Poroshenko’s Red Lines. VoxCheck Has Checked Yet Another TV Marathon

While President Zelenskyy was preparing for the Normandy Four Summit in Paris, the media space was overwhelmed by “the red lines” discussion. Three TV channels   – “Priamyi”, “Espresso” and “5 Kanal” – organized a joint marathon talk show attended by ex-president Petro Poroshenko as a special guest. He was giving advice and warnings, evaluated possible betrayals, and repeatedly emphasized his victories. 

How victorious are these victories? Are we already betrayed? Read to find out.

According to the Stockholm arbitration decision, Gazprom was obliged to pay $4.63 billion to Naftogaz. $2.1 billion has been covered by the earlier supplied gas. $2.56 billion Gazprom is yet to pay.

Naftogaz has prepared one more claim for $12 billion.

Indeed, the NATO summits declarations did mention the Russian aggression in Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea during the last five years (2014, 2016, 2018). 

There was no joint declaration of the meeting participants after the 2017 Brussels summit.  

Nevertheless, the NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg spoke about the Russian aggression and the illegal annexation of Crimea, answering the journalists’ questions at the press conference. The London summit declaration (3-4 December 2019) does not mention Ukraine at all.

Comparing with 2014, the Ukrainian Army did become stronger. However, there is no reputable rating comparing strength of various armies.

It is not the first time that Petro Poroshenko refers to the Global Firepower Index. And we again emphasize that the methodology of this rating is not transparent. There is no information about the sources of data, the methods of calculations, and the experts engaged at their web site.  

However, even if we use this rating, in 2014, Ukraine had a higher position among the European countries than in 2019:

• the 6th place in 2014 (0.8255 Index rate) and 
• the 8th place in 2019  (0.5082 index rate). 

The UN International Court of Justice was established to deal with the disputes among the UN member states and the states acceding to the Statute of the UN International Court.  

There is no need to get the state’s consent to file the lawsuit against this state. This concerns almost every state of the world, as almost all countries are either the UN members or accede to the Statute of the UN International Court of Justice.  

The UN International Court of Justice has, indeed, accepted this trial case for consideration, but it is too early to say that Russia will be held responsible. One needs to wait for the final resolution.

Even if the Court will rule in favor of Ukraine, the implementation of the resolution is not an easy task, which is the main problem. 

If a state fails to perform the resolution of the International Court of Justice, the case is redirected to the UN Security Council (UNSC). The latter can impose sanctions against the state or use other means to enforce the decisions of the Court. However, the veto power allows Russia to block the decisions of the Council and to avoid responsibility for non-performing its obligations.  

There is already a precedent case of Nicaragua vs. the US,  where the US vetoed the UNSC resolution, which obliged the USA to pay compensation to Nicaragua as settled by the Court.

The sanctions against Russia were imposed in March 2014 (e.g., the US and the EU). It was before the signature of the Minsk agreements (September 2014 and February 2015). The reasons for the sanctions were the undermining of or threat to the state sovereignty of Ukraine through the Crimea annexation, as well as destabilization of the situation in the east of Ukraine. 

The Ukrainian president was not present at all recent NATO summits.

Poroshenko was present at three out of four NATO summits held during his presidency: in Wales in 2014, in Warsaw in 2016, in Brussels in 2018.  President Poroshenko did not attend the 2017 Brussels summit. 

European Solidarity parliamentarians are the authors of the statement “On the Priority Measures to Secure the Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine – Acquiring the Fully-Fledged Membership of Ukraine in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization”.

However, there is no bilateral agreement mentioned, either in the first draft document or in the adopted text. Moreover, NATO is not supposed to take any obligations under this document. The approved statement’s essential goal is to call the NATO member countries’ parliaments and ministers to accelerate providing the MAP to Ukraine.

The sanctions belong to the category of issues that require unanimous approval of the EU member states. If not all countries have voted in favor, the sanctions would not have been imposed. 

By the way, at the time of the voting for the imposition of the sanctions, the EU had 28 members, not 27. Croatia was the latest EU joining country (July 2013), and Great Britain started the Brexit in March 2017.

VoxCheck does not comment on Putin’s response to the implementation of the sanctions.

The debt of Ukraine to Russia was restructured in the form of a credit loan in 1993. The debt was partially for the products supplied by Russia to Ukraine. First of all, these were energy carriers (page 156). According to the 1993 agreement, Ukraine had to repay the loan till 1999, which was problematic. So, after the debt restructuring in 1995, the term of the final repayment was postponed till 2007. 

In 1997, Ukraine and Russia agreed that the Russian Black Sea fleet would be staying in Crimea for 20 years (the speaker says 25 years, which is incorrect). At that very day, Ukraine and Russia agreed that the Ukrainian debt, including the debt for gas, would be paid by leasing the territories to Russia for its Black Sea fleet.

VoxCheck does not assess whether Ukraine had any chance to avoid signing such a “package agreement”.