Phone Call From Biden Said to Precipitate Ukraine's UN 'Yes' Vote

"A wealth of evidence is now emerging that, far from simply abstaining from a UN vote, which is how the Administration and its press circle at first sought to characterize its actions, the anti-Israel resolution was actively vetted at the highest levels of the U.S. Administration, which then led a pressure campaign-both directly and through Great Britain-to convince other countries to vote in favor of it.

Tablet has confirmed that one tangible consequence of the high-level U.S. campaign was a phone call from Vice President Joseph Biden to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which succeeded in changing Ukraine's vote from an expected abstention to a 'yes.' According to one U.S. national security source, the Obama Administration needed a 14-0 vote to justify what the source called 'the optics' of its own abstention.

'Did Biden put pressure on the Ukrainians? Categorically yes,' said a highly-placed figure within the Israeli government with strong connections to Ukrainian government sources, who confirmed to Tablet that the Americans had put direct pressure on both the Ukrainian delegation-and on Poroshenko personally in Kiev. 'That Biden told them to do it is 1000% true,' the source affirmed...

The phone call between Poroshenko and Biden, which took place on December 19th, has been officially acknowledged by both parties. The Ukrainian presidential administration's official statement on the particulars of the discussion contains no mention that the settlement vote was discussed. Vice President Biden's national security advisor Colin Kahl-who, incidentally, was one of the staffers instrumental in a failed attempt to have any mention of Jerusalem removed from the 2012 Democratic Party platform-has tweeted several denials.

But a spokesman for the Ukrainian Presidential administration pointedly refused to either confirm or deny that a section of Biden's call not covered in the read-out consisted of the US Vice President personally lobbying Ukraine to vote 'Yes' on the Security Council resolution. The American pressure campaign, according to multiple sources, went beyond the single phone call between Poroshenko and Biden; according to these sources, the Ukrainians had wanted to postpone the vote by several days as a gesture to the Israelis, but the U.S. refused.

'As much as we understand that they did not want to break or tarnish relations with Israel, they could not simply say 'no' to the Americans,' said one high-ranking Israeli government source. 'Samantha Power personally put pressure on the Ukrainian ambassador in the UN and told them that the American side was not willing to accept a delay.'..."