US, Russia do not address Ukraine issue

Former US Senate Foreign Policy analyst James Jatras says that the United States and Russia do not “address the underlying issues in Ukraine.”

“Right now, Washington and Moscow are not having the same conversation and I’m afraid these kinds of consultations are simply a symptom of that and really don’t address the underlying issues,” he told Press TV on Monday.

“We still have an unfortunate breakdown of the dialogue between Washington and Moscow when Washington only wants to talk about troop movements and the status of Crimea and the Russians want to talk about what’s necessary to stabilize the constitutional and political system within Ukraine specially in terms of policy of neutrality and decentralization of the constitutional order in Ukraine,” the analyst added.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov failed to break a deadlock over the Ukraine crisis following hours of discussion.

The US says there are about 50,000 Russian troops within the two nations’ border.

“The Russian troop buildup is creating a climate of fear and intimidation in Ukraine,” Kerry said. “It certainly does not create the climate that we need for dialogue.”

Kerry and Lavrov advanced far different proposals on how to calm tensions and deescalate the situation.