KYIV, April 1 - Ukraine asked the United Nations leadership to maintain economic pressure on Russia saying any backtracking on sanctions at this moment would amount to “appeasement,” the Foreign Policy magazine reported.

“[W]e are witnessing attempts by some states to convince the international community that sanctions constrain their ability to counter the COVID-19,” Ukraine’s U.N. ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, wrote in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. “Those claims are artificial and groundless.”

“Sanctions remain an important tool to restore the respect to international law,” he added. “The only way for sanctions to disappear is not through their cancellation under the pretext of need to face and counter some new global pandemic, but through ensuring a thorough implementation of the UN Charter and complete halting of continuous violations of international law, including armed aggression, occupation and human rights abuses.”

The move comes as an unlikely but growing coalition of forces—including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Democratic lawmakers in the United States, relief agencies, and the U.N. leadership—have advocated an easing of measures in response to the coronavirus. It poses the greatest challenge to U.S. sanctions policy since the 1990s, when the Clinton administration faced charges that sweeping economic sanctions against Iraq were contributing to soaring levels of malnutrition.

“Sanctions imposed on countries should be waived to ensure access to food, essential supplies and access to COVID-19 tests and medical support,” according to a U.N. report commissioned by Guterres and made public on Tuesday. “This is the time for solidarity not exclusion.”

Several Democratic lawmakers in the United States—including presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Chris Murphy, Sen. Patrick Leahy, and Sen. Tim Kaine—have urged the Trump administration to ease sanctions against countries struck hard by the coronavirus, including Iran and Venezuela, which they claim impede the import of medical supplies and protective gear.

“We should not feel guilty about sanctions, period. We didn’t put them on by accident. The sanctions were there for good reasons,” said Daniel Fried, a former senior diplomat who served as the State Department’s sanctions coordinator. “But in the coronavirus situation, the humanitarian impact of sanctions is a legitimate issue to raise.”

The Trump administration has issued exemptions to sanctioned countries for the delivery of humanitarian supplies. But Fried said the conditions the administration placed on these exemptions are too onerous to work. “It didn’t feel like a serious initiative. … It felt like a bureaucratic sleight of hand.”

China and Russia are leading a coalition of countries—including Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela—that are seeking to parlay the coronavirus pandemic into a case for easing U.S. sanctions. (fp/ez)