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Amanpour
Russia Urges Negotiations with Separatist Leaders; American on the Eve of Crucial Elections; Imagine a World
Aired November 03, 2014 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: a rebel election versus a real election. Separatists in Eastern Ukraine vote to move closer
to Moscow.
So is the country on the brink of breaking in two? I speak to Kiev's ambassador t the United Nations.
Plus as U.S. voters head to the polls in tomorrow's midterm elections, we ask why isn't the government more representative of the people?
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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour. in New York on the eve of midterm elections here in
the United States, which could see the president's party lose control of the Senate and therefore both houses of Congress.
Later in the program, we'll examine what's at stake in these elections, which are widely seen as a reality check on the state of American politics.
But first, a different kind of reality check is taking place right now in Ukraine in what the United States, Europe and Kiev describe as sham
elections, separatists in the Eastern Donbas region have elected leaders to rule Donetsk and Luhansk and declared themselves autonomous with closer
ties to Russia, similar to what happened in Crimea earlier this year.
Russia has recognized the result, perhaps no surprise given President Putin has long had his eye on this prize. Back in April, he used the czarist
term "Novorossiya" for this swath of territory that was conquered by the Russians back in the 18th century.
So are separatists in control for good?
And what can the West do about it?
Joining me here in the studio to discuss is Yuri Sergeyev, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations.
Ambassador, welcome back to the program.
YURIY SERGEYEV, UKRAINIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: So the first question: is this cementing and legitimizing a status quo?
SERGEYEV: Of course not. The elected presidents of so-called republics favor not -- they had no legitimacy and nothing could be got more. No
legitimacy even being elected in that illegal way.
AMANPOUR: Except that Russia has recognized it and we've seen, as you saw what happened in Crimea and we've just seen what's been going on over the
last year.
(CROSSTALK)
SERGEYEV: We saw the same story with the pasier (ph) in Ossetia, the repetition of the past. Unfortunately, Russia again betrayed not only
Ukraine, but the worldwide community, not fulfilling their commitments under different international agreements.
AMANPOUR: So here's the thing, though. It happened. What can you do about it and what can the West do about it? The United States has said
they don't recognize this election. Russia does.
SERGEYEV: Russia encouraged the separatists who held these elections, contrary to our agreements in September. These elections or these kinds of
elections should take place under the Ukrainian legislation in December.
It happened and we expressed our concern, deep concern that these kinds of moments in Donbas could destroy the Minsk process of the peaceful
settlement.
AMANPOUR: And that was the last sort of kind of peace process that both Petro Poroshenko, your president, and Vladimir Putin, the Russian
president, discussed together.
SERGEYEV: True. And now it is hardly easy to come back to the negotiating table.
AMANPOUR: So what exactly are your two presidents talking about then, if they keep having these discussions and then unilateral actions are taken?
SERGEYEV: Well, we performed excellently. I supposed is good estimation what we did, because we fulfilled whatever we agreed in Minsk and beyond.
So the cease-fire, we adopted in law on the special status of Donbas to give them more power. We adopted a law opening the doors to the normal
elections to be there. Unfortunately, neither Russia's side nor separatists fulfilled their part of their commitments.
AMANPOUR: Well, if you were giving all of this possibility more local rule for that area, why do you think they jumped the gun?
SERGEYEV: Because this is a scenario from Moscow to keep the region ending this conflict and they are interested to have this instability, either for
the purpose to have more arguments and to break many laws during the next talks on the future of the Donbas or just to keep the frozen conflict
there.
AMANPOUR: But again, the question again is, how do you change this? Because it is cementing what actually is a military demarcation line.
SERGEYEV: This is -- unfortunately, this is true that until Russia continues military support of the separatists, until Russia keeps therefore
army on our borders, so becomes -- we can't come to any agreements. That's why the support, political support, moral support from outside, from
other parties in Europe and the United States, is badly needed now.
AMANPOUR: What do you need more now?
SERGEYEV: Yes, we need more.
AMANPOUR: What?
SERGEYEV: More sanctions against Russia, more political pressure and I feel that at least in the United Nations we have these kinds of support.
AMANPOUR: Can you tell me, because you talked about Russia's military on your border. There have been a lot of conflicting reports over the last
several days. First of all, it was confirmed that Russia was moving its forces back over the last few weeks. Then this weekend, some reports that
troops and other materiel had moved across your border.
What can you tell us for sure?
SERGEYEV: For sure that's the President Putin has announced his decision to withdraw the troops from our borders, three or four times. So the
result --
(CROSSTALK)
AMANPOUR: -- did they come in this weekend?
SERGEYEV: They are still there. And they promised -- they keep telling that no Russian troops, no Russian military support in Ukraine but the
facts are absolutely different.
AMANPOUR: So you say that they have incurred again weekend?
SERGEYEV: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
(CROSSTALK)
SERGEYEV: They enlarge there. Their presence, they enlarge the military support.
AMANPOUR: There was a poll done shortly before the May referendum in Eastern Ukraine. There was some polling done by the Kiev government but
also independent, by the Pew Research Center, which suggests that a vast majority of the people of Ukraine want to keep its borders as they exist
whole, including the majority of people in Eastern Ukraine.
Do you believe those figures still add?
Why have they turned out, apparently en masse, to vote for these leaders against the wish of Kiev?
SERGEYEV: The problem is how the referendums are organized in Crimea and eastern part of Ukraine and how these elections were organized. But the
people they are threatened. They were bribed (ph) by the chief services (ph) and so on. We do not know exactly the intentions of the people
because there is no fair and transparent mechanism how to learn what is real mood of the population there.
But those who escaped, because of the atrocities this region and now they are settled in central and western part of Ukraine, they demonstrated
against these politics of some leaders there, during these couple of weeks and the last Sunday.
They went, the Ukrainians, protesting against Donetsk and Lugansk so-called republics.
AMANPOUR: And finally, do you think this is Crimea, too?
SERGEYEV: This is Crimea, too.
AMANPOUR: They're going to annex it?
SERGEYEV: They -- it is one of the scenario, possible scenario. So now as today one of the leaders, Hajan Kusebian (ph), that the -- to become a part
of the Russia, it will take some time. So if they decided that there is an intention to become a part of Russia, it means that again artificial
scenario when alleged leaders back by alleged support, they will propose -- can propose to be a part of Russia.
AMANPOUR: All right. We'll keep watching this.
Ambassador, thank you very much indeed for being with us today.
SERGEYEV: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: And so as Moscow struggles to convince the West that it's not moving into Ukraine, we just heard what the ambassador said. Its news
channel, Russia Today, is, in fact, moving into Britain, widely derided of course by the British press as another arm of Kremlin propaganda.
The channel is already under investigation by the British media regulators for various violations, with many columnists noting that Russia Today talks
about anything but what's happening in Russian today.
And after a break, a United States government that looks nothing like the United States? The struggle for representation, Americans' midterm
elections when we come back.
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
Tomorrow, voters here in the United States go to the polls in what's known as midterm elections. If opinion surveys are correct, Republicans will
control both houses of Congress for the first time in President Barack Obama's term.
The Democrats lost the House of Representatives in 2010 and they may well lose the Senate tomorrow, despite Vice President Joe Biden's measured
optimism in this exclusive interview with CNN.
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JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: First of all, I don't agree with the oddsmakers. I predict we're going to keep the Senate.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You do?
BIDEN: I've been in 60-70 races all told and I don't get the feeling that oddsmakers are giving.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So no matter who wins, who is representing the American voter?
Here's a difficult truth about American politics. The government from federal to local levels is, in fact, deeply unrepresentative of the
electorate. And here to discuss the issue are Tamara Draut, a researcher at the think tank, Demos, and Errol Louis, a CNN political commentator, who
hosts his own political talk show on New York 1 here in the city.
Welcome to both of you.
ERROL LOUIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good to see you.
AMANPOUR: So let me ask you first and foremost to react to Vice President Biden.
Do you believe the oddsmakers?
LOUIS: The oddsmakers are professional statisticians. The reality is they are right more often than not. And also there's just been a tendency on
average at this point in a president's term, a two-term president, the final midterm before the end of that eight-year career, normally the
president's party loses about 29 seats.
So it's really only a question of whether or not history will repeat itself or if something unusual will happen tomorrow.
AMANPOUR: Do you think something unusual will happen tomorrow?
And if it doesn't and both houses of Congress go against the incumbent, what does that mean for politics as usual?
TAMARA DRAUT, V.P., DEMOS: Well, I'll leave the horse racing to the pros. I think that the only thing I'd add is this is really going to be about
mobilization and whether Democrats can get their base, African American and women voters, to the polls. And that's what it's going to come down to.
AMANPOUR: So now let's talk about precisely that because having read several articles, particularly one that really grabbed my eye, it is
remarkable how unrepresentative the electorate -- the elected leaders are of the people.
So let's take the first little bit that I got from this article in "The New Yorker," Errol: 33 percent of New York City's population is white; 51
percent of New York City council is white.
LOUIS: Yes, this, look, it would have been a lot worse if you had looked at this, say, 20 years ago. There have been incremental reforms that were
specifically designed to encourage participation. One of the biggest ones that almost never gets talked about we have a campaign finance system here
as a result of many lawsuits and reforms that enables you to get 6:1 matching funds.
That enables people coming from wealthy -- less wealthy neighborhoods, from less wealthy professions; frankly, they're not lawyers, they're not medical
doctors, but they're just people from the neighborhood, it gives them enough money at the expense of the government that they can actually run a
credible campaign in the largest city in America.
AMANPOUR: What does that mean, though, for the majority of the people in this city?
LOUIS: Well, for many of them, they might feel that whoever's representing them maybe doesn't quite have all of their interests in mind. But the
reality is this has been a city that has been vulcanized along ethnic and religious lines since its founding hundreds of years ago.
And so those kinds of ethnic contests are really very much a part of what politics is in New York.
AMANPOUR: And then you started by saying actually this shows progress.
So let me ask you in terms of women, another one of the statistics, 51 percent of the American population is female, 20 percent of U.S. senators
are female.
DRAUT: Yes and the --
(CROSSTALK)
DRAUT: -- well, there's been some progress. It's very slow, though, and it's the same -- if you step back -- this is research done by the Women's
Donor Network -- the statistic that really just sticks out to me is that we actually have a third of our population, which is white men, controlling
nearly two-thirds of all elected offices in this country, from the county, city all the way up to the national level.
Fundamentally, we have a democracy that does not represent America and particularly the face of America is changing.
AMANPOUR: And you said you don't think the midterms will necessarily change this.
How does this change -- ?
LOUIS: Well, that's an interesting question and in some ways it's sort of a hopeful one, because it's already being asked in other related spheres.
So the same reason that women and/or girls are not encouraging to go into math and sciences, it turns out when you look at the polling, it turns out
that they're also not encouraged or not rewarded for going into the -- becoming part of the young college Republicans or the young Democrats, the
college Democrats. And those are sort of the theater systems that steer people toward careers in politics.
And it's really that farm team. It's that system, that ladder that leads to people finally running for office.
AMANPOUR: And it is extraordinary, because almost around the same time as this article and this issue is coming up here, there was a very prominent
one in the "FT" in England, which also suggested that not just the elite and the elected leaders but all the subsets around in cultural elite, at
least at the top, are from what they call an OxBridge reality, in other words, the Oxford-Cambridge -- I'll add Harvard and Yale -- kind of set
that continues to support its own all the time.
DRAUT: It's a mutually replicating system. So I really want to underscore what Errol said about public financing. The reason why public financing
works is it prevents that question, which is do I know 10 people that can give me $1,000 and allows particularly women and people of color to run
competitively because they often don't have access to the old boys' network of donor, high donor money and public financing really does make a big
difference and is one of the reasons why New York City council, the progress to go but we're making progress and public financing is a big --
(CROSSTALK)
AMANPOUR: And now to the -- that's obviously substantive. And now to the actual substance of what is this election about.
You know, in -- where I come from in England, there are midterms. I mean, it's very odd to see this process of massive elections every two years.
Some have suggested that it makes governing impossible.
LOUIS: Well, it also makes it more democratic and it -- being a federal --
AMANPOUR: Does it?
LOUIS: -- well, being a federal system as we are, in some ways this is arguably 26 state elections for governor. That's how many are up tomorrow.
This is arguably 435 local elections. And what this election is about really varies from place to place.
Now you can sort of group it regionally and certainly within a state there are usually one or two overriding issues that will sort of dominate. Here
in New York, for example, there's a big issue about hydraulic fracturing, expecting natural gas, so some people are very much against it. The
governor has been a little bit on both sides of it. It's something that's going to be top of mind as people go in, taxes as well.
And what this will be about I think, though, broadly speaking, it's almost always a referendum on the party power --
AMANPOUR: On the president?
LOUIS: On the president. There's simply no getting around it. Most of the most -- many of the most important elections around the country
tomorrow will be about whether or not Barack Obama and his program, especially health care reform, is to the liking of people or whether they
want to go in a different direction.
AMANPOUR: Well, let's talk about that because, again, the extraordinary spectacle of even Democrats, democratically elected leaders running for
reelection, practically diving under the table, not wanting to admit that they voted for President Obama or any of these reforms, like affordable
health care, what does this mean for the president and for gridlock and dysfunction going forward?
DRAUT: Well, I think it means definitely more gridlock and less if the Republicans do take the Senate, then I think they're going to have to
actually get something done and can no longer just govern by saying no. So maybe we'll see. The big grand bargain that the president has always
wanted on taxes, maybe we'll see a grand bargain around immigration reform. I think that's the positive implications.
Whether you're a pessimist or an optimist, probably will determine the way you answer that question.
LOUIS: The voters are people and people are inconsistent about what they want. So you've got hundreds of thousands of people in a state like
Kentucky, who have gotten health care, affordable health care for the first time in their lives, I mean, an extraordinary achievement. They're all set
to go to the polls tomorrow and punish the president for making this possible for them.
AMANPOUR: Why?
LOUIS: It is what it is. Winston Churchill wins World War II with the -- at the first chance they get, the voters throw him out.
AMANPOUR: Well, that is very true. But here -- and you probably see it yourself -- the Democrats are being criticized in the pages of various op-
eds and editorials for actually not standing up and defending actually the successful legislation of the president, whether it is affordable health
care, whether it was the stimulus bill, creating 2.5 million jobs. And in a nation where historically people vote their pocketbook, the economy in
this country is doing better that anywhere else in the Western world.
So what gives?
LOUIS: -- stock market, unemployment under 6 percent for the first time in anybody's memory, hundreds of thousands of jobs coming online every month.
And people still -- if you look at the polling, they say that -- many of them think the country's going in the wrong direction. They're not happy
about it. It becomes, I think, for politicians a very basic kind of a question about are you there to educate the populace? Or are you there to
sort of follow the populace and go in whatever mood they happen to be, even if they feel a little cranky, as many voters do right now?
AMANPOUR: Can you figure this out, why they are so cranky when actually life is looking a lot better than it might have done a few years ago?
DRAUT: Well, because life is still looking pretty hard. We still have high unemployment. We still have lots of people who need full-time jobs
but can only get part-time jobs. We have costs rising for things like child care. So in terms of people's day-to-day lived experience, they're
still feeling a recession despite the fact that the indicators are moving in the right direction.
So I think it's a referendum on the economy but you know what's interesting is on some of the state level, the governorships, the governors' races, you
are seeing the sort of the let's cut taxes and hope that growth comes really being questioned. And it's coming down in Kansas. And I think
that's interesting. So at the state level, you have the conservative ideology actually being questioned and put to the test of whether voters
are ready to throw that out and go a different way, which is a very different question than what's happening in these federal office elections.
AMANPOUR: It's fascinating. We'll keep watching it. Thank you for joining us, Tamara Draut, Errol Louis, thank you very much indeed.
And if the midterm elections do spell the end of an era for Democrats, New York City celebrates the beginning of a new post-9/11 era. Thirteen years
since the disaster at Ground Zero, the first tenants move back into 1 World Trade Center. The tower touts itself as a symbol of overcoming tyranny
with triumph at 1,776 feet, its height matches the year of American independence from British rule.
Today the Conde Nast publishing industry becomes the first to plant its flag there. And New York hopes that will spur a whole downtown rebirth
after all these sad, empty and emotionally and politically fraught years.
And after a break, imagine a world where a woman, famed for her beard, can rise like a Phoenix to team up with the world's diplomat-in-chief. U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Eurovision's showgirl battle against gender discrimination. That's when we come back.
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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, as U.N. secretary-general, you find you share a podium with all kinds of people. But imagine a world where Ban Ki-
moon is joined onstage in Vienna by a bearded Austrian disco diva. Never in his wildest dreams perhaps would this former South Korean diplomat have
expected to share a stage with a cross-dressing Eurovision song contest winner.
But the secretary-general and the pop star, Conchita Wurst, did team up in a shared cause today, calling for an end to bias based on sexual
orientation and gender identity.
Ban said that he would continue his fight against, quote, "transphobia and homophobia," and quoting Conchita's Eurovision victory speech, he added,
"We are unstoppable," after which it seemed only right to hear a rendition of Conchita's winning song, "Rise Like a Phoenix."
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): Now as if on cue, the importance of this issue was highlighted in another historic city today less than a three-hour flight
away from Vienna. In St. Petersburg, a tribute to the late Apple founder, Steve Jobs, has been taken down because CEO Tim Cook has just come out as
gay.
The company that built the memorial said they did so to comply with Russian laws against gay propaganda. The more things change, it seems, the more
they stay the same.
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AMANPOUR: And that's it for our program tonight. Remember you can always watch the show online at amanpour.com, and follow me on Facebook and
Twitter. Thank you for watching and goodbye from New York.
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