A conversation between a State Department official and the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine that was posted on YouTube revealed an embarrassing exchange on U.S. strategy for a political transition in that country, including a crude American swipe at the European Union. The audio clip, which was posted on Tuesday but gained wide circulation on Thursday, features Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussing the makeup of the next Ukrainian government and possible strategies to work with the three main opposition figures: Vitaly Klitschko, former Ukrainian Economy Minister Arseny Yatseniuk and Oleh Tyahnybok, the far-right nationalist opposition leader. Nuland is heard telling Pyatt that she does not think Klitschko, the boxer-turned-politician who is a main opposition leader, should be in a new government: "I don't think Klitsch [Klitschko] should go into the government.
I don't think it's necessary. I don't think it's a good idea." Referring to getting the United Nations involved in a political solution in Kiev, Nuland is heard saying, "So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and have the U.N. help glue it and you know, f*** the EU." Pyatt responded: "Exactly. And I think we've got to do something to make it stick together because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude, the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it." The audio clip was first posted on Twitter by Dmitry Loskutov, an aide to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, a diplomatic source said. The date of the conversation was not specified but the events it describes appeared to have taken place in the last days of January. U.S. officials, while declining to confirm the recording's contents, did not dispute its authenticity. "I did not say it was not authentic," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at a news briefing Friday. "It is no secret that Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary Nuland have been working with the government of Ukraine, with the opposition, with business and civil society leaders to support their efforts," Psaki said. "It shouldn't be a surprise that at any points there have been discussions about recent events and offers and what is happening on the ground." Psaki also criticized Russian officials' releasing the tape as "a new low in Russian tradecraft" and denied Washington was trying to meddle or engineer a particular outcome in Kiev. "Absolutely not," she said. "It should be no surprise that U.S. officials talk about issues around the world. Of course we do. That's what diplomats do." Psaki said Nuland had apologized to her EU counterparts for the reported comments. "Im not going to talk about our private diplomatic communications," Nuland told the BBC over the weekend, adding that "the tradecraft is really quite impressive, the audio is really clear ... somebody put a lot of work into that." White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to discuss the content of the conversation, but he too invoked the Loskutov tweet. "I would say that since the video was first noted and tweeted out by the Russian government, I think it says something about Russia's role," he told reporters over the weekend. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her discontent of the scandal, which has already been dubbed by some in the European media as "Nulandgate," saying -- through spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz, that the American diplomat's tone and words were "absolutely unacceptable." Merkel further defended the efforts made by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to mediate the Ukrainian political crisis. "The chancellor finds these remarks absolutely unacceptable and wants to emphasize that Mrs. Ashton is doing an outstanding job, Wirtz was quoted as saying by The Guardian. The German media, however, were quick to warn against overreaction. In an opinion piece titled "Relax, Europe" leading German magazine Der Spiegel noted that "Europe should simply laugh about the American F-word.
Some humor would do no harm to the transatlantic relationship at the moment."
