Biden dispatched to Ukraine after Easter shootout kills three

Daily Mail – by FRANCESCA CHAMBERS

Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Kiev, Ukraine on Sunday night for a two-day trip to meet with leaders of the country.

Biden arrived in Kiev on Monday afternoon local time. Upon arrival he was briefed on the situation in Ukraine by the U.S. ambassador to the country. He also met with U.S. embassy staff and a delegation of eight members of Congress who are also in the country on official business.   

President Barack Obama did not accompany Biden on the trip to Kiev. Instead, he will make a previously scheduled visit on Tuesday to Oso, Washington, where 39 people were killed in a mudslide earlier this month.

Tomorrow, Biden will meet with acting Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and President Oleksander Turchinov and Ukrainian legislators from across the country. Ukraine’s Prime Minister and Biden will then speak to the press. Afterward, Biden will meet with a group of civil society leaders before returning to Washington on Tuesday night.

Discussions with Ukrainian leaders will include ‘the international community’s efforts to help stabilize and strengthen Ukraine’s economy and to assist Ukraine in moving forward on constitutional reform, decentralization, anti-corruption efforts, and free and fair presidential elections on May 25th,’ the Vice President’s office said in a statement.

A senior White House official told reporters on the trip that the Vice President would also talk with leaders about new economic, energy and governance assistance the U.S. will be offering Ukraine.

In terms of economic assistance, the U.S. will not offer the country new monetary aid. Rather, the White House is offering to put troops on the ground in Ukraine to ensure that the $1 billion guaranteed loan from U.S. is allocated fairly throughout all of Ukraine, the official explained.

Biden’s visit comes after violence erupted in eastern Ukraine on Easter, despite an agreement last week aimed at easing tensions.

A shootout Sunday at a checkpoint in eastern Ukraine manned by pro-Russia insurgents left at least three dead, and Ukrainian and Russian officials traded accusations of blame. The armed clash followed Thursday’s announcement in Geneva that talks between Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union had produced an agreement to take tentative steps toward calming the volatile situation.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry quickly blamed militant Ukrainian nationalists in Sunday’s attack. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Kiev of ‘a crude violation of the agreements reached in Geneva’ to ease tensions.

‘The authorities (in Kiev) aren’t doing anything, didn’t lift a finger to eliminate the causes that are the basis for the deep crisis today in Ukraine,’ he told a news conference.

The Ukrainian Security Service, however, said the attack was staged by provocateurs from outside the country.

‘The situation regarding the incident outside of Slavyansk is still very murky,’ a senior Obama administration told reporters aboard Air Force 2 on Monday. The official called on Russia to use its influence on pro-Russian forces in the country to get them to de-arm and de-occupy government buildings.

If the Russia continues on a ‘destabilizing’ course in Ukraine, the U.S. will impose ‘mounting costs’ on Russia, he said. The official declined to put a timetable on those costs, but said it wouldn’t be ‘an open-ended process.’

‘This is going to be a situation where we take stock and determine in the relatively near term what our next step should be,’ he said.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney also refused to explain on Monday what those ‘costs’ would be or when they would be implemented. He reiterated to reporters during his daily briefing that those costs would ‘escalate’ if Russia escalated its activity in the country.

U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt laid out a slightly less vague timeline for when the Obama administration would take action if Russia does not comply with the agreement made in Geneva, Switzerland last week.

‘We’re talking days, not weeks,’ he said, according to the White House pool report.

Pyatt said it’s still ‘too early’ to know if the agreement would ultimately prevail.

‘The ball is really in Moscow’s court in terms of whether they’re going to take this diplomatic off-ramp.’

Specifically, pro-Russian activists and insurgents would need to stop illegally occupying government buildings in order to be in compliance with the agreement, he said.

The U.S. ambassador also condemned pro-Russian insurgents’ recent arrests of journalists. Pyatt called the arrests a ‘particularly ugly turn’ in the situation.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2609307/Biden-heads-Ukraine-tensions-rise.html#ixzz31eC03WSV
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