Ukraine: Diplomacy Continues Amid Building of Barricades

As pro-Russian Ukrainians in key eastern cities continued to build barricades around occupied government buildings on Wednesday, high-level direct talks aimed at a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine have been officially announced for next week in Europe.

With tensions again at worrying levels after protests in the cities of Luhansk, Donetsk, and Kharkiv led to confrontations between government security forces and those demanding independence from Kiev, the news of the talks is a hopeful sign that further violence can be avoided.

According to reports, next week’s meeting—the exact time and location of which has not been announced—will include EU Foreign Secretary Catherine Ashton, US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and, importantly, Ukraine’s interim Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia.

The Guardian reports:

During testimony to the US Senate on Tuesday, Kerry told the Foreign Relations Committee that Russia was creating a “contrived crisis” in eastern Ukraine as a pretext for intervention and possible annexation of territory.

But as investigative journalist and commenter Robert Parry points, that argument and the overall narrative that has been pushed on the American people by the White House and a pliant U.S. mainstream press since the overthrow of Ukraine’s former government earlier this year betrays the nefarious role that U.S. and European policies have played in creating the current situation in Ukraine. 

Parry writes:

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