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In Show of Support, Obama Meets With Ukraine Leader Obama, Seeking Unity on Russia, Meets Obstacles
(about 14 hours later)
WARSAW — President Obama met on Wednesday for the first time with the newly elected president of Ukraine and pledged American support for efforts to stabilize a country torn by corruption, economic turmoil and a violent pro-Russian insurgency broadly believed to be fomented by Moscow. BRUSSELS — President Obama started his day in Warsaw struggling to convince his friends in Central and Eastern Europe that the United States is being tough enough with Russia. He ended his day in Brussels, still struggling, but this time to persuade America’s core Western allies to stay tough with Russia.
Mr. Obama used the meeting to announce that the United States would increase nonlethal aid to Ukraine with $5 million worth of night-vision goggles, body armor and communications equipment sought by its security forces. He praised President-elect Petro O. Poroshenko, saying that Mr. Poroshenko “understands the aspirations and hopes of the Ukrainian people” and represents a better future for his country. The dizzying contrasts underscored the challenges Mr. Obama faces navigating the complicated waters of European politics as he tries to forge a unified stance against Russian aggression in Ukraine. On the defensive at home for a prisoner swap, he finds himself pressed overseas by some allies unsatisfied with his reassurances of resolve and others unimpressed with his arguments for action.
“I have been deeply impressed by his vision,” Mr. Obama told reporters at the end of the 70-minute session. “The United States is absolutely committed to standing behind the Ukrainian people, not just in the coming days and weeks but in the coming years.” He arrived here on Wednesday to have dinner with the leaders of the Group of 7 powers who, at his urging, had excluded President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as punishment for his annexation of Crimea. But Mr. Obama’s counterparts from Britain, France and Germany all ended up scheduling one-on-one meetings with Mr. Putin later on. President François Hollande of France even arranged to have dinner with Mr. Putin on Thursday just after having a separate dinner with Mr. Obama.
Mr. Obama started the second day of a four-day trip to Europe with an introduction to Mr. Poroshenko — a meeting that gave the American president a chance to take a personal measure of the leader now charged with pulling Ukraine back from the brink of political and economic collapse. Mr. Poroshenko was elected on May 25 and will be inaugurated on Saturday, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in attendance. Not only were they unwilling to snub the Russian leader entirely, as Mr. Obama sought, they were also reluctant to go along with other efforts to isolate the Kremlin. Most notably, the French government repeated that it would go ahead with the $1.6 billion sale of powerful warships to Moscow along with plans to train 400 Russian sailors in France this month. And other European leaders were cautious about setting further red lines threatening additional sanctions against Russia.
American officials have come away from their initial dealings with Mr. Poroshenko hopeful that he has the capacity to overhaul a dysfunctional system. A billionaire known as the chocolate king of Ukraine for his confection business, Mr. Poroshenko, a former foreign minister, speaks colloquial English and has made clear that he is determined to integrate his country into Europe. Mr. Obama’s aides repeated their opposition to the French sale on Wednesday but tried to play down the disparate approaches of the leaders.
At the same time, Mr. Poroshenko has dealt with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in the past, and American officials hope he may be able to improve ties with the Kremlin. Mr. Putin has said he recognizes the choice of the Ukrainian electorate, but he has not yet scheduled a meeting with Mr. Poroshenko and denies sponsoring the separatists who have been waging a low-grade civil war in eastern Ukraine. “The question is not whether they’re meeting,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser. “The question is what people are saying in those meetings. And our belief is that there needs to be a unified message.”
Mr. Poroshenko talked at length with Secretary of State John Kerry during a dinner sponsored by the Polish government on Tuesday night and again on Wednesday morning. Mr. Kerry plans to follow the meetings here by sitting down in Paris on Thursday with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia to discuss Ukraine as well as the joint Russian-American venture to remove chemical weapons from Syria. Others expressed concern. Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister who saw Mr. Obama in Warsaw and then traveled to Kiev later in the day, said Moscow was playing the allies against one another.
Beyond finding a way to ease the security issues in eastern Ukraine, where violence has continued to flare, American officials said that the most important way they could aid Mr. Poroshenko is to help him put the country on a stronger economic footing and deal with its reliance on Russia for energy. “I really hope the G-7 dinner tonight has produced the cohesion necessary,” he said. “It’s only by sticking together that we can influence events. Russia is very consciously cultivating and using different bilateral links.”
The International Monetary Fund has stepped in with a rescue package and the United States has chipped in, but Ukraine is still negotiating with Moscow over unpaid natural gas bills. The leaders used their dinner on Wednesday to discuss what might set off another, more expansive, round of sanctions. Some Europeans want to keep new sanctions in their pocket, as they put it, to impose only if Russia escalates the situation, while others say Moscow should avoid new penalties only if it proactively works to stop pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.
“They’re very interested in making sure that economic support is in place,” Mr. Obama said Tuesday. “They’re very concerned about making sure that energy is in place as winter comes up.” After a long discussion, the leaders left the question largely unresolved. In a joint statement, they again condemned Russia’s actions and called on the country to stop the flow of arms and fighters across its borders. But they did not specify what might prompt them to broaden their sanctions to target entire sectors of the Russian economy. Instead, they threatened “to impose further costs on Russia should events so require,” without elaboration.
“The I.M.F. package and the international assistance, including ours, that has been forthcoming is going to be critical, I think, in these early months of the new government’s efforts to solidify its position and also to reach out to skeptics and say there’s the prospect for a better life,” Mr. Obama added. “But that has to translate into concrete action. And so we’re going to spend a lot of time on the economics of Ukraine.” Unlike some other Western European leaders, Chancellor Angela Merkel sided with the tougher line in a speech to the German Parliament before flying to Brussels. Mr. Putin “has to make his influence felt” with pro-Russian separatists who have attacked and seized government offices in eastern Ukraine and do more to prevent weapons flowing into Ukraine across porous Russian borders, she said.
. “If all this does not stop,” she told Parliament, “then we will not shy away from imposing new sanctions.”
After the meeting, Mr. Obama gave an address at a ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of the first partially free elections in Poland, which led to the eventual end of Communist rule, and he linked those momentous events to Ukraine’s own political revolution in recent months. But the French government repeated its refusal to cancel the warship sale, saying it would be illegal to break a contract under international law. French officials view the economic imperative as outweighing the geopolitical costs.
“The Ukrainians of today are the heirs of Solidarity — men and women like you who dared to challenge a bankrupt regime,” Mr. Obama told a crowd in Castle Square under overcast skies. “When your peaceful protests were met with an iron fist, Poles placed flowers in the shipyard gate. Today, Ukrainians honor their fallen with flowers in Independence Square.” “France cannot bat aside these economic questions with the back of a hand,” said Jean Carrère, who leads the French Senate’s committee on foreign relations and defense, noting “the serious economic difficulties” the country is facing.
He held out Poland as a model for Ukraine. Where the two countries were in similar economic positions at the end of the Cold War, Poland has become far more prosperous. Poland’s gross domestic product is nearly $14,000 per capita, compared with Ukraine’s, which, at under $3,600, is the second-lowest of 41 countries in Europe measured by I.M.F. data. They also disagreed with Mr. Obama’s strategy of walling Moscow off from the outside world. “We’ve tried not to isolate Russia,” said a French official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss delicate a diplomatic dispute. “How can you ignore Russia today? They are important actors in the Middle East. They are everywhere.”
Mr. Obama’s meeting with Mr. Poroshenko came a day after he arrived in Warsaw, where he vowed to spend as much as $1 billion to bolster training and joint exercises in Central and Eastern Europe, where many feel jittery about Russia’s revived assertiveness in the region. But Polish leaders were disappointed that Mr. Obama is not sending more troops in the short term or establishing a permanent base in the long term. That Mr. Obama is caught in the middle may be frustrating to him, given that he does not seem eager for a confrontation with the Kremlin either, but he wants to avoid allowing Russian aggression to stand with impunity and feels pressure at home to take a tough line. Even within his team, there are cross pressures about how to respond, most recently over sending more troops to bolster the security of Poland and other NATO allies in the east.
After his speech in Castle Square, Mr. Obama departed for Brussels to meet with other members of the Group of 7 industrial powers: Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Their gathering was originally scheduled as a Group of 8 summit meeting to be hosted by Mr. Putin in Sochi, Russia, but that meeting was called off when Russia was suspended from the group after its annexation of Crimea. Mr. Obama sided with aides who advised against a more robust military presence in the east in the short term for fear that it would be unnecessarily provocative. But he did promise to spend up to $1 billion if approved by Congress to increase joint exercises, expand military training and preposition equipment. And in a speech in Castle Square in Warsaw on Wednesday before flying here, he had strong words of support.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, speaking to the German Parliament hours before flying to Brussels for the Group of 7 meeting, said Russia needed to do more to prevent violence in eastern Ukraine and gave her clearest warning to date that failure to act would lead to tougher sanctionsagainst Moscow. “Poland will never stand alone,” Mr. Obama declared. “Estonia will never stand alone. Latvia will never stand alone. Lithuania will never stand alone. Romania will never stand alone.”
Mr. Putin “has to make his influence felt” with pro-Russian separatists who have attacked and seized government offices in eastern Ukraine and do more to prevent weapons flowing into Ukraine across porous Russian borders, Ms. Merkel said. Mr. Obama was addressing a ceremony for the 25th anniversary of the elections that led to the eventual collapse of Communist rule in Poland, and he linked those stirring events to the current upheaval in Ukraine. “The Ukrainians of today are the heirs of Solidarity — men and women like you who dared to challenge a bankrupt regime,” Mr. Obama said.
“If all this does not stop,” she told Parliament, “then we will not shy away from imposing new sanctions,” under the so-called Stage 3 of measures approved by the European Union in early March after Russia annexed Crimea. So far, the Europeans and the United States have punished individuals but not whole sectors of the Russian economy, which could happen under those more severe Stage 3 sanctions. His message drew mixed reactions. “The U.S. president did not miss the opportunity to say the right things in the right time and place,” said Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, a former Polish prime minister.
But Witold Waszczykowski, a senior member of Poland’s chief opposition party, Law and Justice, said that $1 billion for a region of 10 allies is not much. “In the past 25 years, we heard a lot of nice speeches, also from other American presidents,” he said. “Now it’s time to turn words into deeds. Because it’s us who are neighbors with the greatest aggressor.”
Mr. Obama met in Warsaw for the first time with the newly elected president of Ukraine, Petro O. Poroshenko, and pledged support for efforts to stabilize his country. Mr. Obama announced that the United States would provide Ukraine with $5 million worth of night-vision goggles, body armor and communications equipment long sought by its security forces.
Secretary of State John Kerry also spent time talking with Mr. Poroshenko, privately urging him to provide evidence of Russian involvement with separatists with which to confront Russian officials. He plans to meet with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov in Paris on Thursday.
Mr. Obama praised Mr. Poroshenko. “I have been deeply impressed by his vision,” he said after their 70-minute session. “The United States is absolutely committed to standing behind the Ukrainian people and their aspirations, not just in the coming days and weeks but in the coming years.”