Confrontation between the US and Germany over “Ukrainian crisis” has been widely discussed in Americans columns.
The Wall Street Journal:
The Ukrainians must also contend with a barrage of bad advice from the West. “After the fall of Slovyansk, the Germans called on Mr. Poroshenko to stop the assault and sue for peace. But Mr. Poroshenko seems to understand he needs to gain the upper hand on the ground before contemplating a settlement. Public opinion in Ukraine won’t stand for anything less,” the article states. “Yet the Kremlin chief still has options. Russia would love to impose a loyal governor in Donetsk, an idea endorsed by Germany. Russia can also ramp up the economic pressure via trade sanctions and cutting gas supplies to destabilize Ukraine. The best news is that Mr. Poroshenko, who came into office in late May, seems to understand that Mr. Putin will grab what he can until Ukraine pushes back,” the authors sum up.
online.wsj.com
Italians have found the main reason why Ukrainian crisis is still in the process – unwillingness of Ukrainian authorities to recognize insurgents as their interlocutors and start the dialogue without preliminary agreement to turn in weapons.
Corriere della Sera:
Fabrizio Dragosei: “Everyone tries to solve Ukrainian’s problem and makes everything to start a negotiation process, but the main obstacle is still the same: Kyiv’s authorities do not want to recognize insurgents from eastern Ukraine and do not want to start the dialogue while rebels still have weapons,” the article writes. “Yesterday Italy’s Minister of foreign affairs Federica Mogherini at the meeting with her counterpart Sergey Lavrov and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin discussed this problem in Moscow. Yesterday evening German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Ukraine’s President once more underlines separatists should surrender. ”Kyiv announces its plan to seize occupies cities of Luhansk and Donetsk. This plan does not suppose air bombing, but it also does not propose to hold a dialogue with armed rebels either,” Dragosei says. “In Moscow Putin supports the idea of a bilateral ceasefire. Russia’s President once more announces his readiness to work for meeting this goal,” the author writes.
corriere.it
Foreign minister of Czech Republic in his interview DW says Russians activity in Ukraine is actually a war.
Deutsche Welle:
Karel Schwarzenberg thinks sanctions on Moscow should have been imposed earlier. The situation with Russia is different. The Crimea has already been occupied. An armed groups have been sent to Ukraine. Thought I have conservative views, but what is going on in Ukraine is a war, there is no other way of putting it. When one country occupies or annexes the part of the other country with using armed forces, it is always called a war. Those actions are partly continued in eastern Ukraine.
www.dw.de
Obama sanction vows against Russia scoffed at in Congress.
Bloomberg:
Warnings from U.S. officials that Russia faces the risk of additional sanctions if it doesn’t stop interfering in eastern Ukraine were mocked by lawmakers who said President Barack Obama’s administration has failed to deliver. “Sometimes I’m embarrassed for you, as you constantly talk about sanctions and yet, candidly, we never see them put in place,” Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told administration officials.” “I really feel like the sanctions threats have been very hollow,” he adds.
www.bloomberg.com
Kremlin’s tactics work – the West begins to analyze the topic about Putin’s dissociation of rebels.
The New York Times.
The West has accused Russia of arming the rebels. “But in recent weeks, fighters have complained that Moscow abandoned them, a sentiment that burst into public view this week when a political strategist closely allied with the Kremlin was shouted at by fighters at a news conference here,” the article states.
www.nytimes.com
By sending mixed signals, Russian leader seeks to blunt push for tougher sanctions.
The Wall Street Journal:
Thomas Graham, a Russia expert and former senior White House official under President George W. Bush, said, however, that the Kremlin’s goal remains the same: “a government in Kiev that at a minimum is not hostile to Moscow and a Ukraine that is not moving with abandon toward Europe.” “What Putin wants is to preserve some kind of appearance of a negotiated process,” says Dimitri Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest think tank in Washington and a Russia specialist. But the Kremlin’s efforts in late June to push the separatists to join Kiev’s unilateral cease-fire failed, as the fractious fighters didn’t follow through on their pledges. Moscow’s efforts to turn the separatist leaders into a credible political force in Ukraine are also handicapped by the fact that many of them are Russian citizens with few ties to the region. Even separatist leaders admit there are few locals with broad appeal.
online.wsj.com
Ukraine needs 500 million Euro to rebuild the infrastructure in eastern Ukraine. Germany will give 3.5 million Euro humanitarian aid.
Die Zeit:
Germany’s foreign minister has decided to increase humanitarian aid for Ukraine up to 3.5 million Euro, German agency Die Zeit informs. Money will be aimed at helping citizens of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. Meanwhile, confrontations in the east create big financial problems for Ukraine’s authorities, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk states. According to his words, approximately 500 million euros will be needed for first infrastructural projects in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. “We do not know where to get such sums of money,” Yatsenyuk adds.
www.zeit.de
In the wake of its military intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, Russia is widely disliked in Europe, the Middle East and the United States, according to a Pew Global Attitudes poll released on 9 July, The New York Times reports.
The New York Times:
“Russia is increasingly disliked in Latin America, although the increase is not as striking as in the United States or Europe,” the edition underlines. “In Asia, most of those surveyed in Bangladesh, China, and Vietnam had a positive opinion of Russia, while most Japanese respondents had a negative view. As with opinions about Russia overall, attitudes toward Mr. Putin’s handling of international affairs were consistently negative in the United States and across Europe. Eighty percent of Americans said they had little or no confidence that Mr. Putin would do the right thing with his foreign policy, as did a majority of adults in every European country surveyed. In Russia, though, 83 percent said they trusted their leader’s handling of world affairs, up from 69 percent two years ago,” the article writes.
www.nytimes.com
