Biden tells Ukraine’s parliament United States will never recognize Crimea …
Yet Biden arrives in a rustic whose morale is sagging due to Poroshenko’s seeming incapability to erase the corruption that has ravaged Ukraine for a lot of its current historical past.
After 20 months of intense fighting between Ukrainian military and Russian-backed armed groups, 9,115 people have been killed and 20,797 injured, with civilians among the dead and wounded.
US Vice President Joe Biden warned Russia on Tuesday that Western pressure on Moscow would only increase if Russian “aggression” against neighbouring war-scarred Ukraine continued.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden delivers a statement on the results of talks with Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko, in Kyiv, Ukraine Monday, Dec. 7, 2015. “Minsk can not succeed if Russia does not fulfill its commitment and (Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin fails to live up to the promises he has repeatedly made to my president, to you and to the global community”.
The UN also noted Ukraine’s failure to prosecute those responsible for deadly violence during its 2013-2014 anti-government uprising and in Odessa in May 2014, and reported claims of growing repression in Crimea since its annexation by Russian Federation.
Euronews reporter Maria Korenyuk said: “It’s Biden’s fourth visit to Ukraine in two years”.
Russia’s construction of the 14 kilometer long power bridge across the Kerch Strait to Crimea started in October to cut the peninsula’s electricity dependence on Kyiv.
Biden’s address before the Ukrainian Parliament, the first of its kind by a high-ranking United States official since 1991, flew in the face of Russia’s assertion that it is the pro-Western government in Kyiv that flouts the peace accord.
“He (Biden) mentioned oligarchs, oligarchs who are using the judiciary system now, who are not paying taxes and also corrupted people in the parliament, in the government, who think about their own interest instead of the country’s interest”, said Anna Hopko, an independent MP.
He said the new aid package will help Ukraine implement reforms and fight “the cancer of corruption“.
These funds also will support the critical role of civil society and independent media, as well as the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission as it monitors and verifies agreements in the conflict areas of eastern Ukraine.
More than 11 years later and two years since the start of Ukraine’s Euromaidan Revolution that eventually ousted Viktor Yanukovych, corruption remains rampant in the former Soviet republic.