A Nation at War
Ukraine is at war with Russia. Ukraine is the 29th most powerful country in the world, rated just behind Greece and Thailand. There have 1,205,000 in military service. Russia is the second most powerful force in the world, with over 3 million in uniform. That’s more than the “First Place” United States, by the way, with US forces at 2,200,000.
So if Russia really wants to invade and take over Ukraine, they have the military power to do it. And it’s clear that the Russia’s President Vladimir Putin wants to take over, to “get Ukraine”. He’s already taken one province, Crimea and invaded two others. Putin wants today’s Russia to regain the “lost empire” of the Soviet Union. And it’s not just Ukraine: Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, and Moldova, are other European nations “on the block” for Russian expansion.
So what’s stopping Putin’s dream of Russian empire?
Russian Empire
There is the European Union, and NATO. But most importantly, the United States of America directly supports Ukraine. Russia recognizes that a full out invasion of Ukraine would, at the least, trigger crippling economic sanctions, and at the worst, a direct confrontation with the US and European military. The US “thumb” is on the scale, balancing the Russian might. America knows that their Ukrainian position “tweaks” Russia. They also know that a full out military confrontation in Ukraine would put US forces in a difficult and dangerous situation.
When Russia invaded and claimed Crimea, President Obama placed economic sanctions on them. When Donald Trump was running for President, he made statements saying he would remove those sanctions, essentially accepting the Russian takeover. Not surprisingly, many Ukrainian leaders spoke out against Trump during the 2016 campaign. Hillary Clinton was likely to be even tougher on Russia than Obama was. Reasonably, Ukrainian leaders were hoping she would win.
That’s not “election interference” as many Republicans are now claiming. Ukrainian leaders voicing their opinion of what’s best for their own country, even if they do it in editorials in American newspapers, isn’t attacking our election process. That’s what the Russians were doing, from manipulating social media to hacking political emails, to direct attacks on US voting systems. What the Ukrainian leaders did was the same kind of thing that Donald Trump does for Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom and Ben Netanyahu in Israel.
For Ukraine, regardless of whether Trump or Clinton is President, every ounce of US backing is important. Since the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian Presidents, Poroschenko and Zelenskiy, have done everything they could to guarantee US aid, particularly military aid, to their nation. US support for Ukrainians is not a luxury. It is a survival issue.
Fall of Communism
Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. Much like Russia, when the Communist regime collapsed there, a huge amount of publicly owned industry went onto the open market. Then the “supply and demand” of capitalism played out. The supply of industry and property on the market was high: that made those values lower. Communism’s collapse created a fire sale on much of Ukraine’s means of production, and speculators made and lost huge fortunes.
It was an environment ripe for corruption, for buying officials to get an inside line on the sales. It happened in both Russia and Ukraine, and created a new class of the wealthy called “oligarchs”. Many of them got their millions illegally, and those that didn’t were forced to pay for illegal action to protect them. Organized crime and organized government often became one and the same.
Corruption, Corruption, Corruption
So corruption was a huge issue in Ukraine. Before the Russian invasion, in 2014 the people of Ukraine rose up against the Russian backed President, Victor Yanukovych, who rose from serving prison time to become a billionaire during his political career. He’s the one that Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort worked for. Once Yanukovych fled to Moscow, the people ransacked his multi-million dollar home. They found a journal, listing illegal payments, including $12 million “under the table” to Manafort.
Even with Yanukovych gone, the United States and the European Union still had great concerns about Ukrainian corruption. Vice President Biden led in putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to move against that corruption, even demanding the removal of the State Prosecutor, who wasn’t investigating the Russian backed leaders in exile. Biden, following US and EU direction, threatened to withhold aid to do it. The Prosecutor, Viktor Shokin was fired and a new prosecutor, willing to prosecute, was brought in.
Over a Barrel
Ukraine is over a barrel, the barrel of a Russian tank. When President Trump asked the new President, Zelenskiy, “to do us a favor, though…” on the infamous July 25th phone call, Zelenskiy didn’t have much of a choice. When he discovered the US military aid and US recognition of his new administration in a White House meeting were being withheld, he had to find a way to grant the favor that Trump wanted. He scheduled a CNN interview, to announce investigations into the Joe and Hunter Biden and Counter Strike, as Mr. Trump asked. Only when the US Congress became aware of the funds block and pressured Trump to release it, did the Ukrainian leader cancel with CNN.
So when President Zelenskiy is asked today whether he was “pressured” by Mr. Trump, of course he says no. The aid of the United States is critical and the Trump Administration still controls it. Zelenskiy is like the kid in the principal’s office, hit by a bully. When the principal asks, “who did this to you,” the kid answers “I don’t know”.
The bully is still out there, and the kid doesn’t want to get hit again.
