WASHINGTON, February 28 (RIA Novosti) – A veteran US diplomat linked with a possible ambassadorial posting to Moscow has said the United States and Russia must refrain from adopting confrontational positions on Ukraine and should instead cooperate on assisting the country achieve stability.
Steven Pifer, who served as US Ambassador to Ukraine for two years up until 2000, was named by Russian newspaper Kommersant earlier this week as a possible replacement for Michael McFaul, who ended his stint this week as Washington’s envoy to Moscow.
Pifer said the US and Russia should work together on leading Ukraine out of the turbulence by which it has been gripped since President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted over the weekend after months of sometimes violent street protests.
“The United States is trying to find a way to communicate with Russia and say: ‘Look, we shouldn’t make this an issue over which we are competing,’” Pifer said.
Attention on Ukraine has focused in the last few days on the southern peninsula of Crimea, where tensions are on the rise as the region’s substantial ethnic Russian population has come out in defiant rejection of the newly installed government in Kiev.
Yanukovych’s support base was particularly strong across south and east Ukraine, but Crimea poses a particular and potentially diplomatic challenge as it hosts neighboring Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
Pifer said that heavily ethnic Russian populated areas in eastern Ukraine should pose limited concerns of secessionism.
“While there may be people in eastern Ukraine who voted for Yanukovych and who may be uncomfortable with how things have happened in Kiev over the last week, I don’t think they’re going to say the answer is separatism,” he said. “When I was there 15 years ago, in eastern Ukraine there was a sense of Ukrainian national identity.”
He urged more caution over Crimea, however.
“Crimea is a special case and I think all sides need to tread very carefully there,” he said.
Pifer reiterated calls made by Deputy Secretary of State William Burns this week for authorities in Kiev not to marginalize some parts of the population – an apparent allusion to legislative proposals to drop Russian as an official language in some parts of the country.
“He seemed to be urging the government to take a calmer approach, an inclusive approach that would resound well with all Ukrainians,” Pifer said.
Pifer is among four candidates being considered to succeed McFaul, the architect of Washington's diplomatic reset with Moscow, according to a report by Kommersant on Wednesday.
Pifer, who is a now senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center on the United States and Europe, has previously served at the US embassy in Moscow.
He said the Kommersant report was the first news he had heard that he might be considered for the Moscow post.
“If I am under consideration, nobody in the US government has told me about it,” he said.
