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Presidential contenders and US Senators Barack Obama, D-Ill., Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and John McCain, R-Ariz., all visited Ukraine since the Orange Revolution and expressed strong support for the nation's Western integration. AP DC insiders believe no matter who wins the November presidential election, Kyiv will likely recover some of its status as a foreign policy priority.

ar, a conflict that has consumed the State Department and US foreign policy for five years.

Washington insiders believe no matter who wins the November presidential election, Kyiv will likely recover some of its status as a foreign policy priority.

“The importance of Ukraine as a successful former Soviet state is a high priority as the war in Iraq dies down, as it will,” said William Green Miller, the US Ambassador to Ukraine from 1993 to 1998.

"Ukraine is more and more economically successful, so it is critical to give it political support instead of more financial aid or technical assistance."

Of the three presidential contenders remaining, observers said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would be Ukraine’s biggest advocate, as his record demonstrates. The likely Republican nominee lent his support to Viktor Yushchenko and the Orange Revolution from the very start, before the smoke cleared and other US politicians felt safer to extend endorsements.

He chairs the International Republican Institute, a leading advocate of Ukraine’s Western integration.

McCain has also been the staunchest challenger to Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, avidly criticizing his authoritarian politics and even urging Russia’s exclusion from the Group of Eight (G8), the world’s greatest economic powers.

All three presidential candidates visited Ukraine at least once. McCain visited numerous times, most notably in August 2004 when he met with government and opposition presidential candidates.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D­NY, visited in 1995, 1997, and a third time in 2005, and Sen. Barack Obama, D­Ill., paid a visit in 2005.

Clinton accompanied her husband in the 1990’s and was already supporting partnerships between hospitals in the United States and Ukraine, and airlifts of pharmaceuticals and other medical supplies.

In her second trip, she visited the victims of Communist repressions memorial in Lviv, where Clinton told the people, “In your fight for freedom, your fight for democracy, the American will stand with you.”

“After hearing pleas from Ukrainian women in 1997 to help combat human trafficking, which had become a growing problem in Ukraine, I helped initiate an international effort to combat trafficking, including several programs specifically to help Ukraine,” Clinton said in a statement.

The New York senator was also the honorary chair of the 1996 Chornobyl Challenge and received the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund’s Lifetime Humanitarian Achievement Award in 1999.

In her campaign statement on Ukraine, Clinton did not forget to court the potential one million Ukrainian­American voters.

“I applaud the fact that Ukraine aspires to anchor itself firmly in the trans­Atlantic community through membership in NATO and look forward to working with Ukrainians and Ukrainian­Americans to reach that goal,” she stated.

Although Obama is not recognized as a foreign policy expert, he accompanied then­chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sen. Richard Lugar, R­Ind., to Ukraine in 2005 as a newly elected senator to inspect and tour destruction sites for nuclear weapons, which culminated in a joint agreement between the two governments to reduce the risk of biological weapons spreading.

Obama, whose state of Illinois is home to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, issued a succinct statement.

“NATO’s upcoming summit in Bucharest in April 2008 is a critical opportunity to continue to build the Europe ‘whole and free’ that has been the goal of all recent US presidents,” his statement said. “I call on President Bush and all of NATO’s leaders to seize that opportunity.”

All three presidential candidates’ campaigns also recently issued statements supporting the Ukrainian leadership’s bid to enter NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP) at the April Bucharest summit.

Though still in the primary stage, McCain is far ahead of his chief rival, Mike Huckabee, while Obama and Clinton are in a neck­and­neck battle for their party’s nomination in late August at the party convention in Denver.

McCain’s statement of support called NATO expansion the heart of creating a “Global League of Democracies.”

“Georgia and Ukraine have expressed their desire for a MAP and we should offer it to them at the Summit,” his Feb.9 statement read.

Regarding their Ukraine policy, “the best litmus test is their top foreign policy advisors, who are all friends of Ukraine through their work,” said Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank.

In fact, both Clinton and Obama have Ukraine­friendly foreign policy advisers.

Clinton’s team includes Richard Holbrooke, who was in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution, former deputy secretary of state and Yalta European Strategy participant Strobe Talbott, and Madeleine Albright, who visited Ukraine as a former secretary of state.

Meanwhile, Obama’s top foreign policy adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski, a co­founder of the Trilateral Commission and strong advocate of Ukraine’s integration into Euro­Atlantic structures.

In fact, both the Republican and Democratic parties favor Ukraine’s integration into Euro­Atlantic structures, and all three candidates offer similar approaches, experts said.

“Their policy will be consistent, as it has been on both sides of the partisan aisle, among journalists, and among think tanks that focus on Ukraine,” Miller said.

During the Clinton Administration, when Congress was controlled by Republicans, Ukraine was the third­largest US foreign aid recipient. By 2006, Ukraine received $115 million and didn’t rank among the top 10.

Meanwhile, some of Ukraine’s closest observers foresee “no fundamental change” in US foreign policy towards Ukraine following the Nov. 4, 2008 election.

“I expect there will be a great deal of continuity in US­Ukrainian relations when the new president takes office in 2009, whether that is Clinton, McCain or Obama,” said former US Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer.

Energy security concerns will ensure Ukraine's priority status.

The US has been absent in seeking alternative pipeline routes from Central Asia, which should’ve been on its agenda when Russia shut off the taps on Jan. 1, 2006, said Adrian Karatnyckyj, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington and founder of Orange Circle, a Ukraine think tank in Washington D.C.

All three candidates remaining should make this a priority as they take office,” Karatnycky said. “It is very important to have an ongoing high level of engagement with Ukraine’s leadership during this critical transitional period.”

While McCain is widely viewed as the Republican Party’s nominee, March 4 could prove pivotal in the Democratic contest, with primaries in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Most experts believe that if Clinton cannot sweep delegate­rich Texas and Ohio, the Democratic Party’s nomination is Obama’s. After the March 4 primaries, eight remain, which together mathematically do not have enough delegates to make up for potential losses in Texas and Ohio.