Feuding imperils Kyiv’s future, Obama’s record
Political feuding imperils Kyiv’s future, Obama’s record
On his most recent visit to Kyiv, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said he spends more time speaking to Ukrainian officials than to his own wife.
That is in addition to four visits by Biden to Kyiv since the change in power, and multiple meetings with Poroshenko and Yatseniuk in Washington and in Europe.
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, Kyiv.
After Russia responded by annexing Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula, and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine tried to secede, Washington doubled down on its commitment to Kyiv.
Days later, during a meeting that was supposed to discuss reform but turned into a shouting match about corruption, the interior minister threw a glass of water at Mikheil Saakashvili, a former president of Georgia who took Ukrainian citizenship and was appointed a regional governor by Poroshenko.
At his meetings in Kyiv with Poroshenko, Biden delivered a warning, according to a source close to the Ukrainian president who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.