. >>> joining us now damon wilson executive vice president of the atlantic council and former senior director for european affairs for the national security council. from stanford, katherine stoner political scientist and senior fell on democracy, development and rule of law at stanford university, and back in the studio, william miller, u.s. ambassador to ukraine from 1993 to 1998. let's go back to the 90's, mr. ambassador, it looked like for a while the ukraine had managed the trick of making the transition from a post self yet soviet state that could stand on its own. they worked out deals with the arsenal, soviet navy, territorial pursuits, the ukraine for some time looked like it was ready to become an independent country. >> it was first in line, but unfortunately the politicians in charge tried to play both sides against each other. east and west. and they lost their way. but more significantly the leadership of ukraine initially was soviet. soviet in background and soviet in mentality, and soviet in behavior. and it's only now that we're beginning to see the generation that i

i'm damon wilson, vice president of the atlantic council. we have a few minutes to have a conversation about your trip and the remarks you delivered. i want to remind everybody they're free to tweet, #acukraine, as fred mentioned. you've just delivered a speech. you laid out six principles, if you will, to guide our way forward. you offered broader remarks about russia, about russia's strategy, about u.s. and european strategy and the eastern partnership in general. we have many ambassadors, representatives from many of those countries here today. let me bring you back to your trip for a moment. you spent some time with president yanukovych with senator murphy. what's he trying to achieve here? what did you take away from your conversation with him in terms of his motivation, his goals? in essence, he was preparing his country, over two years, for this process of concluding the agreement with the eu, only to surprise them with this turn around toward the end before the summit. how did your conversation leave you in terms of understanding whe