Mustafa Çağlayan
September 28, 2015•Update: September 28, 2015
NEW YORK
The conflict in Ukraine’s eastern territories will prohibit reaching the UN's development goals in the country, President Petro Poroshenko said Sunday.
“Sustainable development is not achievable where explosions are heard and peaceful people are killed,” Poroshenko told the sustainable development summit in New York.
“It is not achievable where aggressive ideologies advocating suppression of some nations by other nations reign and key human rights and freedoms are violated.”
Poroshenko’s remarks are thought to be aimed at Russia, which supports a separatist insurgency in Luhansk and Donetsk.
Last week, the UN adopted an ambitious set of goals to end poverty, fight social inequality and tackle climate change by 2030.
Poroshenko said Ukraine's infrastructure had been ruined and around one-fifth of economic potential lost since the conflict began in April last year. The UN says 8,000 have died in the fighting.
“Russia's military actions against Ukraine have also increased environmental and epidemiological threats as well as the risk of social exclusion,” he told heads of government.
"Chemical sites in the conflict area in the eastern part of Ukraine and in the adjacent territories represent a particular danger.”
Poroshenko added: “Each day the war in Donbas costs us around $5 million that we could have invested in sustainable development.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for the lifting of all sanctions imposed on Russia without a UN Security Council mandate.
The U.S. and EU have imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and its support for separatists.
“Unilateral coercive measures that are imposed in violation of the UN Charter go in direct contradiction with the achievement of the sustainable development goals,” he said.
