Germany is seeking to play good cop to America’s bad cop in Western efforts to mediate between the government and protesters in Ukraine

Monday, February 17, 2014

Germany is seeking to play good cop to America’s bad cop in Western efforts to mediate between the government and protesters in Ukraine

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Germany Trying Friendly Approach to Ending Ukraine Unrest

By Associated Press | February 17, 2014

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, center, welcomes Ukraine opposition leaders Vitali Klitschko, left, and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, right, Monday, Feb. 17, 2014 at the chancellery in Berlin to discuss the country's crisis. The former Soviet nation has been in chaos since November when President Viktor Yanukovych ditched a planned EU trade and political pact in favor of closer ties with Moscow. (AP Photo/Jogannes Eisele, Pool)

BERLIN—Germany is seeking to play good cop to America’s bad cop in Western efforts to mediate between the government and protesters in Ukraine in an early test of the German government’s efforts at a more robust foreign policy role.
The Germans have refused to back Washington’s calls for sanctions against Ukraine’s government to pressure it into accepting opposition demands for reforms. At the same time, Germany has launched a flurry of diplomacy toward Kiev and Moscow — a key ally of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych — while trying to promote selected Ukrainian opposition leaders as legitimate negotiating partners.
On Monday, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her foreign minister held closed doors talks with top Ukrainian opposition leaders Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Vitali Klitschko, speaking with the two for about an hour.
Merkel assured Yatsenyuk and Klitschko that Germany and the EU would do everything possible to try and assure a “positive outcome” to the crisis in Ukraine — support for which the two praised the chancellor at a short news conference after the meeting.
“The chancellor is one of the most influential people in the world,” Klitschko said through an interpreter. “The backing of Germany and the EU plays a big role in Ukraine.”
Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said the release of jailed protesters in Ukraine and the handover of occupied buildings in Kiev on Sunday were signs that the government and opposition can find common ground, despite months of increasingly bloody confrontation.
Berlin’s diplomatic advance has put it at odds with some of its European Union partners, including Sweden and the Baltic nations, which have pressed for a harder line against the former Soviet republic, according to Stefan Meister, a senior research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
But it fits in with the German government’s recent pledge for a more assertive role on the international stage.
For Germany, Ukraine is a good test case — a large European country, relatively close to German borders undergoing a more difficult transition than other former Soviet states such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which joined the EU years ago.

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