John J. Metzler

UNITED NATIONS — In a resounding rebuff to Russia, the UN General Assembly has reaffirmed Ukraine’s territorial integrity and has characterized the recent referendum which incorporated the Crimean peninsula into Russia as “invalid.”

While President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty joining Crimea with Russia, the Kiev government has committed itself never to accept Crimea’s independence nor annexation.

Ukraine’s acting Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia told assembled delegates “many still struggle to grasp the reality; it happened in Ukraine, in the very heart of Europe. It happened in the 21st century.”

He added, “After two weeks of military occupation an integral part of Ukraine has been forcibly annexed by a state that had previously committed itself to guarantee, the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of my country.”

The resolution was passed by a powerful vote of 100 countries backing Ukraine including the USA, Canada, the European Union states, and many countries throughout Asia and Latin America. Russia was backed by eleven countries among them Belarus, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Significantly 58 states abstained including Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Iraq, Pakistan and South Africa. China posed the most curious abstention.

More than a score of countries in the 193 member Assembly did not participate at all including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Israel, Islamic Republic of Iran, Morocco and Serbia. Indeed many of these states face active or dormant territorial disputes.

Beijing who often supports Moscow has been particularly nervous during the tumultuous months of Ukraine’s political upheavals and subsequent dismemberment by Russia.

During a number of earlier Security Council meetings and a draft resolution vote on Ukraine, the People’s Republic had abstained while Moscow predictably vetoed. Reading the political tea leaves it’s clear that China fears separatist strains and aspirations within its own territory from Tibet to Sinkiang in the west to Taiwan in the east.

Though democratic Taiwan is happily not under PRC rule despite being grandly claimed by Beijing, the risk remains that China has never renounced the use of force to bring the island back to the Motherland.

The non-binding Assembly resolution stresses that the referendum held in Crimea has no validity and calls on states to “desist and refrain” from any actions aimed at the disruption of Ukraine’s national unity “including any attempts to modify Ukraine’s borders through the threat or use of force or other unlawful means.”

American UN Ambassador, Samantha Power stated, “We have always said that Russia had legitimate interests in Ukraine; it has been disheartening in the extreme to see Russia carry on as if Ukrainians have no legitimate interest in Crimea when Crimea is a part of Ukraine.” She said that Ukraine is justified in “asking us not to recognize the new status quo that the Russian Federation has tried to create with its military.”

The Obama Administration, given its ambivalence towards Central Europe and Russia until the recent crisis, has now compensated with rhetorical barrages and threats of wider economic sanctions on Russia.

In some ways, the current showdown echoes the Georgia conflict in 2008. Georgia’s UN delegate Kaha Imnadze asserted “What happened in Ukraine reminds us of what we saw in Georgia in 2008, when Russia seized Georgia’s Abkhazia and Tskhinvali regions. Six years after the war, 20 percent of my country remains under illegal Russian occupation.”

Since the Crimea crisis has begun to unfold, Vladimir Putin has pledged Moscow’s support to ethnic Russian communities throughout the former Soviet Union in places ranging from the Baltic states to Georgia and Moldova. The Kremlin’s latter day irredentism recalls a bygone era in which seemingly “threatened” ethnic communities were cause for intervention by powerful neighbors.

“The European Union firmly believes that there is no place for the use of force and coercion to change borders in Europe or elsewhere in the 21st century, “ added EU Ambassador Thomas Mayr-Harting.

Though diplomacy appears to be keeping Moscow on the defensive, it’s the threat of serious economic sanctions and ostracism from global trade that may turn the tide.

Speaking in Berlin after meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated it best, “Notwithstanding all of our efforts to make Mr. Putin a partner, he has no desire to be a partner, he has the desire to be a rival.”

So will Moscow’s hyper nationalism cause an economic backlash against Russia?

And as significantly after Crimea, will Putin pause before his next move?

John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for WorldTribune.com. He is the author of Transatlantic Divide ; USA/Euroland Rift (University Press, 2010).

  100 countries at UN rebuff Russia on Crimea; See below who backed Moscow, Andrii Deshchytsia, Crimea, Vladimir Putin