Biden meets Poroshenko in Kyiv, reassures support
Ukraine says it has restored part of the electricity supply to Crimea, more than two weeks after power lines to the territory were blown up. The next day, he will give a speech before the Ukrainian Parliament.
Ukrainian engineers reconnected power lines to the Crimea on Tuesday.
However, ordinary Ukrainians do not trust him, because they better than the political elite know about the situation in the country.
President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, pauses while making a statement on Wednesday’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.
Special attention will be paid to the judicial sector. “So long as the people of Ukraine continue to strive for freedom and democracy, they can count on the unwavering commitment of the United States to stand with them”.
President Petro Poroshenko has been criticized for not doing enough to fight oligarchs many of whom have remained powerful brokers and taken on roles of managing crucial eastern regions bordering on the separatist-controlled areas.
Biden reassured the Ukrainian people that the US has not forgotten about Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 that triggered the war in Eastern Ukraine, which has pitted Russian-backed separatists against Ukrainian government forces and devastated Ukraine’s industrial heartland.
“Ukraine has 1,833 state corporations that are a persistent source of corruption”, said Anders Aslund of the US-based Atlantic Council.
“There’s a growing degree of popular frustration about the slow pace of the reforms and the efforts to root out corruption”, Biden warned.
Kyiv must do more in fighting corruption which “eats Ukraine like cancer”.
Ukraine must free itself from these structures.
In December 2013, the presidents of Russian Federation and Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Yanukovych, agreed that Moscow would grant Kyiv a credit worth $15 bln through the placement of Ukrainian securities.
“But in addition, you also have a battle”. According to the National Defense Authorisation Act for the 2016 Fiscal Year, approved by the US Senate, it could be possible to increase assistance to $300 million.
But Biden has repeated the same themes on this two-day visit.
United Nations investigators documented cases of “enforced disappearance, arbitrary and incommunicado detention as well as torture and ill treatment of people suspected of trespassing against territorial integrity or terrorism or believed to be supporters of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk people’s republic” and “Luhansk people’s republic”.
Maksym Beznosiuk is an worldwide relations specialist from Kyiv, Ukraine.