Biden handles Ukraine politics
WASHINGTON — Two days before he fled Ukraine’s capital, President Viktor Yanukovych huddled on the phone for more than an hour with Vice President Joe Biden, his primary conduit with the U.S. government throughout the political crisis consuming the former Soviet republic.
The window for a resolution to the crisis was closing quickly — and may already have closed, Biden warned Yanukovych, according to a senior administration official familiar with the conversation. Yanukovych was initially defiant, the official said, and accused the protesters in the streets of Kiev of being terrorists. Though Yanukovych became less resistant to Biden’s appeals as the call continued, the vice president hung up the phone uncertain of the embattled leader’s next move.
What followed was a rapid series of developments that left Yanukovych’s fate — and the broader political situation in Ukraine — highly uncertain. On Friday, Yanukovych agreed to form a new government and hold an early election. Ukraine’s parliament slashed the president’s powers and voted to free his rival, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, from prison. And on Saturday, Yanukovych fled Kiev, reportedly holing up in Crimea, a pro-Russian area of Ukraine.
The tenuous political agreement was orchestrated by European diplomats, with the U.S. and Russia playing supporting roles.
Biden and Yanukovych first met in 2009 when the newly sworn-in American vice president traveled to Ukraine. Yanukovych was an opposition political leader with an eye on the presidency. Ukraine’s conflicted loyalties between Europe and Russia, which are at the center of the current crisis, were already bubbling to the surface.
Yanukovych announced this past November he was abandoning an agreement with the European Union and instead was seeking closer cooperation with Moscow. Protesters took to the streets, seizing control of Kiev City Hall and coming under brutal attack by police. Dozens of people were killed in clashes last week.
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