The US official also noted bigger nations “must never be allowed to bully the small or impose their will at the barrel of a gun or with masked men taking over buildings.”
On Thursday, President Barack Obama once again condemned Russian “aggression” in Ukraine.
Obama said Moscow's actions are designed to undermine Kiev's reform plans, adding that Washington and its partners would continue to build pressure on Russia and support Ukraine's efforts to reform its economy.
Ukrainian and European Parliaments Adopt EU Association Agreement
By Peter Schwarz
Global Research, September 18, 2014
World Socialist Web Site
Region: Europe, Russia and FSU
Theme: Global Economy, US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: UKRAINE REPORT
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ukraine-europe
On Tuesday, the parliaments in Kiev and Strasbourg adopted the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union. The refusal of President Viktor Yanukovych to sign this agreement last November triggered the protests on the Maidan in Kiev and the Western-backed coup against Yanukovych.
In the European Parliament, 535 deputies supported the agreement, 127 voted against and 35 abstained. In Kiev, all 355 deputies present voted in favor, while 95 did not attend the vote. The two sessions were connected by video transmission.
It was left to the Chairman of the European Parliament, the German Social Democrat Martin Schulz, to praise the adoption of the agreement as a “triumph for democracy”. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko spoke of a “historic moment” and pathetically declared: “We are treading the path towards victory.”
In fact, the Association Agreement will go down in history as a dirty deal struck between the imperialist powers of Europe and Ukrainian oligarchs at the expense of the working class and world peace.
At the heart of the Agreement are geopolitical interests. The main issue, theFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted, is “not trade or if the Ukraine can participate both in a customs union with the European Union and with Russia. It’s about spheres of influence.”
Poroshenko for his part declared in parliament that the ratification of the agreement meant that Ukraine had made its “geopolitical choice.”
The oligarchs who rule Ukraine are integrating the country into the spheres of influence of the EU and NATO, receiving in return guarantees protecting the wealth they illegitimately acquired during the dissolution of the USSR. The Kremlin can only perceive this as a geopolitical threat, after the world’s biggest military alliance has increasingly surrounded Russia militarily since the dissolution of the Soviet Union a quarter of a century ago. The threat of war, which could end in nuclear disaster, has grown accordingly.
Claims that the signing of the agreement was an act of national self-determination, or a step towards the rule of law and democracy, prove to be absurd when one examines more closely the content of the agreement. By committing itself to adopt EU law, Kiev is largely handing over legislative authority to the unelected EU bureaucracy in Brussels, even though it will not be an EU member. About 80 percent of all laws and regulations are subject to EU provisions.
The agreement subordinates Ukraine to the financial and budgetary dictates of the International Monetary Fund and the EU. The consequences will prove to be even more devastating for the desperately poor population of Ukraine than for the Greek people. There, average incomes have dropped by a third due to the financial dictates of the troika, social provisions and education have been eradicated, and broad swathes of the population have been condemned to abject poverty and unemployment.
The economic consequences of the Association Agreement are so devastating, that its centerpiece, the free trade agreement, is only due to come into force at the beginning of 2016. The delay was agreed by the EU Commissioner for Trade Karel De Gucht, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, and Russian Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev last Friday in Minsk. Russia presented a long list of objections which it wants to negotiate beforehand.
Ukrainian nationalists have condemned the delay of the FTA as an inadmissible concession to Moscow. Fatherland Party chair Yulia Tymoshenko called it “a betrayal of the national interest,” while the chair of the Greens in the European Parliament, Rebecca Harms, ranted: “Mr. Putin has sabotaged the deal.”
In fact, the delay in implementing the free trade agreement is “a sudden and dramatic step to protect the Ukrainian economy,” as Die Zeit writes. The immediate abolition of customs duties on goods from the EU would not only flood Ukraine, but through Ukraine also Russia, with competitive imports from Europe that would threaten to undermine domestic industries.
Russia currently does not levy taxes on imports from Ukraine but has threatened to do so if the free trade agreement is implemented immediately.
Russia is, besides the EU, the main market for Ukrainian products, and the introduction of customs controls would have a devastating effect on the Ukrainian economy, which is already in free fall. The national currency, the hryvnia, has lost 36 percent of its value against the US dollar since the beginning of the year, the inflation rate is 25 percent, and economic output is expected to shrink by ten percent by the end of this year.
The Ukrainian regime also fears the withdrawal of Russian investment. The two economies are closely intertwined, and Ukraine depends on Russian capital. One seventh of the banking sector is in the hands of Russian financial institutions, and large parts of the country’s power system, telephone lines, mobile phone providers, steel mills and real estate are owned by Russian companies. Any sudden withdrawal of capital would lead to severe shocks.
The aim therefore of the free trade delay is primarily to buy time. The same purpose is served by two other laws agreed by the Ukrainian parliament shortly before the adoption of the Association Agreement. One law grants more autonomy to the embattled regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, allowing them have their own elections and set up their own militia. The second law grants an amnesty to separatists who have not committed serious crimes.
These laws have been rejected out of hand by the ultra-right nationalists, upon which the Kiev regime relies. Just 287 of the 450 deputies voted in favor of the amnesty law and 277 for the Autonomy.
There were tumultuous scenes in front of the parliament with at least one deputy assaulted and dumped into a trash can.
Nevertheless, President Poroshenko insisted on the adoption of the laws. The vote was held in secret because this was probably the only way to secure a majority. Poroshenko needs time to reorganise the Ukrainian army with the support of NATO. It has suffered significant setbacks in recent weeks and is presently incapable of defeating the separatists militarily.
For its part, NATO is currently carrying out military maneuvers in Ukraine and the Black Sea, thereby demonstrating that it will escalate its military pressure on Russia.
Geneva WEF Ukraine Initiative: Ten Points for Resolving the Conflict in Ukraine
Geneva Ukraine Initiative / WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
n the spirit of dialogue and in the search for common ground to find solutions for the conflict in Ukraine, sixteen prominent business leaders with equal representation from Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Europe, and the United States gathered privately on the invitation of Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, on Sunday September 14th in Geneva.
While acknowledging the complexity of the situation and the different viewpoints, the participants succesfully agreed on a common approach. The ten points summarized below are considered by all to help resolve the conflict.
All participants recognize that the implementation of these proposals in the present context is challenging given the many complexities. They trust the political leaders involved and their ongoing dialogue, and hope that these proposals can support their initiatives for resolving the Ukraine conflict. The participants also hope that the political leaders can meet soon to bring an end to the conflict, and they pledge their full support for such a political process.
1. Build on the 12 point ceasefire plan elaborated under the OSCE. Ensure a sustained truce, supporting the immediate end of violence and further loss of life. Acknowledge the primacy of the value of human life.
2. Refrain from using provocative and belligerent language, recognizing that it is only through dialogue conducted in an honest and collaborative spirit that progress, security and sustainable peace can be achieved.
3. Intensify the process of comprehensive dialogue on a national Ukrainian level, between Ukraine and the Russian Federation and between Europe, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the United States with the commitment to establish shared objectives and identify key milestones for the solutions to the present challenges.
4. Maintain a security framework in Ukraine’s eastern region under the oversight of the OSCE, to last until the territorial security is guaranteed.
5. Initiate an inclusive political process towards the decentralisation of power in Ukraine, where additional rights are delegated from the central government to the regions, while also supporting guarantees for minority and language rights.
6. Guarantee the security and sovereignty of Ukraine by the international community. Recognize the supremacy of international law above national interests. Recognize the right of self-determination but encourage to consider a policy of military non-alignment for Ukraine, comparable to the status of other European countries (i.e. Finland, Sweden, Switzerland).
7. Identify how sanctions and counter-sanctions can be avoided and rolled-back in accordance with key milestones achieved in the process of reconciliation, as part of a process of re-establishing normal business dialogue and relations.
8. Put in place an economic recovery plan which addresses the devastation created by the conflict, the need for humanitarian assistance and the rehabilitation of infrastructure required. Establish for this a multistakeholder process and encourage all actors, particularly business, to jointly invest.
9. Coordinate and establish special association and trade agreements for Ukraine as well with the European Union as with the Russian Federation, and later possibly with the Eurasian Economic Community, to stabilize Ukraine’s economy, allowing Ukrainian companies to boost job creation, to improve long-term growth prospects and to reach international levels of competitiveness.
10. Organize a summit for the top political leaders from Europe and European countries involved, the Russian Federation, Ukraine and the United States in Geneva within a short timeframe to advance the reconciliation process. – emphasis, m.z. –
URL:
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GenevaU...s_2014.pdf
(1) Participants of the Meeting: Joe KAESER (CEO Siemens; G), Kurt BOCK (CEO BASF; G), Indra NOOYI (CEO Pepsi; U.S.), German GREF (CEO Sberbank; RU), Andrj KOSTIN (CEO VTB; RU), Ukrainian Oligarchs Wiktor PINTSCHUK, Serhij TARUTA et.al.
In the Wake of the Ukraine Cease Fire. The Road Map to War with Russia?
Cease-fire and its reasons
The piping-hot stage of the Ukraine crisis was over with signing of Minsk cease-fire agreement. It is far from clear how long the cease-fire will last, and whether it will morph into stable peace; still this pause provides a chance to review policies and strategies of the sides. The first part of this essay dealt with the Ukrainian crisis up to the Boeing incident. I wrote there of lacklustre achievements of the rebels and concluded that “without direct Russian involvement, a separatist movement in Novorussia was doomed to fail.”
After the Boeing disaster, the Russians have made peace in Ukraine their priority. Paradoxically, this called for more Russian involvement. From the beginning, State Department claims notwithstanding, Putin did not want the war in the Ukraine, and still less he wanted a war with Ukraine. He would prefer the Ukraine remain neutral and friendly. This dish was not on the menu as the US intended to fight Russia by Ukrainian hands, or at least, to strengthen its hold over Europe by using Russian scarecrow. Still Putin procrastinated hoping things will sort out.
He miscalculated: he did not count on Poroshenko’s military ardour, on the new Kiev ruler’s readiness to inflict huge civilian casualties and to sacrifice his own army. This was unexpected development – after peaceful transition of Crimea, Putin could expect Kiev will honour Donbass desires. Putin could not leave Donbass in flames and forget about it. One million refugees from Ukraine already crossed into Russia; continuation of Kiev’s war in Donbass could dislodge up to five million refugees, too much for Russia to swallow.
Putin was ready to negotiate with Poroshenko and achieve a peaceful settlement; Poroshenko refused. The low-level support for Donbass rebels was not sufficient to change the rules of the game and force Poroshenko to negotiate. This called for a limited victory, at the price of some Russian involvement.
It appears that the “involvement” rapidly changed the situation. Facing defeat at seaport city of Mariupol, Kiev accepted Putin’s proposals. Did the involvement amount to invasion? I have no access to the secrets of state, but I’ll share with you what I have heard and seen and understood.
First, compare Russia to Vietnam of fifty years ago.
Vietnam was divided into North and South by the West, like the USSR was divided into Ukraine and Russia by the West.
North Vietnam became independent; Russia became independent;
South Vietnam remained under occupation, Ukraine remained under Western occupation.
People of South Vietnam rose against their US-installed government and North Vietnam certainly supported their struggle.
The US presented the war as “North Vietnamese aggression”, but North and South Vietnam weren’t two independent states; this was one state artificially separated by the West.
Likewise, the US presents now the war in Ukraine as “Russian intervention”, but Russia and Ukraine aren’t two fully independent countries; they are rather two halves of one country, in the eyes of Russians and Ukrainians. In their view, people of the Ukraine rose against the US-installed government, and independent Russia had to support their struggle.
People of my generation remember as the US killed millions of Vietnamese people, bombed their cities and ruined their nature – under the banner of “resisting North Vietnamese aggression” but it ended by unification of Vietnam. Poroshenko is a Ngo Dinh Diem of the Ukraine, Putin is an unlikely Ho Chi Minh of Russia.
Actual Russian involvement took form of (1) providing equipment and training for the Novorussia forces, like the US trained the Syrian rebels in Jordan, and (2) allowing some Russian officers to take leave from their duties and join the rebel forces on the voluntary basis. The Russia-trained and equipped rebel units fortified by some Russian officers, weren’t quite up to scratch as regular army goes; their enthusiasm made up for the lack of skill. Kiev regime estimated the whole Russian military presence in the Ukraine at one thousand men; a negligible amount in comparison with 50,000 troops of Kiev regime and 30,000 of the main rebel forces, but it made the difference. Even more important was (3) strategic command and advice provided by retired planners of the Russian General Staff.
I’ve been told by people on the ground that the Novorussian military leader Colonel Strelkov (I described him in Part One) had no previous experience of commanding big-scale operations, and despite his personal courage he could not successfully lead a force of 30 thousand men. Apparently he was asked to leave the command to more experienced professionals. These first-class military planners rapidly improved the situation by stabilizing the link between Russia and the rebel-held enclave. The Kiev army has been pushed away from the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk.
An additional rebel force crossed the old Russian-Ukrainian border far to the south of Donetsk and closed on Mariupol, an important city and port on the Sea of Azov. The lightening speed of the Mariupol attack changed the equilibrium on the ground. Now the rebels could proceed for Melitopol, eventually heading for Kakhovka, a place of ferocious battles of the Civil war in 1919. If they were to take Kakhovka, they would be able to secure the whole of Novorussia or even retake Kiev. This development proved to Poroshenko that he needs a cease fire. He agreed to the Minsk formula and the armistice took place. The rebels were upset by the armistice as they felt their victory was stolen from them, but they were convinced by the Russians that it would be better to safeguard Donbass.
The sanctions
For the main antagonist of Russia, the US, the cease-fire was a minor setback. Washington would prefer the Russians of Russia and Ukraine to fight each other to death, but it had to consider the weakness of Kiev forces. In 1991, at the break-up of the USSR, the Ukraine has got a much better equipped and much stronger army than Russia had, but twenty years of embezzlement turned it into a feeble pushover. When the Kiev army will be beefed up by Western mercenaries and by NATO soldiers, the war is likely to renew, unless there will be a political settlement.
Meanwhile, the US applied various means of economic warfare against Russia. These means are called “sanctions”, though this word is misleading. “Sanctions” are acts of a legitimate authority towards its subjects; such are Security Council sanctions. The US and EU’s measures against Russia aren’t “sanctions” but acts of war on Russia by economic means.
Some “sanctions” were aimed against most powerful Russians in Putin’s inner circle. The idea was to cause these strongmen to plot and get rid of the popular president. This circle of sanctioned persons grew to include many parliamentarians and businessmen, while the ordinary Russians took the sanctions in their stride, or even enjoyed the discomfort they caused to the wealthy of the land. Putin joked that EU travel bans on top legislators would leave them more time to spend with their constituents. “The less time officials and business leaders spend overseas and the more time they spend dealing with current issues the better”, he said.
Other sanctions were aimed at Russian economy: banks, credits were hit; the US allies were forbidden to transfer advanced technology to Russia. Russians were used to this treatment: in the Soviet days, it was called CoCom (Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls), an embargo on advanced technology supplies to the socialist countries. It was a powerful obstacle to their development; if other countries could buy advanced technology from, say, Japan, the Russians and Chinese had to steal it or reinvent it. CoCom is one of the reasons for Soviets after WWII being rather behind-the-times, in comparison with 1930s, when the Soviets could and did buy the most advanced technology of its time. Apparently, Obama resurrected CoCom; and this is the most serious threat to Russia until now.
This will have a strong effect in many ways, not only on Russia’s profits but on Russia’s thinking as well. After 1991, Russia gave up many of its own industries, notably aircraft and switched to buy Boeing or Airbus. Now they have to build their own planes. Russia is fully integrated in Western banking and it has billions of US securities at its account. Russia used its oil profits to buy Dutch cheese, Polish apples, Italian wine, while neglecting its own food production. Under Western sanctions, the Russians are likely to back out of international cooperation and begin to develop or resurrect their own industries and agriculture. This will cost money; the social projects will suffer. The prosperity of the last ten years is likely to vanish.
Russia sparingly applied counter-sanctions. It discontinued importing foods from sanctioning countries, thus applying pressure on European farmers. This measure is likely to influence Europe. In France, for the first time ever, it can bring Mme Le Pen of the Front National into the Palais de l’Élysée, as both mainstream parties are equally beholden to the US. Finland, Slovakia, Greece will ponder leaving the EU altogether. In Russia, its pro-Western glittering and chattering class was quite upset with the disappearance of oysters and parmesan cheese; the food prices rose all over but slightly.
Sanctions after cease-fire
The Russians were bewildered by the Western response of applying more sanctions despite the cease fire in the Ukraine. Apparently, they thought and hoped to restore the ante-bellum friendly co-existence with the US by giving up on the bulk of Novorussia. The Russian ruling elites were ready to accept their heavy strategic losses in the Ukraine and to live with it. But they counted without the US, as Washington pushed for more sanctions.
Slowly, it transpires that for the US administration, the Ukraine crisis just supplied a plausible explanation and a trigger to attack Russia. To be on the safe side, Obama has opened the Second Front against Russia in the Middle East; ostensibly against the chimera of Caliphate, but it has another target.
ISIS (or ISIL, or IS, or Daish, or Caliphate) is a neo-colonisation project for Syria and Iraq. The technique is familiar: Anglo-Americans create a demon, nurture it to its fullness and then destroy and take over the land. They created Hitler, supported him, then demonised and destroyed him by Russian hands. Germany remains an occupied country to this very day. Al-Qaeda was created in 1980s to fight Russians in Afghanistan and later on it was used to create the casus belli in 2001. Afghanistan is still occupied. ISIS was created to fight Russians in Syria, and now it is being used to bomb Iraq and Syria. At the end, the US will occupy and control the whole Fertile Crescent, with Israel as its centrepiece. Some religiously inclined persons may see it as fulfilment of the prophesy of Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates.
The Russians, like the Middle Easterners, do not believe in the official story of saving the world from the threat of ISIS. They remember that quite recently ISIS was supposed to be a moderate force fighting for democracy against the bloody tyrant. They think that the US uses its own toy monster to break up Iraq, to create “independent” Kurdistan, to bomb Syria, to remove Bashar al-Assad from power and lay a new gas pipeline from Qatar via Kurdistan and Syria to Turkey and Europe, thus pushing Russia out of European gas market altogether, to ensure Russia’s income dwindles and the dangerous liaisons of Europeans with Russia are terminated.
Russians do not care for Islamic takfiri extremists like everybody else, so they were surprised that in the US pundits’ minds, there is a connection between ISIS and Russia. Robert Whitcomb, the Wall Street Journal editor, says in an essay called Wishful thinking about Putin and the Islamic State that these two are somehow equal in their sheer wickedness. “We might make fun of those Renaissance paintings in which little devils skitter around. We don’t like to accept that there’s something like evil in the world. But you look at something like the Islamic State and the Putin regime and you realize that those people in 1500 were on to something.” (You won’t be surprised that Whitcomb hates Islam and loves Israel, would you?)
Anne-Marie Slaughter, an ex-State Department and a Professor at Princeton, called for intervention in Syria to teach Russians a lesson. “The solution to the crisis in Ukraine lies in part in Syria. Obama’s climb-down from his threatened missile strikes against Syria last August emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin to annex Crimea. It is time to change Putin’s calculations, and Syria is the place to do it. A US strike against the Syrian government now would change the entire dynamic. After the strike, the US, France, and Britain should ask for the Security Council’s approval of the action taken, as they did after NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999. Equally important, shots fired by the US in Syria will echo loudly in Russia.”
In Russia, there are some voices calling to support the US strikes in Syria. Important politicians and parliamentarians propose to repeat 2001, when Russians supported the US war on terror, despite its grim consequences. (Since 2001, Afghanistan has been occupied by the US, and the traffic of drugs to Russia and Europe increased twenty-fold). Actually, there are many pro-western politicians in power in Russia, and especially in Russian media. Once, the West had freedom of expression, while Soviet Russia spoke in one voice. Now the positions has been reversed: Russia enjoys pluralism of views and freedom of expression, while in the West, alternative views exist on the margins of the public discourse.
Why the US is so keen on subjugating Russia, provided that Russia is not punching above its weight and is generally accommodating to the US demands? The US is special, as this heir to the British Empire guided by Jewish spirit is the only country ever possessing the unique, expensive and uncomfortable desire to rule the whole of planet Earth. They view every independent force in the universe as a challenge they can’t tolerate. They think that Russia with its nuclear weapons and educated people can become too strong and disobedient. Russia is a bad example for Europe, Japan, China, India as these powers could strive for independence, as well. Russia with its oil and gas can attempt to undermine the dollar status as the world currency. Russian weapons could protect Iran and Syria from American anger.
For these reasons, a war between the US and its proxies and Russia seems very probable. Syria and Ukraine are two perspective battlefields where the battle of will precedes the battle of steel. The war may be conventional or nuclear, regional or world-embracing. The alternative is the US’s full spectrum global domination. Many Russians would prefer a war to this grim prospect.
Israel Shamir
Ukrainian President Poroshenko Delivers Bellicose Speech to the US Congress
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko addressed a joint session of the United States Congress on Thursday morning, calling for increased military assistance from the United States to defeat the pro-Russian separatist movement in the east, and for closer trade relations with the West to limit the economic and political influence of Russia in the country.
Poroshenko, a billionaire oligarch dubbed the Chocolate King for his wealth derived from the confectionery business, spoke as the representative of a thin layer of Ukrainian society that has enriched itself in the wake of the restoration of capitalism amidst the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Poroshenko is seeking to build closer economic and military ties with the United States, the European Union, and the other Western imperialist powers to the benefit of this corrupt layer of oligarchs.
His address to the US Congress came just two days after the Ukrainian and European parliaments jointly adopted the controversial Association Agreement, and one day after he secured a $300 million loan guarantee from the Canadian government.
In his address Poroshenko pressed for increased military assistance from the United States in his government’s drive to put down the pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine. Despite a precarious ceasefire between the Kiev regime and the pro-Russian separatists, Poroshenko provocatively called for the United States to provide Ukraine with lethal military aid to complement the non-lethal aid that it has already provided. “Blankets, night vision goggles are also important, but one cannot win the war with blankets. Even more, we cannot keep the peace with a blanket,” he said.
He called on the United States to develop closer military ties with Ukraine by developing a “special security and defense status” with the former Soviet republic, which would allow for the “highest level of interaction with a non-Nato ally.”
Poroshenko insisted that the outcome of the war being fought in Ukraine between the regime and the separatists was of great strategic interest to the United States and the EU. “The only thing that now stands between the reality of peaceful coexistence and the nightmare of the full relapse into the previous century, into a new Cold War, are Ukrainian soldiers,” he said. He maintained that the conflict in Ukraine was a “war for the Free World.”
The Ukrainian president used the address as well to call on the US to enact further economic sanctions against Russia, which he declared to be the aggressor in the east. Just last week the United States and European Union endorsed an expanded set of economic sanctions against Russia’s oil and gas sector.
Finally, Poroshenko called for the development of closer economic ties between the United States and Ukraine. He called on Congress to establish a special fund to “support investment of American companies and Ukraine” and help the country “reform” its economy. He assured the Congress that aid provided by it would be used by “noncorrupt institutions,” and “distributed effectively.”
The last Ukrainian President to address a joint session of the US Congress was Viktor Yushchenko in April 2005, after being swept to power in the so-called Orange Revolution, which was heavily supported by the US State Department, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy, as well as a host of Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Poroshenko denounced what he called Russian “imperialism” on the same day that the US Senate, following in the wake of the House, voted overwhelmingly to support President Barack Obama’s plan for escalating intervention by American imperialism in Syria.
The same senators who hailed Poroshenko as a symbol of resistance to supposed aggression by Russia—whose warplanes have not dropped a single bomb on eastern Ukraine—voted overwhelmingly to support a military effort in which the United States will bomb Iraq, Syria and any other country in the region that it chooses.
Democratic Senator Carl Levin told reporters that the Poroshenko speech was a “real rousing call to us to be supportive of their dreams,” and called for the dispatch of ammunition, surface-to-air missiles and anti-tank weapons to the Ukrainian government. He said that Congress could take up a resolution in an upcoming session encouraging the President to increase military aid to Kiev.
Republican Senator Rob Portman called for Obama to “immediately” respond to Poroshenko’s requests. “I think most members of Congress on both sides of the aisle understand the stakes here and want to be more supportive,” he told reporters.
After his address Poroshenko met with Obama at the White House Thursday afternoon, where the two discussed the details of $53 million in new aid from the United States. While Obama did not immediately commit the US to providing lethal weaponry, the deal would provide non-lethal military equipment including body armor, binoculars, counter-mortar detection units, small boats and other gear for the Ukrainian armed forces and border guards.
After the meeting at the White House Poroshenko told reporters that he was satisfied with the new guarantees from Obama. He said, “I asked the president to increase the cooperation in the security and defense sector, and I received a positive answer.”
Meanwhile sporadic fighting between Kiev forces and pro-Russian separatists continued to strain the ceasefire which was signed by both sides nearly two weeks ago after peace talks in Minsk. Officials at the city hall in Donetsk reported that two civilians had been killed and another three wounded in fighting around the airport since Wednesday.
Andrei Purgin, the deputy prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, told reporters on Wednesday that shelling by government-backed forces had effectively ended the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine. “In my opinion, there is no ceasefire already. Heavy weaponry is being intensely used,” he said. “Towns are bombed. Four neighborhoods of Donetsk are being bombed constantly. Not long ago a shell fell in a bus with people in it.”
Also on Wednesday Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk ordered Kiev’s military force to go into full battle alert against pro-Russian separatists. “Russia will not give us peace so I am asking the defense minister for full battle readiness,” he stated. According to Yatsenyuk, the peace plan worked out by Poroshenko did not mean “relaxing the work of the defense and interior ministries. Full readiness [is required],” he added. “We can’t believe anyone, especially the Russians.”
http://www.interpretermag.com/ukraine-li...etsk/#4324
