Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and President of the United States of America Barack Obama (RIA Novosti/Michael Klimentyev) / RIA Novosti
Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg: Ukrainians Suspect Obama-Putin Cooperation
It's rare that official representatives of the U.S. visit foreign parliaments to persuade lawmakers to vote a certain way on some piece of legislation. Yet last week, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland traveled to Kiev and did just that, as the Ukrainian parliament prepared to vote on amendments to the country's constitution.
Nuland was interested in just one line of the bill that President Petro Poroshenko submitted to the parliament, on page 7:
18. The particulars of local government in certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions are determined by a special law.
It may sound like a bland provision, but it was worth Nuland's airfare, because the line was actually very controversial. Many legislators refused to vote for it. Mustafa Nayyem, a member of Poroshenko's parliamentary faction, explained that the "special law" might enable a future legislature to grant the rebellious, pro-Russian regions in eastern Ukraine powers amounting to legal secession. "I am convinced such a norm doesn't reflect the will of the Ukrainian people, which has already lost thousands of soldiers and continues to fight a bloody war to bring those regions back under Ukrainian jurisdiction," Nayyem wrote.
WNU Editor: Russia is far more important to President Obama than Ukraine .... so yes .... I would not be surprised if President Obama is probably cooperating on some level with Putin on what to with Ukraine.
