Biden Visits Ukraine To Reaffirm US Support
Biden, visiting Kyiv for the fourth time in two years, warned against repeating the broken reform promises of the 2004 Orange Revolution, which failed to curb the clout of the businessmen that control Ukraine’s biggest companies and influence politics.
The senior United States official said Biden would take extra care to stress that the overtures toward Putin in no way affected the West’s support for Kyiv.
“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”.
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.
Biden also mentioned his frequent communication on a weekly basis, both with the Ukrainian Prime Minister and President.
The warning on Tuesday came just a day after Biden released an additional $190 million (175 million euros) in aid to Ukraine, to help the economically embattled government implement the necessary reforms.
Clashes between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists have lulled recently, but combat has claimed more than 8,000 lives since fighting began in April 2014.
“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“, he said.
“He (Biden) is there to kind of reassure the Kyiv puppet ally government that the United States is standing behind them, ready for World War 3 against Russia”, Joachim Hagopian, an investigative journalist, told Press TV.
Biden also declared that the US will never accept Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
The Kakhovskyy-Titan power line was reconnected overnight “with agreement from activists involved in the energy and food blockade of Crimea“, said authorities in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, quoted by Interfax news agency.
“Russia put forward an offer for restructuring… unfortunately our interlocutors have not accepted this initiative”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country in February 2014 following months of anti-government protests in Kyiv, largely fueled by rampant corruption.