American voters who elected Donald Trump as the country’s next president may have inadvertently signed a death warrant for tens of thousands of Ukrainians as Russia’s Vladimir Putin could very likely interpret it as a green light to invade Ukraine.
That is the fear of many in Ukraine who were shocked to hear candidate Trump’s praise for Putin in debates and campaign speeches.
He suggested that Moscow’s annexation of Crimea might be justified and in one TV interview said:”I don’t like what’s happening with Ukraine. But that’s really a problem that affects Europe a lot more than it affects us.”
For part of the campaign period, Trump used as his chief adviser Paul Manafort, notorious in Ukraine as the person who mapped out Viktor Yanukovych’s strategy to capture the presidency in 2010.
Manafort, an American PR maestro who had a reputation of selling his services to whoever would pay, however odious they were, groomed Yanukovych to make him more palatable to the gullible among Ukraine’s electorate. He also worked on whitewashing Yanukovych’s criminal and corrupt history for the outside world so that Western leaders would tolerate him even if they had contempt for the former Ukrainian despot.
Firtash ties
Manafort worked for other unsavory Ukrainian characters, including oligarch Dmytro Firtash, who was for years the biggest player in Ukraine’s gas industry – a byword for corruption. He was widely regarded as working with – or for — Putin to sell Russian and Central Asian gas provided to him cheaply and then sold to Ukraine at vastly increased prices. Most believe Putin and his acolytes were the main financial beneficiaries of the schemes which gathered billions of dollars in profits. Firtash is currently fighting an FBI extradition warrant to the US on corruption charges.
Manafort is also under investigation by the US authorities after Ukrainian sources earlier this year revealed information purportedly showing he had received millions of dollars in fees from Yanukovych that had not been declared to American tax authorities.
There were murmurings that while Manafort was working for Yanukovych, and then earlier this year for Trump, he had links to Russians thought to work directly or indirectly for the Kremlin.
After Trump becomes president he may use his influence to ensure Manafort is not prosecuted. That presents the ominous possibility that Manafort may return to a position of influence within Trump’s administration which would allow him to wreak revenge on Ukraine.
Pro-Russians celebrate
A Ukrainian army colonel, who did not want to be named, said that Putin and pro-Russian forces in occupied Ukraine have been buoyed by Trump’s victory and may see it as permission to increase aggression against Ukraine.
Since the election he said the pro-Russian side had violated the ceasefire much more “brazenly” with a fourfold increase in attacks in Donbas, the eastern Ukrainian territory seized by pro-Moscow separatists supported by regular Russian forces. He fears Putin might exploit the confusion to “go for a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine.”
A Ukrainian military intelligence source said that there had been a “considerable” buildup of Russian-provided armor, rockets and artillery in the Donbas region and Russian military facilities near the borders with Ukraine in the weeks prior to the election and the number of artillery and small arms attacks against Ukrainian forces had spiked in the days following the election.
Putin bides time
Some savvy commentators on Ukraine and Russia like The Economist editor Ed Lucas and author Anne Applebaum had suggested before the elections that Putin might strike at Ukraine soon after Election Day if Democrat presidential candidate Hilary Clinton, openly hostile to the Kremlin, had won.
Now that Trump is president-in-waiting the military intelligence officer said Putin can afford to bide his time. Although acknowledging that Putin could strike suddenly at Ukraine, the intelligence officer believed a Russian attack next spring was likelier.
A former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, John Herbst, said that although Trump had made some “rather naive” statements during the campaign period it still remained for him to unveil his policy on Putin or Ukraine. Much, he said, would depend on Trumps advisers who he called a mixed group.
General Michael Flynn
“It seems that General Michael Flynn is kind of soft [on Russia] and tries to avoid saying anything about Kremlin policy,” said Herbst. “But we know that Vice President- elect Michael Pence has said some very important things about the dangers of Putin’s policies and we know that other advisers around Trump have said similar things on these subjects.”
Flynn, who has praised Putin, has been paid to give speeches in Moscow and has appeared on Russian TV to air his Moscow-friendly views, is thought a favorite to be Trump’s nationals security adviser – a position which would give him pivotal importance on deciding whether the new administration will support or ditch Ukraine. Herbst and others interviewed for this article said that Flynn potentially represents a far bigger threat to Ukraine than Manafort.
Will sanctions stay?
Herbst said that a key Trump decision will be whether to continue sanctions against Russia, which have impacted on Moscow’s economy and also seen many of Putin’s closest cronies banned from traveling to the U.S. and other Western countries. That, he said, will be influenced by whether European leaders, particularly Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, remain firm in maintaining EU sanctions.
Taras Kuzio, senior research fellow at Alberta University and Ukraine expert. does not believe Russia has the resources to launch major military operations in Syria and Ukraine simultaneously and will wait to see to how Trump’s campaign statements about improving relations with Russia actually play out, particularly concerning the sanctions regime. He said: “By unleashing military conflict in Ukraine, Putin may derail a potential ending of the sanctions regime.”
Kuzio said that if America dropped sanctions that would encourage those EU countries lukewarm on sanctions to abandon them, effectively a Western recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. He said downscaling sanctions could tempt Putin to ramp up operations against Ukraine.
Strong Congress
However, he said sanctions are largely the remit of Congress – not the President – and so far both Republican and Democrat members of both houses of Congress have mostly been staunch supporters of Ukraine.
Many Ukrainians and foreign friends of Ukraine say Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s dawdling for more than two years on reforms to combat rampant official corruption have made Ukraine more vulnerable to Russian aggression.
Corruption remains high
Current U.S, Vice President Joe Biden, consistently a strident Ukrainian supporter, pleaded fruitlessly with President Petro Poroshenko for more than a year to prosecute and jail at least one corrupt oligarch or senior official. Biden’s frustration is shared by millions of Ukrainians who are angry that people who they regard as corrupt or outright criminals strut around with impunity or are tipped off and flee the country if Ukraine’s prosecutor general might actually move against them.
The fight to dismantle systemic official corruption was a key demand of those taking part in the revolution that in 2014 overthrew Ukraine’s former, pro-Putin president, Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych’s security forces gunned down more than 100 protesters and since then thousands of Ukrainians have died defending their country against Russian and Moscow-backed forces. Therefore, Poroshenko’s feeble anti-corruption efforts stir raw emotions among Ukrainians and his popularity ratings have tumbled.
Kuzio points out that some 15 percent of the country’s electorate are now veterans of the Donbas conflict. During visits to the war front, soldiers frequently spoke to him of their anger at Poroshenko warning they would not tolerate rampant official corruption indefinitely. Many of them have vowed that if there are no dramatic results they could turn their guns on a government perceived as nurturing corruption.
Kuzio said that Kyiv’s failure to deliver on its anti-corruption promises, has led to “Ukraine fatigue” among Ukraine’s American supporters – politicians, diplomats, government officials – who need ammunition to persuade President Trump to continue sanctions against the Kremlin, let alone provide the lethal weapons the Ukrainian military needs to resist a new Russian invasion.
Loss of Saakashvili
Poroshenko suffered a big blow to his corruption-fighting credentials in November with the resignation of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as governor of Ukraine’s Odesa Oblast. Poroshenko appointed him to the post in 2015 in a high-profile demonstration that Saakashvili, who had fiercely and successfully battled corruption in his own country would spearhead the fight in the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian region. But Saakashvili resigned his post accusing Poroshenko of shielding the “clans responsible for Odessa’s corruption.
There have been some serious reforms in Ukraine concerning finance and the frequently phony or corrupt banking sector.
The energy industries, formerly Ukraine’s most corrupt sector, has been transformed. There have been painful hikes in domestic utility prices demanded by the IMF and other international lenders. Recently publicly-accessible Internet “e-declarations”, where all politicians and senior bureaucrats must declare their wealth and assets, have been introduced after months of eviscerating political wrangling.
Poroshenko must lead
Herbst said that although Poroshenko deserved some credit he believes “the real impetus for reforms has been coming from lower levels.”
He said Trump will be well- informed by his own advisers and government officials about Ukraine’s progress – or lack of it on these and other reforms and advised: “It would be good for Ukraine domestically and for Ukraine’s domestic positions if the president were clearly seen as leading the charge on reforms.”
Although it was no secret that Poroshenko, like most Ukrainians, had hoped for a Hillary Clinton victory, he nevertheless sent pro-forma congratulations to Trump.
Ukraine’s Ambassador to America Valeriy Chaly warned that if the U.S. softened diplomatic pressure on Moscow that could send a dangerous message to the Kremlin which might encourage “acute” military escalations in Donbas and to ignore Russia’s obligations under the”Minsk agreements” governing a cease-fire and political arrangements in the conflict zone.
US Vice President Joe Biden (L) gestures to Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko at a bilateral meeting during the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC, March 31, 2016.( AFP)
Escalation of war?
He said Russian regular troops and Moscow-trained rebels, supported by huge quantities of Russian heavy military equipment remain on Ukrainian territory poised to intensify the conflict.
The ambassador warned that if US and EU sanctions were scaled down that would send a dangerously “erroneous message to the world and would unleash violence by this nuclear power [Russia] not only in Ukraine”. He said international security would be severely undermined and the repercussions would affect Europe, the Middle East and, eventually, the U.S. and, like the Ukrainian government, he would watch carefully for clues to Trump’s Ukraine policy as he fills senior positions in his cabinet before inauguration day – Jan. 20.
The Ukrainian government and military will minutely analyze every statement emanating from President-elect Trump’s coterie to understand what he intends for their country. They hope that as he is briefed on the situation “reality will dawn on him” and his apparently pro-Putin passion will be quelled.
“But if not,” said the Ukrainian colonel, “Then indeed American voters could have unwittingly signed the death warrants of thousands of Ukrainians who will have to defend their country if Putin launches an all-out assault.”
Askold Krushelnycky, a former Kyiv Post chief editor. is the author of “Orange Revolution: A Personal Journey Through Ukrainian History.”
