Ukraine had every reason to want Hillary Clinton elected as U.S. president in 2016 — and every reason to try to curry favor with Donald J. Trump when American voters chose him instead.
Why Hillary? During the 2016 presidential election, the Kyiv Post explained the reasons in an Aug. 5, 2016 cover story with the banner headline: “Ukraine’s Twin Threats.” Underneath were photos of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump.
That story was remarkably prescient. Then, as now, there are questions about Trump’s financial ties to Russia. Then, as now, Trump refuses to release his tax returns. And, then as now, Trump displays a perverted sense of loyalty to Putin and hostility to Ukraine’s aspiring democracy.
As the 2016 story predicted: “Much of Trump’s rhetoric, coupled with the people he surrounds himself with, suggests that he would as president engage in an unaccountable, transactional mixing of business and politics that casts Western democratic values aside in favor of appeasing the Kremlin dictator.”
This is exactly what Trump is facing impeachment for: trying to get President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on political rival Joseph Biden, the former U.S. vice president, and the Democratic National Committee in exchange for a White House meeting and nearly $400 million in military aid.
Moreover, evidence suggests that Trump succeeded in getting ex-President Petro Poroshenko to kill investigations against former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort in exchange for a 2017 White House meeting and Javelin anti-tank missiles. Ex-Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin denied that and said the allegation doesn’t ring true at all.
In the 2016 campaign, Trump suggested that he might recognize Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and relax sanctions against the Kremlin. He was indifferent to the Russian invasion of the eastern Donbas.
He rankled Ukrainians, moreover, by hiring the reviled Manafort as his campaign manager in 2016. Manafort, now serving a prison sentence in America partly because of tax fraud involving $12.7 million in illegal payments he received for work in Ukraine, damaged Ukraine immensely as a political consultant who helped get Kremlin-backed Viktor Yanukovych elected in 2010. Questions remain about his possible role in Yanukovych’s failed attempt to violently suppress the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted the disgraced president in 2014.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and ex-Ukraine Ambassador to the United States Valeriy Chaly are among the many Ukrainians who publicly criticized candidate Trump. Whether it was wise or not, the sentiment was genuine and the criticism was justified.
But when Trump got elected, Poroshenko had to find a way to ingratiate himself for the good of the nation. Knowing what we know now of Trump’s demands on Zelensky during the infamous July 25 phone call, it’s suspicious that Trump agreed to meet with Poroshenko and approve Javelin missile sales without any conditions. Zelensky was willing to go along with Trump’s demands until the conversation gave rise to the impeachment inquiry.
There has been testimony about Trump’s hostility to Ukraine, a nation he sees as filled with terrible, corrupt people who tried to defeat him in 2016.
It’s an inaccurate and unfair opinion, but a dangerous one because of his power.
Ukraine will have to practice smart diplomacy to stay in the good graces of both Republicans and Democrats. But there’s no reason to stay silent when politicians and public officials express hostility and ignorance about Ukraine. The nation must defend itself on all fronts, loudly and clearly.
