USA presents Ukraine ultimatum

US administration urged the Ukrainian government to put an end to violations of democratic norms

The US Department of State has recently released rather a harsh statement. The official spokesman for the department, Richard Boucher, demanded Ukraine should conduct the forthcoming presidential election without any violations. Otherwise, Boucher stated, Ukraine would be deprived of the political support from the States. According to the US official, America would closely cooperate with any politician, who would win the honest and free election.

The Department of State reminded that Washington was grateful to Ukraine for its support of the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, although it did not relieve the Ukrainian administration of the responsibility to Ukrainian citizens to protect democracy and human rights in the country and hold the election in compliance with international standards. Boucher emphasized that the US administration urged the Ukrainian government to put an end to violations of democratic norms and to let Ukrainians vote freely.

The USA is concerned about the fact that the Ukrainian government tries to restrict freedom of speech and mass media. In addition, the American officials do not like the fact that Ukrainian politicians often use state resources to support one of the nominees for the presidential post, RUpor news agency said. If the election in Ukraine does not meet democratic standards, the USA will have to revise the relations with those people, who manipulate the elections, Richard Boucher promised.

The US Department of State believes that the forthcoming election will be the most important presidential election in the history of Ukraine. OSCE will send 600 international observers to Ukraine to observe the election process. Ukraine will have 10,000 of its own observers too. The observers will not be able to prevent all violations, although they will register the most blatant ones of them.

American and European officials believe that Ukrainian authorities may not let international observers access the polls on the voting day. In addition, they may not be allowed to observe the process of vote calculation.

Alexandra Kirichenko