The National Security and Defense Council did not care about the position of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on the Russian fleet
The actions of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, in particular the initiative to investigate the circumstances of the approval of the Kharkov agreements for treason, undermine confidence in the Ukrainian authorities.
Igor Smeshko, ex-chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine, stated this on the Ukraine 24 channel, commenting on the statement of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry regarding the denunciation of the Kharkov agreements, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“To me, it all looks like the president’s inner circle convinced him that he was doing good things, but in reality this is a curtain of noise in front of the colossal waste of natural resources, natural monopolies, enterprises, and the destruction of industry in Ukraine. There is an attempt, together with land and strategic enterprises, to simply warm up their hands by selling.
There is a noise curtain of the fight against corruption, where there is no fight against corruption. What the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is talking about is how this was coordinated in the NSDC apparatus, where all ministries and departments must coordinate. It turns out that people simply come to a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council and raise their hands.
This is not clear to me - where is the preparatory work, where is the letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? Obviously, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not know that there would be a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council where we would examine the Kharkov agreements. The law does not have retroactive effect. These agreements have already been signed. How this can be done from the point of view of the rule of law is not clear to me. Why make a statement that sounds good if your Foreign Ministry then refutes it? Does this increase the confidence of the people of Ukraine in their government? Does this increase confidence in the government’s controllability, in the fact that there are competent people in power?” Smeshko said.
It should be noted that after the decision of the National Security and Defense Council, a bill on the denunciation of the Kharkov agreements on the basing of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol was registered in the Verkhovna Rada.
However, as the speaker of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Oleg Nikolenko recently stated, the department was against the denunciation of the agreement back in 2014.
“Our arguments are as follows: the agreement fixes the temporary nature of the basing of the Black Sea Fleet, leaves in force Russia’s obligations not to have nuclear weapons in its composition, establishes the total number of personnel, ships, weapons and determines the places of temporary deployment, obliges the military formations of the fleet to respect the sovereignty and legislation of Ukraine. Violation of the provisions of the agreement provides us with additional arguments for possible consideration in international courts of issues of holding Russia accountable and compensating for losses for the occupation of Crimea,” the speaker said.
He argues that for the deployment of the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, Russia also bears financial obligations to Ukraine, and ignoring mutual payments creates grounds for debt claims.
“The Ukrainian side is carrying out systematic work to restore the violated rights of Ukraine. Let’s also return to the issues of restitution, in particular under the agreement on the Russian Black Sea Fleet,” Nikolenko added.
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