Americans still haven’t connected the financial dots between Trump and Putin

While compelling, neither the impeachment testimony, nor the conviction of Roger Stone, were the most significant developments of the past 10 days about the Trump presidency. Far more consequential were comments by someone close enough to the president to be able to speak to him in a stunningly un-presidential way, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland.

Sondland’s dual revelations that the president cares not at all about Ukraine (beyond as a source of dirt on a political rival) and that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky would allow himself to be used to advance Trump’s ends, have extraordinarily profound implications. It’s shocking that Trump would manipulate Zelensky so blatantly as to undermine his legitimacy and capacity to govern his fragile country.

Trump’s actions are particularly disturbing since Zelensky appeared to be Ukraine’s first president to have both the will and the domestic constituency to move his country from political inertia and decline to progress and stability.

Trump dealt a profound blow to longtime U.S. interests. It’s the greatest of his many gifts to Vladimir Putin. As for Putin’s efforts to undermine American national interests from the Baltic to the Balkans and beyond, no place is more important to the the United States’ future well-being than Ukraine. As an independent buffer state between the aggressive and ruthless Russian leadership and the West, it is critical for both U.S. and Western European interests.

For three decades, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. State Department and Agency for International Development (USAID) have devoted vast amounts of effort and resources (while Paul Manafort earned vast sums assisting those supporting corruption and Putin’s interests) to helping Ukraine overcome corruption and cynicism that have undermined the political and economic progress of many post-Communist countries. That such efforts were beginning to have success is evidenced by the murderous war that Putin launched against Ukraine in an effort to destabilize it and return it to old Soviet style subservience.

This, of course, again raises the question of why an American president, provided the world’s best intelligence, significantly undermines long-term U.S. interests and advances the interests of Putin. This is not a new question. It goes back at least to candidate Trump’s first entry in the international arena as people close to him sought to change the Republicans’ 2016 platform from pro-Ukrainian to pro-Putin. He then floated a trial balloon of ceding Crimea from Ukraine to Russia.

Since then, there have been many more dots to connect — from Helsinki, through Europe and NATO, to Syria.

One answer may simply be some combination of political incompetence and/or selfinterest. However, well-researched books and articles by excellent journalists, not to mention Donald Trump Jr., suggest another explanation.

As all have noted, for more than a decade before becoming president, Trump’s family finances have involved many highly unusual relationships with Russian oligarchs dependent upon Putin and banks connected to those oligarchs. Similarly, putting on a major event like a Miss Universe contest in Russia in 2013, without engaging in substantial bribery of Russian officials — an action that has sent U.S. businessmen to jail — seems, at best, rather slim. Under-the-table payments are the norm, not the exception. Writing as someone who once found a hidden camera in his own hotel room while working on USAID projects in Ukraine, I know it is likely any bribery was secretly recorded by Russian authorities.

All of which leads to the most important question: Have the dots become so big, so blatantly obvious and so unlike anything to have ever happened in the United

States before, that the American public can’t even see them, much less connect them?

Allan Rosenbaum is professor of public administration at Florida International University. He traveled to Ukraine, Russia and other post-Communist countries on USAID projects and for U.N. conferences on good governance. This op-ed represents his own opinion.