Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with this reminder of how shaky the current cessation in hostilities could be:
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Here's BuzzFeed's Max Seddon's take on Donald Trump's slightly surreal-sounding video address in Kyiv:
Donald Trump, the billionaire businessman turned unlikely leading Republican presidential contender, made a surreal appearance in Ukraine on Friday via video link at a conference organized by Viktor Pinchuk, one of Ukraine’s richest men.
“My feeling toward the Ukraine and toward the entire area is very very strong. I know many people who live in the Ukraine. They’re friends of mine. They’re fantastic people,” Trump said, failing to name any Ukrainians other than Pinchuk. Trump continually referred to the country as “the Ukraine,” a faux pas that rankles most Ukrainians.
Trump was full of praise for Pinchuk, a pro-Western oligarch whose father-in-law is Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s second president, who left office under a cloud a decade ago after recordings emerged of him apparently ordering the beheading of a journalist. “Viktor, by the way, is a very, very special man, a special entrepreneur,” Trump said. “When he was up seeing me I said I think I can learn more from you than you can learn from me.”
It was not entirely clear why Trump decided to speak at the conference, an annual event bringing Western politicians together with the post-Soviet elite, from an office overlooking Central Park from the south, only weeks after saying that he “wouldn’t care” if Ukraine joined NATO and that Crimea’s annexation was “Europe’s problem.” Asked by political analyst Doug Schoen what he would do as president about the crisis in Ukraine and its conflict with Russia, Trump told the crowd that the country was not “given the proper respect from other parts of Europe.”
Trump continued: “Our president is not strong and he’s not doing what he should be doing for the Ukraine,” prompting a lone American to shout “YEAH!” loudly. “So far we have all lip service and in this country we call it just that, it’s lip service and nothing else. Part of the problem that the Ukraine has with the United States is that Putin does not respect our president whatsoever,” Trump said.
Nor was it clear why Pinchuk, who has donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Global Initiative and hosted former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the conference in the past, invited him. A spokesperson for Pinchuk said that the oligarch was simply interested in the presidential race, and had invited former House speaker Newt Gingrich to a previous edition of the conference when it was held in the Crimean resort town of Yalta, now controlled by Russia.
Read the entire article here