Discussion on Ukraine's Political Challenges

No, I, I am

not the pen pal, but the phone pal of Poroshenko and

Arseniy Yatsenyuk and, uh, now the speaker.

I literally, without exaggeration,

the last, uh, four years I'm on the phone

two to three hours a week with, with, with those folks.

There's an overwhelming instinct in Europe to say, "Hey,

before you guys became president, this was owned by Russia anyway.

They had a puppet there. What difference does it make?

What the hell is the difference? Why are you making us

engage in these sanctions?"

You remember last year I was authorized to say we'd do

the second tranche of a billion dollars, and he didn't fire his,

um, his, uh, chief prosecutor,

and because I have the confidence of the president, I was there, and I said, "I'm

not signing it. Until you fire him,

we're not signing it, man. Get it straight. We're not doing it.

Until you form a new government

and you actually bring in someone who will move on this, we're not playing." Not

because we're trying to play hardball, because we know if they

give an excuse

to the EU, there are at least five countries right

now that want to say, "Whoa,

we want out." At least five right now.

And so what we've put together, we're putting together now,

is a basic detailed roadmap of who goes first

and who goes second, and there's two pieces to this, folks.

One is the security guarantees that are to flow from

Russia,

and two, the political steps

that Ukraine has to take,

and some of the steps are very difficult to take.

They've already done the energy piece.

They've done some other things, but my point is that when you say that

Donbas is gonna have a special status and you're gonna amend your constitution,

it's like saying, "Okay, you know, Texas and Wyomi- Texas is gonna have a

special status that we don't want because we want, uh,

Mexico to have more influence in Texas,

and we're gonna pass that through the United States Congress."

So there's some really tough stuff they've got to do.

They're willing-- I'm convinced they will do it.