Biden travels to Ukraine to show support against Russian Federation
“The Russian Federation has no other proposals thus, under all norms of financial global relations, (Ukraine) nears default as this is a sovereign debt”, spokesman said.
On the first day of his visit Biden assured Kyiv of the U.S. support and announced allocation of additional $190 million from the USA budget to help conduct structural reforms in Ukraine and fight corruption in the first place.
Joe Biden’s message to Ukraine on Tuesday was crystal clear: Don’t screw this up. “We know this. You know this”, Biden told Ukrainian MPs. He will reiterate the US’ position concerning Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and its current involvement in desabilizing eastern Ukraine.
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. During a joint briefing following bilateral talks with Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko, Biden said, “It’s absolutely critical for Ukraine, in order to be stable and prosperous and part of a secure Europe, to definitely, thoroughly completely root out the cancer of corruption“.
Biden said the latest developments in the Middle East in no way appeased Washington’s anger with Putin and support for Poroshenko’s pro-Western team.
Ukraine’s Western backers have repeatedly urged Kyiv authorities to stick to reform promises made under a $40 billion worldwide bailout programme aimed at shoring up the country’s war-torn economy, which was brought close to bankruptcy by years of corruption and economic mismanagement. Ukraine should fulfill its obligations under the pact, including granting decentralization and amnesty to Russia-backed separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last month said that Moscow was ready to spread out the repayment over three years after initially demanding that Kyiv make good on the full amount by late December. As a result, pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovych fled Ukraine.
“If Russian aggression persists, the cost imposed on Moscow will continue to rise”, Biden said Tuesday in a rare address to the Ukrainian Parliament on the second day of his visit to Kyiv.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, right, greets U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Dec. 7, 2015.