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The Russian Humanitarian Aid
to the Donetsk Residents Is Legitimate

by Jacques Cheminade, President of Solidarité et Progrès
August 2014


Jacques Cheminade.

PARIS, August 12th, 2014 -- The Russian humanitarian convoy -- without military escort -- to Eastern Ukraine is a legitimate decision. Vladimir Putin underlined, in a discussion with the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, that Russia is acting "in cooperation with the Red Cross."

In the context where the Ukrainian army is using phosphorus fragmentation bombs and SS21 ballistic missiles against the population, this aid is absolutely legitimate. Of no use against self-defense forces or in guerrilla warfare, those weapons are being deployed to target individual homes, electrical plants and hospitals. Luhansk and Donetsk are deprived of water, electricity, food and medicine. Thus, the protests of President Obama, that Russian aid "is unacceptable," "unjustified" and "illegal," are the reflection of the hypocritical cynicism of his personality, because it is the United States and the United Kingdom which support the war crimes being committed against the Eastern Ukrainians.

The very countries which invoke the "responsibility to protect" doctrine to justify their military operations in Iraq, Libya, and today against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, have the gall to condemn the Russian humanitarian aid, claiming it's the prelude to a military deployment! Let's speak brutally: Were the "responsibility to protect" raised, Russia would have the best reasons in the world to intervene with all the means to protect the Ukrainian Russian-speaking population. Are they worth less than the Libyans of Benghazi?

It is time for France to return to a Gaullist policy, because Atlanticism leads to war. We must support the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have taken refuge in Russia and not block, in any way or manner, the Russian initiative in Ukraine, as NATO had done with the humanitarian convoys to the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo. We must demand the dismantling of the neo-Nazi militias operating with the putchist Kiev regime.

It is time that we return to an option for peace through mutual development, leaving Messrs. Rasmussen, Obama and Cameron to their fantasies, whose only future is war. We must help Russia bring its rentier economy to an end and engage its de-offshorization. The future for France is in a Eurasian and European policy of détente, entente and cooperation; this must be the foundation of a peace among nations and the basis for a space policy tackling the common aims of mankind. Our movement has sketched the essential lines of this policy. We have little time left to avoid the worst.