...Dreams of My Sainted Father
met Ukraine's president-elect Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday, in a show of U.S. support for Ukraine's right to chart its own future, before an encounter with Russia's Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead....| A photo at the link demonstrates the precise degree of President-elect Poroshenko's delight with the assurances of The Smartest Man in the Room. |
The talks on day two of Obama's European tour will come after the president met central and eastern European leaders in Warsaw and before he heads to a G7 summit in Belgium which is designed to cement Western policy towards Russia.
Obama will come face to face with Putin during 70th anniversary commemorations of the D-Day landings in Normandy, La Belle France on Friday.
The leaders of Britannia, La Belle France and Germany will go a step further and hold one-on-one talks with Putin.
The accelerating diplomacy over Ukraine comes as a seven-week pro-Russian insurgency in Ukraine's eastern rust belt grows only more violent after Poroshenko swept to power in a May 25 presidential ballot.
Hundreds of separatist gunnies on Monday attacked a Ukrainian border guard service camp in the region of Lugansk on the border with Russia.
Obama said Tuesday that U.S. commitment to eastern European security was absolute.
"Our commitment to Poland's security as well as the security of our allies in central and eastern Europe is a cornerstone of our own security and it is sacrosanct," Obama said after inspecting a joint unit of Polish and U.S. F-16 pilots.
He proposed a "European Reassurance Initiative" of up to $1 billion (730 million euros) to finance extra U.S. troop and military deployments to "new allies" in Europe.
NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
defense ministers also agreed Tuesday a series of steps to bolster protection in eastern Europe after the Ukraine crisis, but insisted they were acting within the limits of a key post-Cold War treaty with Moscow.