Before we get bogged down in pipeline overload, here’s a simplified explanation.
Azerbaijan has substantial natural gas reserves in its Shah Deniz II field in the Caspian Sea. Europe wants access to a gas supply other than Russia and Shah Deniz II fits the bill perfectly. So a series of pipelines are being linked together to get natural gas from Azerbaijan across Georgia and Turkey and eventually to Italy by way of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline. This pipeline route that is intended to thwart Europe’s over-dependence on Russian natural gas is known as the Southern Gas Corridor. More on that in a moment.
Another attempt to weaken Russia’s stranglehold on Europe’s gas market occurred in 2014 when the EU signed an agreement with Ukraine that started the ball rolling toward that country’s possible 2020 entry into the Union.
While many in the media saw the efforts of the U.S., NATO and EU as nothing more than the West’s desire to prop up these new fledgling democracies against any efforts of their former Russian overseer to reclaim them as satellite states, Putin understood the efforts for what they were — a well-thought-out plan to destroy his cartel’s primary revenue stream, thereby weakening his control over Russia.
Of all the former Soviet states that Putin could not allow to fall under the control of the U.S. or EU, Ukraine was most important, at least in the short run.
That’s because Ukraine was Putin’s pipeline to Europe, literally. More than 70 percent of Russia’s natural gas makes its way to European markets via pipelines running through Ukraine. It was the head of Putin’s pipeline snake and he knew Clinton and her allies intended to cut it of
Cut off the head
Remember all the election controversy around Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks and her refusal to release the transcripts of those speeches? Well, WikiLeaks eventually released some of them for her and lo and behold if Russia and its natural gas exports weren’t right at the heart of Clinton’s message.
One transcript from a speech in July of 2014 reads, “We are now energy independent, something we have hoped for and worked for over many, many years. That gives us tools we didn’t have before. And it also gives us the opportunity not only to invest those resources in more manufacturing and other activities that benefit us directly here at home, but to be a bulwark with our supplies against the kind of intimidation we see going on from Russia.”
Newsweek summed up the content of Clinton’s paid speeches, several of which dealt with Russia and its energy exports, as being “the equivalent of a Molotov cocktail directed ‘right at the source of Russia’s wealth.’”
Clinton wanted to use U.S. oil and gas exports to weaken Russia’s grip over Europe, but she knew that the United States’ ability to export that much oil and gas was years away and that it would be difficult for its oil and liquefied natural gas to compete with Russia’s low price point due to its pipeline advantage over our tankers. So she used her position as secretary of state to launch other, broader attacks on Putin’s energy cartel.
The September 2014 issue of Mother Jones reported that Clinton had spent a significant amount of time during her tenure as secretary of state opening up shale oil and gas plays all around the world for U.S. oil and gas companies. She encouraged countries all over the world to quickly begin fracking their own shale resources.
Environmentalists were obviously concerned with this use of the State Department, which eventually created a 63-employee division to encourage the fracking of tight shale around the world. But Clinton was doing more than just the bidding of the major oil and gas corporations that had always supported her and her husband’s political ambitions. Right or wrong — and the newer science would lean toward the latter — Clinton saw natural gas as a clean energy fuel that would aid in the fight against global warming. But more importantly to the current political crisis we are facing, she also saw it as a tool to destroy Putin’s cartel and weaken his authoritarian grip on Russia. In her mind it was a win-win that would write the next chapter of global history with her as the principal author.
“This is a moment of profound change,” she said during an oft-quoted speech before a crowd at Georgetown University in 2012. “Countries that used to depend on others for their energy are now producers. How will this shape world events? Who will benefit, and who will not? … The answers to these questions are being written right now, and we intend to play a major role.”
In the last days of the Obama administration, Vice President Joe Biden took a "swan song" trip to Ukraine, a notoriously corrupt country where he had been the administration's "point person." On the eve of this trip, the country announced it would end a criminal investigation into a company connected to the loss of $1.8 billion in aid funding — a company whose board of directors included Biden's son Hunter.
The Biden family's dealings with this Ukrainian company involved getting one of the country's most notorious mob bankers, Ihor Kolomoisky, off the U.S. government visa ban list. Under Biden's leadership, $3 billion in aid went to Ukraine, and his son's company was implicated in the disappearance of $1.8 billion of that money.
Secretary of State John Kerry announced the U.S. support for Ukraine's nationalist government in March 2014, a month after a mass uprising pushed pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych out of office and inspired a corresponding pro-Russian uprising in the east. Biden became the Obama administration's "point person" for the country.
Hunter Biden "seemed undeterred by the fact that as he was joining the Burisma board the British government's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) was seizing $23 million from [founder Mykola] Zlochevsky's bank accounts." Furthermore, a year after Biden joined the firm, "experienced industry observers warned investors that Burisma was still a company to be avoided."
Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Out of 148 nations studied by the World Economic Forum, Ukraine ranks 143 for property rights, 130 for "irregular payments and bribes," 133 for "favoritism in decisions of government officials," and 146 for "protection of minority shareholders' interests."
Zlochevsky founded Burisma in Cyprus in 2006. He served as natural resources minister under Yanukovych, and gave himself the licenses to develop the country's abundant gas fields. He also had a flare for lavishness, running a super-exclusive fashion boutique named after himself.
Burisma's major subsidiaries ended up sharing the same business address as the natural gas firm controlled by Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. He controlled the country's largest financial institution, ProvatBank, through which the Ukrainian military and government workers got paid. He also owned media companies and airlines. In violation of Ukraine law, he maintained Ukrainian, Israeli, and Cypriot passports.
Kolomoisky gained a reputation for violence and brutality, along with lawlessness. Rival oligarchs have sued him for alleged involvement in "murders and beheadings" related to a business deal. He also allegedly used "hired rowdies armed with baseball bats, iron bars, gas and rubber bullet pistols and chainsaws" to take over a steel plant in 2006. He built his multibillion-dollar empire by "raiding" other companies, forcing them to merge with his own using brute force.
For these and other reasons, the U.S. government placed Kolomoisky on its visa ban list, prohibiting him from entering the country legally. In 2015, however, after Hunter Biden and Devon Archer had joined Burisma's board, Kolomoisky was given admittance back into the U.S.
Archer and the younger Biden brought other benefits to Burisma, however. Archer represented the company at the Louisiana Gulf Coast Oil Exposition in 2015. Biden addressed the Energy Security for the Future conference in Monaco. The vice president's son brought much-needed legitimacy to the shoddy gas company.
Less than a month after Archer joined Burisma's board, the company hired another Kerry lackey, David Leiter, as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. He successfully lobbied for more aid to the country.
Both Biden and Kerry championed $1.8 billion in taxpayer-backed loans to be given to Ukraine courtesy of the IMF. That money would go directly through Kolomoisky's PrivatBank, and then it would disappear.
According to the Ukrainian anticorruption watchdog Nashi Groshi, "This transaction of $1.8 billion ... with the help of fake contracts was simply an asset siphoning operation."
In December 2016, Ukraine's government was forced to nationalize Privatbank in order to shore up Ukrainians' savings. A Ukrainian lawmaker called it the "greatest robbery of Ukraine's state budget of the millennium."
In February 2016, the government seized Burisma founder Zlochevsky's assets and placed him on Ukraine's wanted list. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office seized Burisma's gas wells.
Devon Archer left the company at the end of 2016, but Hunter Biden remains on the board and continues to provide legal assistance. Archer and Biden have not been required to disclose their compensation from Burisma, but Bowling Green State University professor Oliver Boyd-Barrett wrote, "Potentially, the Biden family could become billionaires."
Did Joe Biden get Burisma off the hook for $1.8 billion in lost aid funding? Did he or his son get Kolomoisky off the visa ban list? Schweizer says the Bidens did not return numerous requests for comment.
Schweizer's book also reveals extensive Biden- and Kerry-related corruption in China, with Hunter Biden's company even investing in a Chinese company under FBI investigation for stealing U.S. nuclear secrets.
Even so, four days before Joe Biden arrived for his "swan song" visit in January 2017, the criminal investigation into Burisma was dropped.
The U.S. Army has revealed that the 10-day exercise involved «commercial traffic monitoring». Because of the sophistication of the electronic warfare and intelligence used during SEA BREEZE, it can be assumed that commercial traffic monitoring included monitoring the track of MH-17.
Past NATO-Ukraine exercises in Crimea were called SEA BREEZE. This year’s annual SEA BREEZE exercise with Ukraine, approved by the rump Ukrainian Parliament, is clouded in mystery with the Pentagon saying “it was only in the planning stage and we can’t announce dates yet“.
However, 200 U.S. Army personnel normally assigned to bases in Germany were in Ukraine during the time of the MH-17 fly-over. They were participating in NATO exercise RAPID TRIDENT II. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense led the exercise.
BREEZE included the AEGIS-class guided missile cruiser USS Vela Gulf. AEGIS cruisers’ AN/SPY 1 radar has the ability to track all aircraft over a large region. For example, the AEGIS test center in Moorestown, New Jersey, was able to see the Boeing 747 TWA Flight 800 when it disappeared from radar screens in 1996 near East Moriches Bay, Long Island. According to Lockheed Martin personnel who operated the AEGIS test center in New Jersey, the Navy ordered the SPY 1 radar turned off for «maintenance» shortly before the downing of TWA 800.
The announcement of U.S. BREEZE and RAPID TRIDENT II military maneuvers came on May 21, 2014, and were announced on the website operated by Vice President Joe Biden’s office. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, is a newly-named director of the Ukrainian natural gas and oil company Burisma Holdings, Ltd., owned by Ihor Kolomoisky, the Ukrainian-Israeli mafia oligarch, whose is known as the Chameleon. Kolomoisky has raised his own mercenary army, complete with the BUK missiles allegedly used in the shoot down of MH-17. Kolomoisky, the Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine, has threatened terrorist attacks against Russian-speaking officials in eastern Ukraine, including assassinations.
Igor Kolomoisky
Burisma is a typical RUIM [Russian – Ukrainian – Israeli – Mafia] operation, with subsidiaries in such tax havens as Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands. It is part of Kolomoisky’s large umbrella corporation called Privat Group.
Kolomoisky, estimated to be the second-richest person in Ukraine, also has strong connections inside Kiev’s Borispol International Airport, where it has been reported that Ukrainian Interior Ministry troops stormed the air traffic control tower shortly before MH-17 was shot down. A Spanish air traffic controller, who possessed knowledge of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s involvement in the shoot down of MH-17, reportedly had his life threatened by people he described as Maidan troops, a reference to the Maidan Square uprising that toppled the Ukrainian government earlier this year. The Spanish controller, identified only as ‘Carlos’, understood that the shoot down of MH-17 was carried out by supporters of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. Kolomoisky is a political ally of Tymoshenko and Avakov.
His Private Group owns Dniproavia, which is based at Dnipropetrovsk Airport. Kolomoisky’s aviation and Israeli security contacts gives him carte blanche access to secure airport facilities in Europe and around the world.
Kolomoisky’s forces, comprising Ukrainian regular military personnel; neo-Nazi units from west Ukraine, and foreign mercenaries, including Georgians, Romanians, and white supremacists from Sweden and Germany; and ex-Israel Defense Force Blue Helmet commandos, are mainly separated into four battalions: the Azov Battalion; the Aidar Battalion, the Donbass Battalion; and the 2,000-strong Dniepr-1 (or Dnipro-1) Battalion, which was responsible for the deadly May 1 fire-bombing of the trade union building in Odessa and the burning alive of people trapped inside the Mariupol Police Station on May 9. Dnipro-1 also maintains a 20,000-member reserve force.
At the heart of Kolomoisky’s Army is a Nazi Brownshirt-style force of ardent Kolomoisky loyalists who have used guns, iron bars, and batons to seize control of factories and offices in Ukraine that Kolomoisky has expropriated from so-called separatist sympathizers.
Some of the Georgians who serve in Kolomoisky’s Army have reportedly been trained in the use of BUK missile systems previously sold by Ukraine to Georgia under the presidency of Mikheil Saakashvili. Kolomoisky has utilized ex-President Saakashvili’s consulting services in Dnipropetrovsk in the military and political campaign against the breakaway people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
US efforts to turn the political tide in Ukraine away from Russian influence began much earlier. In 2004, the Bush administration had given $65 million to provide ‘democracy training’ to opposition leaders and political activists aligned with them, including paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet US leaders and help underwrite exit polls indicating he won disputed elections.
This programme has accelerated under Obama. In a speech at the National Press Club in Washington DC last December as Ukraine’s Maidan Square clashes escalated, Nuland confirmed that the US had invested in total "over $5 billion" to "ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine" – she specifically congratulated the "Euromaidan" movement.
"Ukraine is increasingly perceived to be critically situated in the emerging battle to dominate energy transport corridors linking the oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian basin to European markets… Considerable competition has already emerged over the construction of pipelines. Whether Ukraine will provide alternative routes helping to diversify access, as the West would prefer, or ‘find itself forced to play the role of a Russian subsidiary,’ remains to be seen."
A more recent US State Department-sponsored report notes that "Ukraine’s strategic location between the main energy producers (Russia and the Caspian Sea area) and consumers in the Eurasian region, its large transit network, and its available underground gas storage capacities", make the country "a potentially crucial player in European energy transit" – a position that will "grow as Western European demands for Russian and Caspian gas and oil continue to increase."
A default by Ukraine on $3 billion in debt to Russia this year could threaten the International Monetary Fund's lifeline to the embattled country, an IMF spokesman said.
The Ukrainian government has begun negotiations with creditors for $15 billion in debt relief, part of a $40 billion, four-year financial rescue envisioned by the IMF.
The Fund has approved a $17.5 billion loan to Ukraine as part of the package in exchange for the government's successful implementation of economic, budget and monetary reforms. It has disbursed an initial $5 billion payment.
But, the IMF has warned, the breakdown of a fragile ceasefire with pro-Russia rebels in the country's east, the failure to reschedule its debt with private lenders, or domestic political issues could all undermine the plan.
Kiev's debt includes $3 billion lent by Russia in 2010 to the previous Moscow-backed government.
An IMF rule could threaten continuation of the Ukraine aid program. It bars the Fund from lending to a country that has defaulted on a loan in the "official" sector, that is, from a state or public institution.
"We have a non-tolerance policy," IMF spokesman William Murray told reporters at a regularly scheduled news conference.
Ukraine's debt to Russia should be considered state debt, he added.
With Washington's blessing, Ukraine is going on the offensive against a Baltic Sea pipeline it deems a death knell to state controlled Naftogaz. Naftogaz is one of the most important companies in the country, and the gateway between Russian gas fields and the European market. This is the ultimate fight. Only this time, it pits Ukraine and the U.S. on one side with the Europeans and Russians -- oddly enough -- on the other.
Some history is warranted here. Naftogaz and Gazprom have been going through a bitter divorce with the Europeans as mediators since at least 2014. It's one arbitration hearing after another in a Stockholm court over contract disputes involving the two, with Gazprom the defendant. Gazprom is Europe's single biggest supplier of natural gas. Gazprom is run by the Russian government. Gazprom supply contracts have been a bone of contention for years. Naftogaz cries foul. The courts will rule on that one, lord knows when. But as a result of the crisis between the two countries, Gazprom looked to Turkey and the Europeans to build alternative pipelines. The Turks are building Turkish Stream. The Germans, French, Austrians and the Brits are looking to build Nord Stream II, a pipeline that would sit right beside an existing one. As it is not a new route, Ukraine calls it a political move to squeeze Naftogaz of its ability to make money delivering Russian gas to Europe.
Now the tough part. Anti-Russia Senators, most of them Republican Never Trumpers, are turning the screws on Russian oil and gas firms. They have three hopes here: punish Russia for supporting anti-government forces in Ukraine; ban Trump from his constitutional duties of being able to call off the sanctions regime and...help U.S. natural gas drillers and potential exporters.
But on Tuesday, the IMF joined the New Cold War. It has been lending money to Ukraine despite the Fund’s rules blocking it from lending to countries with no visible chance of paying (the “No More Argentinas” rule from 2001). When IMF head Christine Lagarde made the last IMF loan to Ukraine in the spring, she expressed the hope that there would be peace. But President Porochenko immediately announced that he would use the proceeds to step up his nation’s civil war with the Russian-speaking population in the East – the Donbass.
That is the region where most IMF exports have been made – mainly to Russia. This market is now lost for the foreseeable future. It may be a long break, because the country is run by the U.S.-backed junta put in place after the right-wing coup of winter 2014. Ukraine has refused to pay not only private-sector bondholders, but the Russian Government as well.
This should have blocked Ukraine from receiving further IMF aid. Refusal to pay for Ukrainian military belligerence in its New Cold War against Russia would have been a major step forcing peace, and also forcing a clean-up of the country’s endemic corruption.
Instead, the IMF is backing Ukrainian policy, its kleptocracy and its Right Sector leading the attacks that recently cut off Crimea’s electricity. The only condition on which the IMF insists is continued austerity. Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, has fallen by a third this years, pensions have been slashed (largely as a result of being inflated away), while corruption continues unabated.
Despite this the IMF announced its intention to extend new loans to finance Ukraine’s dependency and payoffs to the oligarchs who are in control of its parliament and justice departments to block any real cleanup of corruption.
For over half a year there was a semi-public discussion with U.S. Treasury advisors and Cold Warriors about how to stiff Russia on the $3 billion owed by Ukraine to Russia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. There was some talk of declaring this an “odious debt,” but it was decided that this ploy might backfire against U.S. supported dictatorships.
In the end, the IMF simply lent Ukraine the money.
By doing so, it announced its new policy: “We only enforce debts owed in US dollars to US allies.” This means that what was simmering as a Cold War against Russia has now turned into a full-blown division of the world into the Dollar Bloc (with its satellite Euro and other pro-U.S. currencies) and the BRICS or other countries not in the U.S. financial and military orbit.
What should Russia do? For that matter, what should China and other BRICS countries do? The IMF and U.S. neocons have sent the world a message: you don’t have to honor debts to countries outside of the dollar area and its satellites.
Why then should these non-dollarized countries remain in the IMF – or the World Bank, for that matter. The IMF move effectively splits the global system in half,between the BRICS and the US-European neoliberalized financial system.
With Washington's blessing, Ukraine is going on the offensive against a Baltic Sea pipeline it deems a death knell to state controlled Naftogaz. Naftogaz is one of the most important companies in the country, and the gateway between Russian gas fields and the European market. This is the ultimate fight. Only this time, it pits Ukraine and the U.S. on one side with the Europeans and Russians -- oddly enough -- on the other.
Some history is warranted here. Naftogaz and Gazprom have been going through a bitter divorce with the Europeans as mediators since at least 2014. It's one arbitration hearing after another in a Stockholm court over contract disputes involving the two, with Gazprom the defendant. Gazprom is Europe's single biggest supplier of natural gas. Gazprom is run by the Russian government. Gazprom supply contracts have been a bone of contention for years. Naftogaz cries foul. The courts will rule on that one, lord knows when. But as a result of the crisis between the two countries, Gazprom looked to Turkey and the Europeans to build alternative pipelines. The Turks are building Turkish Stream. The Germans, French, Austrians and the Brits are looking to build Nord Stream II, a pipeline that would sit right beside an existing one. As it is not a new route, Ukraine calls it a political move to squeeze Naftogaz of its ability to make money delivering Russian gas to Europe.
Now the tough part. Anti-Russia Senators, most of them Republican Never Trumpers, are turning the screws on Russian oil and gas firms. They have three hopes here: punish Russia for supporting anti-government forces in Ukraine; ban Trump from his constitutional duties of being able to call off the sanctions regime and...help U.S. natural gas drillers and potential exporters.
This has the Germans, in particular, in an uproar.
On June 14, the Senate passed a bill by a margin of 97 to 2 in favor of extra-territorial sanctions on Russian oil and gas. That means the Senate wants to give the President powers to punish companies doing certain types of business with sanctioned Russian firms outside of Russia instead of only those inside of Russia. Nord Stream II is on the hit list.
Five days later, Naftogaz gave a hint to its lobbying efforts in the E.U. against Nord Stream. They said in a note that the European Commission "should use its mandate as a guardian of the interests of the European consumers and insist on the application of the Third Energy Package to the Nord Stream II project."
Hunter Biden, 45, a former Washington lobbyist, joined the Burisma board in April 2014. That month, as part of an investigation into money laundering, British officials froze London bank accounts containing $23 million that allegedly belonged to Mr. Zlochevsky.
Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, an independent government agency, specifically forbade Mr. Zlochevksy, as well as Burisma Holdings, the company’s chief legal officer and another company owned by Mr. Zlochevsky, to have any access to the accounts.
ADVERTISEMENTBut after Ukrainian prosecutors refused to provide documents needed in the investigation, a British court in January ordered the Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets. The refusal by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office to cooperate was the target of a stinging attack by the American ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, who called out Burisma’s owner by name in a speech in September.
“In the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the U.K. authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people,” Mr. Pyatt said. Officials at the prosecutor general’s office, he added, were asked by the United Kingdom “to send documents supporting the seizure. Instead they sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was freed by the U.K. court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.”
Mr. Pyatt went on to call for an investigation into “the misconduct” of the prosecutors who wrote the letters. In his speech, the ambassador did not mention Hunter Biden’s connection to Burisma.
But Edward C. Chow, who follows Ukrainian policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the involvement of the vice president’s son with Mr. Zlochevsky’s firm undermined the Obama administration’s anticorruption message in Ukraine.
“Now you look at the Hunter Biden situation, and on the one hand you can credit the father for sending the anticorruption message,” Mr. Chow said. “But I think unfortunately it sends the message that a lot of foreign countries want to believe about America, that we are hypocritical about these issues.”
US Vice President Mr. Joe Biden is making a historic visit to Cyprus during the settlement talks that restarted on this February. The visit is historic because Biden is the most senior US official to visit the island since the Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s visit in 1962.[1] Because of this historic meaning, this visit will naturally boost hopes for a breakthrough in ongoing reunification talks between Turkish and Greek Cypriots. Biden’s visit also shows Washington’s growing interest and engagement in Cyprus Dispute, though the real motivation might be derived primarily from American companies drilling in the East Mediterranean rather than a fair peace between two communities.
Mr. Biden met with both President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot President Derviş Eroğlu today under equal protocol rules although Turkish press claimed that Greek Cypriots openly pressed Biden not to give a picture that could place the Turkish Cypriot leader in an equal position with Anastasiades.[2] Biden, together with US ambassador to Cyprus John M. Koenig, also met with Archbishop Chrysostomos and discussed the Cyprus Dispute.[3] After its meeting with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, Biden made a speech and said that “He waited 40 years to come to the island and was not disappointed”.[4] He continued; “It is the birthplace of Aphrodite, the crossroads of civilization, and a genuine strategic partner. The best days were ahead for both countries”.[5] Biden added that “his country is ready to provide assistance to Cyprus to achieve the goal of reunification”.[6]
The United States and Vice President Biden personally fully understand the concerns of the Cyprus government and will take all necessary measures to avoid anything that could undermine the status of the Republic of Cyprus, Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden assured Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides.
The Cypriot Minister met Thursday with Sullivan, at the White House, discussing the Vice President`s forthcoming visit to Cyprus, on May 21-23.
Prominent members of the Greek American community as well as political parties in Cyprus raised concerns over the announced contacts Biden is expected to have in the Turkish-occupied areas of Cyprus. In particular, Biden is expected to meet with the Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu.
According to a reliable source, the White House gave assurances that US diplomats and a member of the Vice President`s official delegation will inspect the location where Biden and Eroglu will meet, to ensure that everything is as agreed. Kasoulides and Sullivan met on Thursday for one hour, discussing Biden`s agenda in Cyprus, on top of which, the progress in Cyprus-US relations over the last 15 months stands out.
The second issue is the Cyprus problem and the way the US can encourage the leaders in Cyprus to seize the opportunity for reaching a solution.
The two sides also discussed a package of confidence building measures Biden is expected to announce while in Cyprus.
Another topic concerns energy matters, which attain increasing significance for the US, following the crisis in Ukraine, while the Vice President`s agenda also includes regional matters, as well as the situation in Ukraine.
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris examine how former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden may have leveraged the Maidan coup and war in East Ukraine to strike lucrative oil fracking deals in East Ukraine, along with a John Kerry family friend.
Limassol, Cyprus based energy firm Burisma Holdings, collected large energy contracts in the East of Ukraine, with Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, closely tied to the energy production company, which pushed for fracking exploration on land owned by East Ukrainian residents.
