Dozens of journalists have been killed – US
The United States has been very focused at the OSCE, which is the world’s largest regional security organization, on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. In fact, every week Russia stoops to new lows and doubles down on the sorts of monstrous behaviors that have defined its war effort from the very start, and we’re going to keep exposing what they’re doing. The OSCE’s efforts have led many in the international community, based in fact on the OSCE’s very own factfinding missions, to declare that some of the actions that Russia has taken in Ukraine amount to crimes against humanity. And we need to keep talking about this, because what Russia has done in places like Bucha and Borodyanka and Mariupol is, frankly, unconscionable, and we have a duty to keep recording what it is doing inside Ukraine each and every week, because it keeps doing new things.
The last couple of days
Now, I want to point out just recently, in the last couple days, we saw Russia’s barbaric attack on Odesa’s UNESCO protected historic town center, as well as the Orthodox cathedral there – yet another attack on Ukraine’s cultural heritage and its national identity. I think it’s pretty clear what Russia is trying to do here, which is to wipe out an independent Ukrainian nation state and subjugate it to Russia’s control.
Also, there’s Russia’s weaponization of hunger. Russia has destroyed 60,000 tons of grain in Ukraine. Just yesterday, it struck a grain storage facility in the town of Reni on the Danube River, near the borders of Moldova and Romania. And Russia has also unilaterally withdrawn from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, causing the price of wheat and other food stuffs to spike all around the world. Many people in developing countries will go hungry as a direct result of Russia’s irresponsible and callous behavior.
And I want to point out that we have information that Russia intends to target civilian shipping in the Black Sea, laying mines on approaches to Ukrainian ports, and that it will try to blame Ukraine for any damage to civilian vessels in the Black Sea. And I want to also point out that this is a pattern that we’ve seen time and again, where Russia accuses Ukraine of committing the crimes that it itself is perpetrating.
And for – by way of background, thanks to the mediation on the Black Sea Grain Initiative, thanks to the mediation of the United Nations and Türkiye, the Black Sea Grain Initiative has allowed for the export to date of 32 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain and food stuffs – two thirds of that – fully two thirds going to developing countries. And now Russia has cut this off. It’s a heartless – frankly, cynical – effort to weaken Ukraine that’s causing harm to millions of innocent civilians around the world.
Artificial inflation
Meanwhile, Russia makes a killing off the artificially inflated food prices, and it is raking in record profits. Russia, of course, claims that Western sanctions are blocking their exports, but that is a patent falsehood. They’re exporting more grain at higher prices than ever before.
All of this is happening while Russian officials send Ukrainian children deep into Russia, trying to re-educate them in special camps that try to deny these children’s Ukrainian identity and create a sense of allegiance to Russia. It’s immoral and it’s wrong.
Russian officials are also instituting a so-called filtration system. I’ve talked about this extensively in the past. I speak about it every week at the OSCE’s Permanent Council. These filtration operations take place across the occupied territories, where civilians are subjected to unlawful arrest and detention, where many are split apart from their families, and many have reported being subjected to torture. Many thousands of Ukrainians have been forcibly disappeared as part of this process. And we know that many Ukrainian civilians – both children and adults – are currently being kept in Russia’s jails, not just in the occupied territories of Ukraine but in Russia itself, where these individuals vanish into a vast network of detention facilities that constitute essentially a modern-day gulag.
The United States is therefore determined to keep using OSCE tools, like the Moscow Mechanism, to expose these atrocities, both for the sake of the historical record but also for the sake of future accountability efforts. We’re also determined to keep Russia isolated at the OSCE, where currently not one single other OSCE participating state supports Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
No to Russian veto
We’re not going to let Russia veto the OSCE’s work in Ukraine either. We have a brand new OSCE field mission in Ukraine that will deliver for the Ukrainian people. It’ll work in the area of humanitarian de-mining, providing psychological support to Ukrainian children and families, help support accountability efforts, strengthen cyber security, support civil society, and much more. The United States is proud to generously contribute to this new field mission.
The OSCE is an organization that was born after the conclusion of the Helsinki Final Act, which enshrines basic norms of interstate behavior, including the inviolability of borders, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. Nearly 50 years ago, the countries that signed the Helsinki Final Act agreed to these commitments and, importantly, also to hold each other accountable for their violations. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We intend to continue to use all the tools available to us to hold Russia accountable for its war of choice and to support the independence and sovereignty of all 57 of the OSCE’s participating states.
Attacks on journalists
The United States condemns any attacks on journalists wherever and whenever they take place. But I have to say that in this circumstance, the solution is for Russia to end its war of aggression against Ukraine. A lot of the tragedies that we see playing out across Ukraine, including the one I mentioned with children who have been abducted from their families, with civilians who have been tortured in interrogation centers, with journalists – now dozens of journalists – who have been killed in this war.
None of this would have happened if Russia had not invaded its neighbor with absolutely no reason whatsoever other than a desire for imperial control of additional land. So Russia could really rectify this situation by putting an end to this war of choice today if it chose to do so.
Airstrikes
So I don’t have anything specific for you on this. I will say that it is deeply disturbing to see Russian airstrikes, repeatedly over the course of these last 18 months of this war, target Ukrainian cultural heritage, including religious institutions. Many churches, monasteries, other religious sites have been hit in the course of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine.
And as I mentioned in my opening comments, the Orthodox cathedral in Odesa, a real architectural gem and part of this UNESCO-protected World Heritage Site in Odesa, recently destroyed – partially destroyed by a Russian missile strike – is just appalling. And one has to ask oneself: Why is this happening? And unfortunately, the inescapable conclusion is that there is an effort to seek to undermine Ukrainian national identity, including its cultural heritage. And look, I won’t pronounce on this, but if in fact this is an intentional effort, it would constitute a war crime. And I’m sure it will be subject to future accountability efforts.
Russia’s potential false flag attack
So we have tried at every step of this war to seek to put information out into the public domain as soon as we receive it about Russia’s intentions. In fact, we did this prior to February 22nd, where the United States declassified a considerable amount of intelligence to be able to share with the world Russia’s intentions. In fact, I myself spoke to this from the State Department podium on several occasions.
We seek to do that in this case as well. We think it’s important for the world to understand that this planning is underway. And certainly, look, this, an attack on a civilian shipping vessel, would also be a war crime. And so that we would take this very, very seriously, and we are currently telling the world that we have information. Of course, we’ll have to see what happens in the coming days, but we have information that such plans do exist. And again, this – if it were an intentional attack on civilian shipping, this would constitute a violation of international humanitarian law.
The impact of the Russia’s pulling out of Black Sea
I do think it’s having an impact around the world. Now, I sit as our permanent representative to the OSCE. I can tell you that within the OSCE context there has been widespread condemnation of Russia’s unilateral move to exit from the Black Sea Grain Initiative from a number of countries in the OSCE, and in fact, as I mentioned earlier, not one single participating state that defends Russia’s war of aggression or its current move to exit from this arrangement which has so benefited so many people in the Global South.
I do believe that across the wider world there are many countries that are starting to understand with greater acuity what is happening and why Russia is doing this. As I said, Russia claims that it is the victim, but in fact it is raking in record profits from the surge in agricultural prices and exporting more than it has ever exported before. And look, other countries understand this. They see the facts; they see the data. And so they understand that this war of aggression against Ukraine is also impacting them and it’s impacting their populations and that what Russia is saying is a very cynical attempt to deflect blame for something that it itself is doing. It launched this war. It withdrew from this agreement – again, brokered through the good offices of the United Nations and Türkiye, and we thank them for their efforts. But at the end of the day, Russia has unfortunately walked away from something that would help feed millions of people around the world.
And so yes, there is a realization that this is happening and that it is impacting people around the world. Nation
