The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba argued why the United States has not yet recognized Russia as a terrorist state.
In an interview with RBC-Ukraine, the minister emphasized that Ukraine understands the U.S. position, but does not share it.
The first argument is that when a state is declared a sponsor of terrorism, its assets in the U.S. are open to lawsuits by the U.S. citizens and legal entities, and can be recovered as compensation for certain actions.
"The argument of the United States is that otherwise these funds, instead of going to the future for the restoration of Ukraine, will end up here. This is a very shaky argument, because now the U.S. does not have a mechanism to transfer this money to rebuild Ukraine," he noted.
According to him, the U.S. also does not want its friends and allies, primarily in Europe, to fall under secondary American sanctions.
"That is, how it works: if you are a state sponsor of terrorism, then the U.S. gets the right to apply sanctions against legal entities of third countries that have dealings with the state sponsor of terrorism. For example, some European partners of the USA. But we emphasize that applying secondary sanctions is not an obligation, but a right," Kuleba emphasized.
The third argument is that the overall list of criteria for recognizing a state as a sponsor of terrorism is written in such a way that Russia does not fall under it. "We also say that it does not work, because there is, for example, the terrorist organization "Wagner", which is directly sponsored by the Russian state and which operates not only in Ukraine, but also in African countries," the minister noted.
- On July 31, the Lower House of the U.S. Congress presented a bill on recognizing Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. The Senate has already passed such a resolution, but the U.S. State Department has the final say. Currently, the list of countries sponsoring terrorism includes four states: Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria.