Fate spared Ukraine in Trump saga
Public uproar at aid-for-favour disclosure forced US rethink.
It was early September, and Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, faced an agonising choice: whether to capitulate to President Donald Trump’s demands to publicly announce investigations against his political enemies or to refuse, and lose desperately needed military aid. Only Mr Trump could unlock the aid, he had been told by two US senators, and time was running out.
If the money, nearly US$400 million (12.1 billion baht), were not unblocked by the end of the fiscal year Sept 30, it could be lost in its entirety.
In a flurry of WhatsApp messages and meetings in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, over several days, senior aides debated the point.
Avoiding partisan politics in the United States had always been the first rule of Ukrainian foreign policy, but the military aid was vital to the war against Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, a conflict that has cost 13,000 lives since it began in 2014.
By then, however, Mr Zelenskiy’s staffers were already conceding to what seemed to be the inevitable, and making plans for a public announcement about the investigations.
It was a fateful decision for a fledgeling president elected on an anti-corruption platform that included putting an end to politically motivated investigations.
Elements of this internal Ukrainian debate have appeared in the Ukrainian news media and seeped into congressional testimony in the United States, as part of an impeachment inquiry undertaken after accusations surfaced of Mr Trump’s demands.
But interviews in Kyiv with government officials, lawmakers and others close to the Zelenskiy government have revealed new details of how high-level Ukrainian officials ultimately decided to acquiesce to Mr Trump’s request — and, by a stroke of luck, never had to follow through.
Aides were arguing in favour of “bowing to what was demanded”, said Petro Burkovskiy, a senior fellow at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation who has close ties to the Ukrainian government.
They were willing to do so, he said, despite the risk of losing bipartisan support in the United States by appearing to assist Mr Trump’s reelection bid. “The cost was high.”
As Mr Trump’s principal envoy to Ukraine, Gordon Sondland, admitted on Tuesday in congressional testimony, the Trump administration had withheld the military aid to pressure Mr Zelenskiy to make a public statement on the two investigations: one into whether former vice president Joe Biden had pressed for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Burisma, a natural gas company where his son served on the board; the other into unproven accusations that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that meddled in the 2016 election to promote the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
In the July 25 phone call that provoked a whistleblower complaint and touched off the impeachment inquiry, Mr Zelenskiy offered private assurances that his government would look into those matters.
But a public statement that raised doubts about Russian meddling and Mr Biden, who the president regarded as the greatest threat to his re-election, would be far more useful politically to Mr Trump.
Not only would it smear Mr Biden, it could also appear to undermine the Mueller investigation into Russian electoral interference by pinning some blame on Ukraine.
A tug of war ensued between a senior aide to Mr Zelenskiy, Andriy Yermak, and another of Mr Trump’s envoys to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, over the wording of the proposed public statement. Mr Volker went so far as to draft a statement for Mr Zelenskiy that mentioned both investigations.
Mr Yermak pushed back, suggesting language that mentioned investigations but in general terms, so as not to antagonise the Democrats. Late in the negotiations, the American diplomats consented to dropping mention of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.
Even as Mr Yermak negotiated the wording in August, the stakes were clear. While rumours had been swirling for months about a possible hold on military aid, by early August high-level Ukrainian officials had confirmed the freeze.
The trade soon became explicit. They were approached in September by Mr Sondland, a major donor to Mr Trump’s inauguration who had been appointed ambassador to the European Union despite having no diplomatic experience. At that point, he explained in blunt terms to Mr Zelenskiy and Mr Yermak, there was little chance the aid would be forthcoming until they made the public statement on the investigations.
“I said that resumption of the US aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Mr Sondland said in sworn testimony released on Tuesday by the House committees leading the impeachment inquiry.
Mr Trump wanted the Ukrainian president to speak on CNN, William B Taylor Jr, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, testified. But aides to Mr Zelenskiy, on high alert to avoid any move that might irritate Mr Trump, wondered if that was such a good idea, in that Mr
Trump habitually called CNN “fake news” in his Twitter posts.
Finally bending to the White House request, Mr Zelenskiy’s staff planned for him to make an announcement in an interview on Sept 13 on CNN.
Though plans were in motion to give the White House the statement it had sought, events in Washington saved the Ukrainian government from any final decision and eliminated the need to make the statement.
Word of the freeze in military aid had leaked out, and Congress was in an uproar. Two days before the scheduled interview, the Trump administration released the assistance, and Mr Zelenskiy’s office quickly cancelled the interview.
Since then, Trump administration officials, including White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, have tried to argue the security assistance could not have been conditioned on the public statement because the aid was released without it. That stance has crumbled as a succession of US diplomats, capped by Mr Sondland on Tuesday, have testified in the impeachment inquiry that the freeze on aid was part of a quid pro quo designed to coerce Mr Zelenskiy into making the statement.