In the Trump impeachment saga, Ukraine is a central character — but a voiceless and largely invisible one. U.S. lawmakers and officials refer to it frequently, but never do House of Representatives committees leading the inquiry hear the Ukrainian side of the story.
On Nov. 13, the House held the first public impeachment hearings, with testimony from William B. Taylor, the United States’ interim ambassador to Ukraine, and George Kent, a top State Department official who had previously served at the embassy in Kyiv.
Both largely repeated the information in transcripts of their earlier, closed-door testimonies, emphasizing the irregularity of Trump’s use of backchannels to communicate with Ukraine’s leadership and the effect that conspiracy theories about Kyiv pushed by people in Trump’s inner circle had had on bilateral relations.
“There are two Ukraine stories,” Taylor said. “One is about impeachment, in which Ukraine is merely an object. There is another, a positive, bipartisan one. In it, Ukraine is a subject. It is about young people in a young nation, struggling to break free from its past, hoping that their new government will finally usher in a new Ukraine, proud of its independence from Russia.”
Beyond that, the hearing was largely a chance for Democrat and Republican lawmakers to attempt to elicit information to support or oppose Trump’s impeachment, turning Ukraine into a political football.
During the questioning, the Republican side termed unfounded allegations of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election “reasonable.” Republican representative Devin Nunes said Trump had “a perfectly good reason to want to find out what happened.”
Another Republican, Jim Jordan, said Trump could not have withheld aid to Ukraine to force the country to open a politically motivated investigation into his political opponent: After all, the country never announced an investigation.
Nunes called impeachment a “low-rent Ukrainian sequel” to the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. election.
This is untrue. Ukraine did not interfere in the U.S. election. Trump’s backchannel was not just irregular it was also detrimental to Ukraine. Trump’s decision to freeze aid to Kyiv harmed the country as it defends itself from Russia, and his politicization of U.S.-Ukraine ties risks undermining the bipartisan support for Ukraine that Taylor stressed.
Now, as impeachment moves forward, the U.S. will harm Ukraine again. It will make the country part of a spectacle, highlight its challenges with corruption and continue to politicize its ties with Washington.
We know how this story ends. Trump will not be removed from office — there’s no way two-thirds of the Senate will support it.
So Trump, a president who hates Ukraine, who calls Ukrainians “terrible people” who tried to block his path to the White House, will remain. He will stay with the Ukrainian people, and his party will likely hold a grudge.
Ukraine did nothing to deserve this fate and will not get the chance to defend its reputation in the hearings. It has tried to be a good ally to the United States, European Union and NATO. It continues to defend itself — and, by extension, the West — from Russia.
All the while, the narcissist-in-chief honors authoritarian leaders with Oval Office meetings, sucks up to dictators and plans to attend Moscow’s Victory Day parade next May.
Life is so unfair.
