While the celebration was pleasant, the entertainment great and the food and drink plentiful, both nations hit the 20-year mark on a melancholy note, with diminished expectations and a currently strained relationship.

The U.S. was represented by Ambassador John F. Tefft, while the Ukrainian side was represented by Deputy Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, who both gave cordial speeches.

Tefft said: “The United States wants, as it has always wanted, what Ukrainians themselves want for their country – a Ukraine that is sovereign, independent, prosperous and irreversibly democratic: a country that is modernizing as a European state; a transparent, inclusive Ukraine where a dynamic civil society is free to contribute to public life; a country which is open to investment and welcomes international business, and a Ukraine, where all citizens enjoy the full protection of the rule of law.”

What was left unsaid by the polite host is that Ukraine remains far from many of these goals.

The United States deserves credit for raising issues of democracy and human rights. So does the European Union. Other great powers, notably China and Russia, don’t care about such matters in their pursuit of commerce at all costs.

However, even the United States can do better in promoting justice.

With the United States and Ukraine so far away from each other, people-to-people contacts form the strength of the relationship. America is home to at least 1 million people who claim Ukrainian roots. And, as Tefft noted, U.S.-sponsored exchange programs have sent 40,000 Ukrainians to the U.S. since 1992. We wish there could be more.

Unfortunately, the credibility of America’s exhortations about democracy – from no less distinguished people than U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – are undermined by the company that her family keeps.

As the U.S. calls for the release of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from prison, her husband, the ex-U.S. president, and most recently their daughter, Chelsea (in Kyiv on Jan. 24), continue their courtship with a Ukrainian family that has inflicted lasting damage to Ukraine in its 20 years as a nation.

The partnership between the Clintons and Victor Pinchuk seems to be all about the millions of dollars that the billionaire oligarch and his wife, Elena Pinchuk, have given to the William J. Clinton Foundation.

Pinchuk acquired much of his fortune while his father-in-law, Leonid Kuchma, was president from 1994-2005. This money was not earned honestly, in our view, but rather through privatizations that were fixed beforehand to favor insiders.

In just one outrageous example, Pinchuk and fellow billionaire Rinat Akhmetov tried to get the nation’s largest steel mill, Kryvorizhstal, for $800 million.

They failed when Tymoshenko ordered it sold in the nation’s only competitive, transparent auction. It fetched six times the Pinchuk-Akhmetov price, or $4.8 billion, in 2005.

As for Kuchma, who hurried out of the October Palace Hall on Jan. 20 surrounded by a phalanx of security guards, he should be standing trial into whether he ordered the 2000 murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze. Kuchma also has never faced credible investigations into other allegations of crimes during his corrupt rule.

While Pinchuk is a pleasant fellow and he has stepped up his philanthropy, his charming demeanor is beside the point and his charitable gifts amount to crumbs from the ill-gotten banquet table.

America and Americans, especially prominent families such as the Clintons, will find their criticism of “selective justice” in Tymoshenko’s imprisonment is more credible if they were more selective about the company they keep and if they openly criticized injustice wherever it exists, rather than excluding big donors.