Excerpt
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): When the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down, the stakes in the fight for the future of Ukraine went up. At the center of what has rapidly become a global flash point is the deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and Russia. But what, if anything, can the U.S. or Russia do in the face of international grief, recrimination and derailed diplomacy?
Stephen Sestanovich was U.S. ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union during the Clinton administration. He’s now senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. And Eugene Rumer was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia during the Obama administration from 2010 to 2014. He’s now director of Russia and Eurasia Programs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Stephen Sestanovich, how much — how much good can international pressure do?
STEPHEN SESTANOVICH, Council on Foreign Relations: Well, there’s no doubt that Russia faces the most appalling public relations predicament that it’s been in, in decades. And it is going to be responding to international pressure.
No government wants to have the kind of criminal reputation that the Russians are acquiring for their handling of this. And the result is — you already see — is a kind of backing off of some of the positions that they have taken. They supported a U.N. Security Council resolution today. The separatists have been urged to release the bodies. There is that kind of minimal level of cooperation that is meant to rescue their international position right now.
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