Ukraine bone of contention between Washington and Moscow

Twenty years later, Russia invaded Crimea and sent dissidents to Kiev.

The Russia calls it "support to separatist insurgency in Eastern Ukrainian front". Regardless of designation, how Kiev and the Kremlin reached the point of no return?

Since the independence of Ukraine in 1991, the relationship between Kiev and Washington had ups and downs. Actually, it's a relationship that cannot be considered separately from the Russian policy in the region.

After a good phase at the end of 90 because of the signing of the Treaty, there has been a turnaround in relations between Washington and the Ukraine, with President Leonid Kuchma, to beat the record of human rights abuses that culminated with the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze (in 2000), and resulted in the freezing of bilateral relations.

The next milestone was in 2004, with the Orange Revolution, which u.s. President George w. Bush faced as a good opportunity to try to dismantle the sphere of influence of Russia in Ukraine. The Bush administration, at the time, have provided millions of dollars for the "strengthening of democracy" the opposition leaders and activists lined up with them.

However, the Bush Administration's efforts in 2008 to achieve that Ukraine joined NATO failed, mainly because of opposition from Germany and France, who did not want to antagonize Russia.

The West's appeasement policy toward Moscow has grown in strength with Barack Obama who, at the beginning of the first term, announced that it was pushing the "reset button" on u.s. policy toward Russia aiming to reverse what he called a "dangerous derives an important bilateral relationship".

Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently had another kind of "reset" in mind, and took the cue to redraw the map of Europe.

If You Enjoyed This, Take 5 Seconds To Share It

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• StumbleUpon
• Digg
• Delicious
• LinkedIn
• Reddit
• Technorati