Rove's Yalta European Strategy summit.

Since Karl Rove skipped out on his subpoena to appear before the House Judiciary Committee last month, the whereabouts of Bush’s longtime political strategist have emerged—Rove was in Crimea, Ukraine, for the fifth annual Yalta European Strategy summit. Also in attendance: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Here’s an excerpt from his panel discussion about how U.S. policy toward Ukraine would change, if at all, after November’s American presidential elections.

YES-Yalta European Strategy site:

According to the opinion of Karl Rove, the key strategist of US Republican party election campaigns, Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate for Presidency, “knows this part of the world in a good way, he has been visiting the region quite often and has even spent his vacation in Georgia once. He knows the specificities of Ukraine and is aware of its geopolitical role. Suffice it will be to say that his US External Policy Principles Article has seven words that Barack Obama does not have, and one of the words is Ukraine”.

McCain is quite skeptical in relation to Russia and its leadership in the region; his priorities are NATO expansion, development of relations with European Union and building “the line of democracy” with Ukraine and Georgia to become the key elements of it, mentioned Karl Rove. He made an emphasis on the fact that one of the main McCain’s peculiarities is his support of the established free trade regime between USA and other countries. “McCain voted for free trade regime, meanwhile Obama was always against it; and that is the great difference between them”, mentioned the Republicans’ strategists.

Alongside with this, Karl Rove has admitted that there is no much difference between the candidates in the sphere of external policy, especially in relation to Ukraine. “Both candidates stand for NATO expansion; both stand for Ukraine to make steps in that direction”.
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