Secretary Kerry’s Remarks With EU High Representative Federica Mogherini After Their Meeting So today, we reviewed the alarming situation in Ukraine, where we are continuing to press Russia to live by the Minsk agreements which they signed onto, which they negotiated, which they said they would keep, and which is critical to our ability to be able to restore the full sovereignty and the calm and the stability necessary for a transformation. We also call on all sides to end the fighting and to implement the Minsk agreement. We’re particularly concerned by signs that the Russian-backed separatists are attacking a full-scale initiative against the city of Debaltseve, and in an attempt to obviously gain control of a very significant rail juncture. And that is in blatant violation of the Minsk agreement – the September 19th Minsk agreement ceasefire. It is also obviously – because there’s been about a 500-square-mile extension of the so-called line of control – an effort to try to broaden the amount of territory that is being held from the time that they signed an agreement and agreed to keep the line of control. So this is a very blatant land grab, and it is in direct contravention to the Minsk agreements which they signed up to. And that is why the European community decided to hold the line with respect to the sanctions and continue to send a message that we will not stand for this kind of violation of the sovereign integrity of a nation. We also talked about the need to defeat terror networks such as Daesh and al-Qaida, and to do so without undermining the freedoms that violent extremists find so threatening. We need to move ahead on every single front – militarily, but also through law enforcement, through intelligence sharing, by attacking the root causes so that terrorist appeals fall flat and foreign recruits are no longer enticed to go to a place and wreak havoc on it. And this is a subject I intend to tackle a little bit when I speak in Davos later in the week. Read the complete remarks at state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/01/236180.htm
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 06:55:20 +0000
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