Bohdan Sokolovskyi
The participation of the Ukrainian delegation headed by the President of our country in the jubilee 70th session of the General Assembly (GA) of the United Nations has been actually completed.
Many respected experts and politicians have already made their comments on this participation. And they are probably right, if the conversation was about the long-term consistent Ukrainian course, diplomacy included.
In this regard, the following should be said.
Our President's meeting with the President of the United States, first of all showed the respect to our country, despite its duration or topics that were touched upon there. On the other hand, taking into consideration the duration of the conversation of the US President with the President of the Russian Federation and the general atmosphere in the world and in the GA, it was once again confirmed that in our defense against the Russian aggressors we need to rely mainly only on ourselves. Because everybody readily sympathize with us, worry about us, even want to help. But nobody will fight instead of us. And we won't be given modern weapons. Neither by the USA nor by Europe included. No one will do our job for us, Ukrainians, in defending our Motherland included. And this is normal. Because who of us defended the American democracy, or any other?
At the same time, we must not forget that the UN General Assembly is a kind of a long-term consistent work at the bilateral level. We, unfortunately, have not been able to lead such a long-term work constantly and everywhere. The former leadership did not have such a will. The right job had been done only by individual Ukrainian embassies for which patriotism was not an empty phrase.
After all, the United Nations practices the simple truth that it is better not to put forward an initiative, if there is no guarantee that it will be supported by the majority out of the 193 UN countries. But such work is not done within a month, a year or even a year and a half. A hard work with the UN member states takes a lot of time.
How have Ukrainian diplomats been instructed in recent years? Let's be honest: until 2010 they were told one thing, from 2010 until the beginning of 2014 — another, now yet another. What, then, are foreigners supposed to think of us?
For example, many ordinary foreign citizens in democratic countries still do not know that in Ukraine, there is no civil war, but there is a cynical Russian aggression. They do not know that the Ukrainian nation at one time experienced the Holodomor, which killed millions of our Ukrainian citizens; they do not understand the main point and causes of the Holodomor and so on. And who, if not we, could explain this to them?
We still live ad exemplum of the former Soviet empire. And we just cannot get used to the fact that in democratic countries a position of politicians is based on beliefs of the society. It takes a lot of time to achieve this. In our work abroad, we continue to use Soviet methods, when the basis was the content of central media. Now this methodology for big money is actively used by the Kremlin. A common German, an American, a Frenchman, a Pole, etc., as a rule, demands respect, to be communicated with. It should be understood that the local population must trust our representatives. And this requires a lot of time, it takes years. There may be a large scope for Ukrainian representatives' activity abroad. Then the Russians will not have enough money to carry out their deceitful work everywhere there.
At the moment we, unfortunately, do not have the resources needed abroad. Therefore, we are late with the formation of our honest position. And therefore — we do not have sufficient support. I hope we do not temporarily have it.
