizant of the fact' that Moscow has sought to freeze conflicts in place and to use them to its own strategic advantage, the State Department said on Friday.

"We’ve seen this in the course of several previous conflicts, several current frozen conflicts. It is why we have been so skeptical about Russia’s claims for so-called ceasefires," Spokesperson Ned Price said in response to TURAN's questions on whether the war in Ukraine has impacted Washingtin's approach towards frozen conflicts.

Price was speaking to reporters during a briefing organized by the State Department's Washington Foreign Press Center on the U.S. foreign policy agenda.

He recalled that he had called Putin's Christmas ceasefire “nothing but cynical” when the Kremlin announced it on Thursday.

“I think that assessment has been borne out given what we’ve seen over the course of the day,” he said. “We believe that our scepticism is warranted because of what we’ve seen from Russia over the course of this conflict,” Price said.

He went on to add, "But we believe that our skepticism is warranted because of what we’ve seen from Russia over the course of this conflict previously, in the earliest days in the conflict when Russia would call for so-called humanitarian ceasefires in places like Mariupol, we would see those immediately violated. We also know that there may be an ulterior motive in calling for a ceasefire like the one that we’ve heard from President Putin in recent days."

Washington is concerned that Moscow would seek to use any potential pause in fighting to refit, to regroup, and ultimately to reattack with more vengeance, with more brutality, with even more lethality, as Price put it. "It is not our goal to see Moscow be able to regroup and to reposition its forces just to re-engage in an even more brutal fashion against the people of Ukraine."

That’s why, he said, "we want to see a peace that is just, yes, but is also durable – a peace that is lasting; it is not a conflict that is just frozen into place, but recognizes Ukraine’s independence, its territorial integrity, its sovereignty, and that leaves Ukraine in a position to defend itself against future acts of aggression."

Alex Raufoglu

Washington D.C.