Political feuding imperils Ukraine's future, Obama's record
KIEV |
On his most recent visit to Kiev, U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden said he spends more time speaking to Ukrainian officials than to his own wife.
He may not be exaggerating: senior U.S. officials, including Biden, are deeply embroiled in trying to persuade Ukraine’s leadership to hold the line and implement the reforms they have promised to carry out.
But despite these efforts, divisions inside the ruling coalition are growing and many of the reforms are stalled. If the leaders fail, it will be a deep embarrassment to Washington, the EU, and the IMF which sacrificed relations with Russia to support these people.
"I think we may have logged close to 1,000 hours on the telephone," Biden told reporters during his visit this month, referring to his calls with Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko, before adding the quip that it was more time than he spends talking to Mrs Biden.
The Obama administration, with the EU, has invested deeply in making a success of Ukraine's Feb. 2014 revolution, when protesters forced a Russian-backed leader to flee and pro-Western opposition figures took over.
A look at statements issued by Biden's office shows that since 2014 the vice president spoke by telephone 40 times with Poroshenko and 16 times with Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk.
That is in addition to four visits by Biden to Kiev since the change in power, and multiple meetings with Poroshenko and Yatseniuk in Washington and in Europe.
Biden was not alone in spending time on Ukraine. In 2014, U.S officials and members of congress paid more than 100 visits to Ukraine, according to a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.
Yet despite intense efforts by the White House the project is now in danger of unraveling.
If that happens, it will be a squandered opportunity for Ukraine to break a 25-year cycle of chaos and corruption and would rob the Obama administration of a rare foreign policy success.
cont'd
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-politics-idUSKBN0UB10R20151228
posted by Satish Sharma at
11:45
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