After John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State and Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister met in Paris several media wrote that the White House agreed with the Kremlin regarding federalization of Ukraine.
For example, Russian «Kommersant» wrote «Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry agreed to facilitate federalization of Ukraine».
«The model of Unitary state is not working here»
Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry agreed to facilitate federalization of Ukraine
Russia and USA Ministers of Foreign Affairs had a 4 hour negotiations regarding Ukraine on Sunday night. After the meeting, Sergey Lavrov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation claimed that Moscow and Washington agreed on working with the Ukrainian government to achieve the compliance of national minorities rights, provocateurs disarmament, implementation of constitutional reform and carrying out elections with objective monitoring. From Mr. Lavrov’s statement it was clear that USA agreed with Russia’s opinion that only federalization can save Ukraine.
In the next publication they report «From Mr. Lavrov’s further statements it was clearly seen that John Kerry agreed with his opinion that only federalization can save Ukraine”. He stated “We discussed the constitutional reform and we support it along with the Americans”.
There is a full version of this quote on the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia. “We discussed the constitutional reform and we support it along with the Americans. Ukrainian authorities in Kiev have promised to exercise it. We are sure that federalization is extremely important…”
With a closer look there are a few keys in this statement that would make you doubt the US agreement with Russia on the topic of federalization.
If you go to the official website of the US Department of State and look for the transcript of John Kerry’s press conference regarding the results of the meeting with Mr. Lavrov the first and most important thing you will see is the answer to New York Times journalist, Michael Gordon’s question. He was asking about a possibility of federalization of Ukraine. John Kerry says that Russian point of view should be taken into consideration, because Russia has “serious interests”. However, Ukrainians should make the decision.
Secondly, Lavrov’s wording «We discussed the constitutional reform and we support it along with the Americans” was incorrect. Therefore, Russian minister claims that USA and Russia are talking about the same reform.
We need to look again on the US Department of State website and we will see another quote:
Therefore it is clearly seen that the US is supporting constitutional changes in Ukraine, but they mean those changes that are done by the current Ukrainian government.
Also at the end of Mr. Lavrov’s quote “We discussed the constitutional reform and we support it along with the Americans. Ukrainian authorities in Kiev have promised to exercise it” at least sounds very strange. First of all current Ukrainian government stated that they are against federalization on many occasions. Secondly, it would be very complicated to make a statement like that because Russia keeps negotiating regarding Ukraine without the participation of its leaders.
