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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBreaking: Kerry to Visit Kiev to Show Support for New Ukrainian Government
By MICHAEL R. GORDONMARCH 2, 2014
WASHINGTON Secretary of State John Kerry plans to visit Kiev on Tuesday in a gesture of support for the new Ukrainian government, a senior United States official said on Sunday.
The announcement came just hours after Mr. Kerry warned that Russia risked eviction from the Group of 8 industrialized nations and that assets of Russian businesses could be frozen if the Kremlin did not reverse its military occupation of Crimea in Ukraine.
Mr. Kerry had been scheduled to travel on Tuesday to an international meeting on Lebanon but will instead leave Washington on Monday for Ukraine, his first trip there as secretary of state.
Mr. Kerry will meet with senior Ukrainian leaders, and talk with the Parliament and civil society leaders, a senior official said. He will discuss measures to support Ukrainian politically, the official said.
read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/world/europe/kerry-warns-russia-of-possible-eviction-from-g-8.html?hpw&rref=world&_r=0
Cha
(297,158 posts)Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)Kerry did a great job with Iran and Syria.
Syria is giving up their WMD and Iran is now working with the international community.
Hopefully Kerry can duplicate his diplomatic success.
Pretzel_Warrior
(8,361 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)The far right has also achieved a major breakthrough in the government. Some commentators have warned that their level of representation in the new Ukrainian government is unparalleled in Europe. The xenophobic Svoboda party controls the posts of deputy prime minister, ministers of defence, ecology, agriculture and the prosecutor general's office. Andriy Parubiy, one of the founders of the Social-National Party of Ukraine and a former leader of its paramilitary youth organisation, who later joined the moderate Batkivshchyna party and efficiently commanded self-defence forces in Maidan, is now the head of the national security and defense council.
At the same time, the protest badly fits into the coup label of a well-planned armed seizure of power. The Maidan movement, particularly its paramilitary arm, was hardly controlled by the parliamentary parties. In fact, these parties were regularly trying to pacify the movement, urging compromises with Yanukovych, albeit without much success.
What is most worrying is that the new government cannot control the infamous Right Sector. Its members are now popular heroes, the vanguard of the victorious "revolution". They have guns captured from police departments in the western regions and now, after Yanukovych's toppling, are demanding that the revolution needs to continue against "corrupt democracy" and liberalism. The liberals celebrating their decisiveness and crucial role in the Maidan movement are now discovering the right's reactionary ideas. Recently, the press secretary of the Right Sector gave an interview saying "we need to tell Europe the right way to go" and save it from the "terrible situation" of "total liberalism", when people don't go to church and are tolerant of lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender rights. It is too soon for the Right Sector to move against the new government it lacks the support. But the group may lead a new insurrection in the event of a rapid and deepening economic crisis. In the absence of any strong leftist force in Ukraine, social grievances will be whipped up by rightwing populists.
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)US officials have visited countries like Saudi Arabia in the past even though they are very anti-LGBT.