WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st September, 2021) After delays due to the aggravated situation in Afghanistan amid US troops withdrawal, US President Joe Biden is holding his first meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday.
Biden was expected to welcome Zelenskyy to the White House on Tuesday, August 31, but the deteriorating security situation in the Afghan capital derailed his plans. The United States had to mount a speedy operation to rescue Americans and their Afghan allies and bring them out of Kabul after it fell to the Taliban militant group (banned in Russia) more than two weeks ago.
Though talks at the highest level have not yet commenced, Washington has already interpreted the visit as a signal of improvement of ties with Kiev. According to US envoy to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the meeting will improve the close relations between the two countries.
"We... look forward to welcoming President Zelenskyy to the United States. His meeting with President Biden will further cement the close relationship between our countries and demonstrate our enduring partnership," Thomas-Greenfield said earlier in August.
According to Kiev, the sides will discuss significant issues during their first meeting in Washington ranging from political cooperation and security to bilateral economic relations. The meeting will culminate in a joint document signed by the two presidents.
"There will be three sets of issues. The first one is political. We have had a strategic partnership with the US since 2008. But, of course, everything has changed since then. And this strategic partnership needs to be brought to a new level. The second is security. Undoubtedly, countering the Russian aggressor, the issue of Donbas, Crimea, where and how we will move. We have discussed some very specific ideas, I cannot share them so far," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced earlier in August.
The third major topic is the economy.
"We do not hide the fact that we want to see more American money in the Ukrainian economy, especially in the strategic sectors of our economy," the minister said, adding that Ukraine can build a very effective partnership with American business and financial institutions, with specific projects being in the pipeline.
Since April 2014, Kiev has been sustaining an offensive against the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which declared independence from what they considered a coup in Kiev earlier the same year. Peace has been discussed in various formats, including the Contact Group in Minsk, which in September adopted three documents to resolve the conflict.
Since July 2020, a set of additional measures to bolster the ceasefire in the breakaway regions have been in effect, including a blanket ban on deploying military equipment or using drones in reconnaissance, sabotage or offensive missions in sensitive locations, and punishments for ceasefire violators. However, the truce has repeatedly been broken, and fighting in the region continues.
Zelenskyy's American visit is taking place less than two weeks after the Crimean Platform summit which took place in Kiev on August 23. The event was aimed at garnering support from the international community to return the Crimean peninsula to Ukraine. The summit was attended by the US delegation led by US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
Russia repeatedly criticized the idea of convening the summit. Earlier in August, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov labeled the Crimean Platform as "another coven" for the nurturing of "neo-Nazi, racist sentiments of the incumbent Ukrainian government."
The Crimean Peninsula re-joined Russia after nearly 97% of voters supported the move in a referendum in March 2014. The majority of Western countries, as well as Ukraine, did not recognize the referendum results and imposed sanctions on Russia. Moscow deems the issue of the peninsula's territorial belonging "historically closed."
While the Nord Stream 2 issue has not been officially confirmed to be on the table between Biden and Zelenskyy, speculations appeared that the leaders will touch upon this topic. In particular, the Ukrainian ruling party leader Davyd Arakhamia said that he expects the closed-door part of the upcoming meeting to be "heated" due to the Nord Stream 2 deal recently reached by the United States and Germany.
In mid-August, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on two Russian companies and two vessels over their involvement in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project. The move came after the US and Germany on July 21 published a deal in which Washington agreed to withhold sanctions to allow for the completion of the pipeline. However, the US also reserved the right to impose sanctions if it deemed it necessary, but that was supposed to be related to Russia's activities vis-a-vis Ukraine.
"I expect, taking into account the degree [of tension in relations], that at least the closed-door meeting of Zelenskyy and Biden will be heated. Today, the US largely underestimates or maybe pretends to underestimate, the blow it has delivered by such an action [the deal on Nord Stream 2]. Using diplomatic language [they] say that 'we are deeply disturbed' and so on, but in the non-diplomatic [language] people call it what it is," Arakhamia said.
The Nord Stream 2 project, which is almost completed, provides for the construction of a 745-mile offshore twin pipeline aimed to supply up to 1.9 trillion cubic feet of gas per year from Russia directly to Germany. Ukraine and several eastern European states called on the EU to abandon the project, citing the bloc's perceived over-dependence on Russia. Meanwhile, Moscow has repeatedly called to stop politicizing the project.
