Merkel fury
KYIV: German Chan-cellor Angela Merkel expressed outrage yesterday over a leaked conversation in which a top US diplomat used the f-word to disparage the European Union’s handling of the crisis in Ukraine.
The candid remark by the US State Department’s most senior European official threatened to drive a dangerous wedge between the allies in the midst of one their most high-stakes diplomatic tussles with Moscow since the Cold War.
The embarrassing row came as Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych prepared for crisis talks with his Russian counterpart and ally Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.
Washington and Brussels have engaged in an intense standoff with Kyiv and Moscow over deadly mass protests that erupted in Ukraine in November when Yanukovych rejected an historic pact with the EU in favour of closer ties with old master Russia.
But the leaked phone call hinted strongly at Washington’s mounting frustration with the Europeans’ handling of Ukraine’s worst political crisis since its independence in 1991.
In the recordings, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Washington’s Kyiv ambassador frankly discuss which opposition figures should go into the new Ukrainian government – comments that play directly into Russia’s charges of Western meddling in its neighbour’s affairs.
“That would be great I think to help glue this thing and have the UN glue it and you know, f**** the EU,” Nuland says at one point.
Nuland herself did not dispute the authenticity of the call while refusing further comment. “I will not comment on a private diplomatic conversation,” Nuland told reporters in Kyiv.
“It was pretty impressive tradecraft,” she added. “Audio quality was very good.”
The US State Department immediately pointed an incriminating finger at Russia for allegedly bugging diplomats’ phones.
“Certainly we think this is a new low in Russian tradecraft,” US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
But the irritation among top EU leaders focused mostly on Washington rather than the Kremlin – a worrying signal for the US administration amid continuing fallout over its controversial phone and Internet surveillance work.