June 17, 2008

Right Honourable Stephen Harper

Prime Minister of Canada

Ottawa

Dear Mr. Prime Minister:

      We would like to express our great concern with the recent belligerent and threatening statements made by Mr. Vladimir Putin, the former President of the Russian Federation, regarding Ukraine. According to reports in the media, on April 4 at the meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Bucharest, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia will work to break up Ukraine if that country joins NATO. Mr. Putin reportedly claimed that Russia will encourage the separation of eastern Ukraine and Crimea from Ukraine. Such threats by the President of a state that is a member of the UN, the Council of Europe and the G8 are surely unacceptable and cannot be dismissed as harmless.

        Mr. Putin’s anti-Ukrainian statements have been echoed by other ranking Russian officials. As a result, on April 12, 2008 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine issued a statement expressing serious concern about statements of high level officials of the Russian Federation that question the territorial integrity of Ukraine: “It is absolutely unacceptable that the Russian Federation as one of the sides of the (1994 Budapest) memorandum (in which the nuclear powers including the Russian Federation provided security guarantees for Ukraine) and a permanent member of the UN Security Council responsible for maintaining of international peace and security, resorts to unfriendly steps towards Ukraine, calls into question its territorial integrity …”

        Equally unacceptable and dangerous are recent decisions of the Russian Federation to impinge upon the sovereignty of its neighbour Georgia by upgrading the status of its relations with the Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Presidents of Georgia and Ukraine issued a joint statement on April 30, 2008, in which they “condemn the recent statements of the Russian representatives on possibility of application of ‘military means’ by Russia for protection of compatriots in Abkhazia”. The presidents stressed “that the Georgian - Abkhaz and Georgian - South-Ossetian conflicts may be settled only by peaceful means and in the framework of the resolutions of the UN Security Council, in particular, the Security Council’s Resolution 1808 of April 15, 2008. As is known these resolutions urge the UN member states to respect sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Georgia within its internationally recognized borders.”

         Such behaviour by the leadership of the Russian Federation calls into question the membership of the RF in the G8. We urge the Government of Canada to express its condemnation of the Russian Federation’s threats towards its neighbours, Ukraine and Georgia, and to put pressure upon the Russian Federation to adhere to its international commitments respecting the sovereignty of its neighbours and non-interference in their internal affairs.

              Respectfully yours,