Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja said that the proposed meeting of foreign ministers from Russia, the US, the EU and Ukraine is extremely important since no other approach offers the possibility of resolving the crisis in Ukraine without the use of military force or otherwise causing the situation to deteriorate.
According to Tuomioja, while no one expects any concrete solutions when the foreign ministers meet Thursday, the initial talks will reveal whether or not all sides really want to find a solution. Once this is established a long process lies ahead, he added.
“We need to agree on the discussion points and arrive on some consensus on them. The Ukrainians themselves will of course play a central role, this cannot be agreed over their heads in any other capital,” Tuomioja told Yle.
Whose Ukraine?
Tuomioja said that the Ukrainian crisis had evolved into a tug of war between East and West, adding that the crisis cannot be resolved in Washington or Moscow.
“This is about the Ukrainians’ own country. The starting point should be that it’s in everyone’s interest not to have a fragmented state in Europe,” he stressed.
The foreign minister said the war of words about whom Ukraine “belongs” to is absurd because it means that the winner would have to pay a large price.
“It should be more like a point of cooperation than of competition, because Ukraine will always stay the same geographically. And no one in Europe wants a Ukraine that would have hostile relations or open conflicts with its neighbours,” he added.
Use of force still a possibility
Tuomioja noted the possibility that conflict in Ukraine could last years.
“This happens if the country is divided and if military force is used to accomplish that goal. This is precisely what we should avoid,” Tuomioja underlined.
He said that Ukrainians had not yet been able to enjoy true democracy and a corruption-free government.
“In this respect all Ukrainian leaders have disappointed their country’s expectations. This is precisely the reason for the agitation in the Maidan; it’s not a stand against the opposition, but against the rotten system and they are hoping for support from Europe to address this,” he noted.
According to Tuomioja it’s not possible to rule out the use of military force in eastern Ukraine, or that the crisis may unintentionally expand.
“When you have armed men on both sides and provocateurs thrown in who don’t take direct orders from anyone in authority, then this kind of thing may inadvertently happen, but everyone hopes it won’t,” Tuomioja concluded.
