Ukraine rolls out the red carpet for US Vice President Joe Biden on December 7
American leader will address Ukrainian lawmakers in parliament
US Vice President Joe Biden will address Ukraine’s parliament next week during a visit that will largely ignored by ordinary Americans, most of whom are still incapable of finding the country on a map.
Michael Eckels for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on December 2 writes about what we can expect from the visit.
“A senior U.S. administration official said on December 2 that in his address to the Verkhovna Rada, Biden would reiterate U.S. opposition to Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and support for Ukraine’s debt-restructuring agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international lenders”.
Biden is the highest-ranking US official to speak before the Ukrainian parliament since U.S. President George H.W. Bush in 1991, during the waning days of the Soviet Union.
During that trip, he delivered the infamous ‘Chicken Kyiv‘ speech, which is still widely considered as one of “the worst speeches” ever made by an American chief executive.
“Biden has visited Ukraine four times since peaceful protests began in the streets of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in November 2013 over a proposed deal between Ukraine and the European Union. Those protests morphed into violent clashes and culminated in February 2014 with then-President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing the country.’
US and European officials say combined Russia/separatist forces in eastern Ukraine continue to violate the Minsk accords. Eckel says Moscow, for its part, is accusing Ukrainian security forces of violations.
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“Biden’s visit comes just days after US President Barack Obama signed new defense-policy legislation for 2015 that includes 0 million in aid and equipment for Ukraine. Of that figure, Congress earmarked USD 50 million for lethal weaponry, something Ukraine has been requesting for months now.”
Read also US agrees to provide USD 1 billion more to Ukraine
Unfortunately, much of promised US non-lethal assistance to Ukraine has been “crap,” according to several recent articles appearing in the English-language press. Eckels adds at the end of the piece that Biden will also discuss the decades-long problem of reforms aimed at rooting out Ukraine’s deeply entrenched and festering problem of corruption.
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