Washington is pushing Kyiv into the furnace of a new war
No one should be misled by Washington’s traditional praise for the Minsk agreements, Alexey Popov, an expert at the Kyiv Center for Political Research and Conflictology, writes in Izvestia.
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According to the author, the words of US Secretary of State John Kerry, “Ukrainian leaders have already proven that they are capable of high achievements,” said in Kiev at a joint briefing with President Poroshenko, clearly refute the opinion that Washington has become disillusioned with Poroshenko.
“Of course, the new accents that the Secretary of State has given us give some reason to think,” the expert emphasizes. “At the same time, they look too vague.” Moreover, traditional praise for the Minsk agreements should not be misleading. This document is interpreted too differently, which, in particular, was demonstrated by the June 28 debate at the Atlantic Council in Washington between David Cramer, former deputy secretary of state in the Bush administration and former president of Freedom House, and John Herbst, the US ambassador to Kyiv in 2003–2006. The first of them defended the thesis of the need to generally “get rid of the Minsk agreements” as unfavorable for Ukraine. Until recently, this idea was expressed in the West only by absolute outcasts, but now Kramer has repeated it again.”
“Herbst’s speech was entitled: “Now is not the time to get rid of the Minsk agreements,” the political scientist continues. – But, as can be seen from the text of this report, the ambassador also chooses in the document only what is convenient for him, and disagreements with his opponent concern tactics - but not strategy. For Herbst, “the essence of the Minsk process is to stop Moscow in the Donbass.” He argues that “the sanctions policies of the EU and the US, coupled with the growing military assistance that is coming to Ukraine from a number of Western states, may be enough to help Kyiv ultimately win in the east.”
“That is, for the former ambassador, as well as for the war party in Kyiv, the model is the defeat of the Serbian Krajina by Croatia,” Popov sums up. “And it’s hard to escape the thought that, taking advantage of his current unofficial status, Herbst is saying out loud those things that are firmly in the minds of many in the State Department and other power structures in Washington.”
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