Speaking on Monday about Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, Ukraine’s foreign minister said “please don’t drag us into your [America’s] internal political processes.”  Unfortunately, Republicans appear intent on doing precisely that, as they repeat the false Russian claim that the Ukrainian government interfered in the 2016 US election.

Republicans see this as part of their effort to defend President Trump. In doing so, they put at risk America’s long-standing support for its Ukrainian partner.

The US government and large bipartisan majorities in Congress have backed Ukraine since the early 1990s, when it regained independence following the Soviet Union’s collapse. By the end of the decade, Congressionally-approved assistance for Ukraine had reached USD 300-400 million per year.

When Ukrainians took to the streets in the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity, their striving for democracy won interest and support from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill.

Such Congressional support offered Kyiv grounds for comfort when Trump became president in 2017. Candidate Trump had suggested he might recognize the illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia. He also questioned the sanctions imposed on Moscow for its seizure of Crimea and subsequent aggression in eastern Ukraine.

Despite Trump’s apparent skepticism about Ukraine and his reluctance to criticize Vladimir Putin (or Russian actions), Congress continued to back Ukraine. It regularly voted by wide margins to approve funding for reform and military assistance for Kyiv while pressing the administration to bolster sanctions on Russia.

Things took a turn last September with the revelation of Trump’s effort to extort Ukraine’s president into investigating his possible 2020 political opponent by withholding an Oval Office visit and military assistance. The president’s alleged abuse of power led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives in December.

I tried to assure my Ukrainian interlocutors that, whatever President Trump did, they had an ace in the hole: the bipartisan support their country enjoyed from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. This was support that, if necessary, would produce veto-proof votes to aid Ukraine. Today, I am not so sure.

It has long been clear that Trump buys Moscow’s disinformation line that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US election. It is true that individual Ukrainian officials criticized candidate Trump, just as officials from many European countries did. But it was Russian intelligence agencies, with Putin’s approval, that hacked the Democratic National Committee’s e-mails and gave them to Wikileaks. It is Russia’s Internet Research Agency that used social media to sow division among Americans.

However, in November and December as they sought to defend Trump against impeachment, Republicans began to make the Russian argument that Ukraine had interfered. There were many examples of this from Republicans who will sit in judgment as the Senate conducts the impeachment trial. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) commented, “I think both Russia and Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.” Meanwhile, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) argued, “There’s no difference in the way Russians put their finger early on, on the scale and how Ukrainian officials did it,” and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) stated bluntly, “Ukraine blatantly interfered in our election.”

We can expect more such charges in the coming days. Republicans have put themselves on a slippery slope as regards support for Ukraine.

Will Republicans who assert that the Ukrainian government interfered in the US election vote in the future to approve assistance for Ukraine? And, if they can separate their espousal of the Kremlin’s talking point from their votes on assistance, how do they defend to constituents and others less sympathetic to Ukraine a vote to assist the country that they say interfered in the 2016 US election?

This is dangerous ground that could undermine US support for a country whose success is in America’s national interest.

Steven Pifer, a William Perry research fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, is a former US ambassador to Ukraine.

Read the Rest at The Atlantic Council

Original written for Brookings.Com

Since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, the United States has provided Ukraine with $3 billion in reform and military assistance and $3 billion in loan guarantees. U.S. troops in western Ukraine train their Ukrainian colleagues. Washington, in concert with the European Union, has taken steps to isolate Moscow politically and imposed a series of economic and visa sanctions on Russia and Russians.

The furor over President Donald Trump’s sordid bid to extort the president of Ukraine into investigating his potential 2020 political opponent raises an obvious question: Why should the United States care so much about Ukraine, a country 5,000 miles away? A big part of the reason is that U.S. officials told the Ukrainians the United States would care when negotiating the Budapest Memorandum on security assurances, signed 25 years ago this week.

A NUCLEAR-ARMED STATE BREAKS UP

In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the United States, Russia, and Britain committed “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” and “to refrain from the threat or use of force” against the country. Those assurances played a key role in persuading the Ukrainian government in Kyiv to give up what amounted to the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, consisting of some 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads.

When the USSR broke up in late 1991, there were nuclear weapons scattered in the resulting post-Soviet states. The George H. W. Bush administration attached highest priority to ensuring this would not lead to an increase in the number of nuclear weapons states. Moreover, as it watched Yugoslavia break apart violently, the Bush administration worried that the Soviet collapse might also turn violent, raising the prospect of conflict among nuclear-armed states. Ensuring no increase in the number of nuclear weapons states meant that, in practice, only Russia would retain nuclear arms. The Clinton administration pursued the same goal. With the prospect of extending the Non-Proliferation Treaty indefinitely looming, an alternative course that allowed other post-Soviet states to keep nuclear weapons would have set a bad precedent.

Eliminating the strategic nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and strategic bombers in Ukraine was a big deal for Washington. The ICBMs and bombers carried warheads of monstrous size — all designed, built, and deployed to attack America. The warheads atop the SS-19 and SS-24 ICBMs in Ukraine had explosive yields of 400-550 kilotons each — that is, 27 to 37 times the size of the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima. The 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads — more than six times the number of nuclear warheads that China currently possesses — could have destroyed every U.S. city with a population of more than 50,000 three times over, with warheads left to spare.

ASSURANCES FOR UKRAINE

Before agreeing to give up this nuclear arsenal, Kyiv sought three assurances. First, it wanted compensation for the value of the highly-enriched uranium in the nuclear warheads, which could be blended down for use as fuel for nuclear reactors. Russia agreed to provide that.

Second, eliminating ICBMs, ICBM silos, and bombers did not come cheaply. With its economy rapidly contracting, the Ukrainian government could not afford the costs. The United States agreed to cover those costs with Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction assistance.

Third, Ukraine wanted guarantees or assurances of its security once it got rid of the nuclear arms. The Budapest Memorandum provided security assurances.

Unfortunately, Russia has broken virtually all the commitments it undertook in that document. It used military force to seize, and then illegally annex, Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in early 2014. Russian and Russian proxy forces have waged war for more than five years in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, claiming more than 13,000 lives and driving some two million people from their homes.

Some have argued that, since the United States did not invade Ukraine, it abided by its Budapest Memorandum commitments. True, in a narrow sense. However, when negotiating the security assurances, U.S. officials told their Ukrainian counterparts that, were Russia to violate them, the United States would take a strong interest and respond.

Washington did not promise unlimited support. The Budapest Memorandum contains security “assurances,” not “guarantees.” Guarantees would have implied a commitment of American military force, which NATO members have. U.S. officials made clear that was not on offer. Hence, assurances.

Beyond that, U.S. and Ukrainian officials did not discuss in detail how Washington might respond in the event of a Russian violation. That owed in part to then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin. He had his flaws, but he insisted that there be no revision of the boundaries separating the states that emerged from the Soviet collapse. Yeltsin respected Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity. Vladimir Putin does not.

U.S. officials did assure their Ukrainian counterparts, however, that there would be a response. The United States should continue to provide reform and military assistance to Ukraine. It should continue sanctions on Russia. It should continue to demand that Moscow end its aggression against Ukraine. And it should continue to urge its European partners to assist Kyiv and keep the sanctions pressure on the Kremlin.

Washington should do this, because it said it would act if Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum. That was part of the price it paid in return for a drastic reduction in the nuclear threat to America. The United States should keep its word.

What an American-Led Peace Plan Should Look Like

For more than five years, Russian forces and their proxies have waged a bloody war against Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The conflict has claimed more than 13,000 lives, driven almost two million people from their homes, and caused immense material damage. France and Germany have together sought to broker peace but failed to produce a durable cease-fire—let alone a political settlement....

If European efforts continue to falter, the United States should take a more active role in the peacemaking process, working with European countries to make Russia’s military engagement in Ukraine more costly and a settlement more attractive. Moreover, Washington should set forth its own peace plan—one that builds on previous diplomatic efforts but includes a UN-authorized peacekeeping mission and an interim international administration in Donbas.

Read the rest at Foreign Affairs

Congress has long weighed sanctions as a tool to block the Nord Stream II gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. Unfortunately, it has mulled the question too long, and time has run out. With some 85% of the pipeline already laid, new congressional sanctions aimed at companies participating in the pipeline’s construction will not stop it. Instead, they will become a new bone of contention between the United States and Europe.

There is a smarter way for Congress to proceed, one that could avoid a U.S.-Europe spat while ensuring significant gas flows continue to transit through pipelines in Ukraine.

The giant Russian Gazprom parastatal company currently moves a large amount of gas through Ukraine to destinations located further west in Europe. In 2018, the volume totaled 87 billion cubic meters (BCM), shipped under a contract that expires at the end of 2019.

The Ukrainians would like to negotiate a new long-term contract, ideally, for 10 years. Russian negotiators, however, have proposed an agreement that would last only one year, anticipating completion in 2020 of Nord Stream II and a separate pipeline to Turkey. The two new pipelines will have a combined capacity of about 71 BCM, meaning that they could take most of the gas that now traverses pipelines through Ukraine.

These new pipelines reflect a decision taken by Moscow more than a decade ago to find ways to get gas to Europe that circumvent Ukraine. The Russian government and Gazprom seek to eliminate Gazprom’s dependence on Ukrainian pipelines as well as to end the transit fees that last year generated $3 billion in revenue for Kyiv.

As Russia has reduced its dependence on Ukraine for transiting gas, Kyiv stopped importing gas directly from Russia for Ukrainian use in 2015, instead bringing gas in from Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. That gas fills about one-third of Ukraine’s needs, with domestic production satisfying the remainder.

The European Union has sought to facilitate agreement between Kyiv and Moscow on a new contract on gas transit. A deal so far has eluded negotiators, given the wide difference in proposals for a new contract’s duration and Russia’s unreasonable demand that Ukraine drop a $2.7 billion judgment it won against Gazprom.

That all raises questions as to what happens on January 1, 2020. Some suspect that, if there is no agreed contract, Gazprom might nevertheless continue to ship gas west via Ukrainian pipelines, daring Kyiv to stop the flow and incur the wrath of those European countries that depend on that gas.

European Union officials have suggested a 10-year contract with a provision requiring that 60 BCM of gas be shipped each year via Ukraine. While making clear her support for Nord Stream II, German Chancellor Angela Merkel also expressed support for Ukraine continuing to transit significant volumes of Russian gas.

Nord Stream II has concerned Congress, which fears the pipeline would deepen Europe’s dependence on Russian gas and would allow Gazprom to reduce the gas it ships via Ukraine, perhaps to a trickle. Committees in both houses of Congress have developed legislation to sanction companies involved in constructing the pipeline, particularly those owning the ships that are laying the pipes. However, given that the pipeline is almost complete and Congress has not yet passed the legislation, those sanctions could end up punishing European companies — but not actually stopping the pipeline.

It will prove difficult for Congress to make Europe cut its dependence on Russian gas. In any case, Nord Stream II is less about how much gas Europe buys from Russia than about how Russia ships that gas to European markets.

On the latter question, Congress could help protect gas transit through Ukraine. It could amend the legislation, perhaps by adding provisions to provide for waiving the Nord Stream II-related sanctions if a long-term gas transit contract were agreed on between Kyiv and Moscow, a contract that entailed a significant flow of gas through Ukraine. That would give EU negotiators and Merkel an additional incentive to broker an agreement sustaining significant gas transit revenues for Kyiv.

Clearly, Congress’s preferred solution is to block Nord Stream II. That now seems all but impossible. Congress still has a chance to facilitate a second-best outcome, one that would ensure that Ukraine could continue to take advantage of — and profit from — its position as a transit country for Russian gas while avoiding creation of a new area of disagreement with Europe. Congress should amend its legislation accordingly.

Originally for Brookings:https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/11/12/congress-nord-stream-ii-and-ukraine/

PEACE, DONBAS, AND RUSSIA

The simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Russian and Russian proxy forces occupy part of Donbas, has now entered its sixth year. Zelenskiy attaches top priority to ending that conflict and restoring Ukrainian sovereignty. He and his team justify this in real and understandable terms: More Ukrainian soldiers die each week along the line of contact. Moreover, they feel that now could offer their best opportunity to reach a settlement with Moscow.

Zelenskiy seeks a summit meeting of the “Normandy format,” which would involve Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Emmanuel Macron. To try to shake things loose on Donbas, Zelenskiy endorsed the Minsk agreements reached in 2014 and 2015, accepted the “Steinmeier formula” for implementation of Minsk (albeit reinterpreting its terms), and ordered Ukrainian military forces to disengage and pull back from the line of contact in two locations, with a third disengagement possible in the near future.

The president’s team hopes these steps will set up a summit meeting in which progress can be made or, failing that, the blame falls on Putin. Other Ukrainians worry, however, that Zelenskiy appears too eager for agreement. That could lead Putin to up his demands. They also question whether he has solid red lines on where to stop in any negotiation with the more experienced Russian leader.

CONCERN ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS WITH WEST

As Kyiv prepares for a possible Normandy format summit, Ukrainians are nervous about the backing they will receive from Germany and France. They note the decision to re-admit Russia to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the nearing completion of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline, and the apparent French desire to move toward business as usual with Moscow and restore the G-8 by bringing Russia back in. All these actions strike Ukrainians as steps to return to a more normal Europe-Russia relationship, despite the fact that the Russians have done nothing to correct their aggressions of the past five-plus years.

Ukrainians also express nervousness about whether the congressional impeachment inquiry might lead to a reduction in U.S. support for Ukraine. Ukrainian officials note that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s decision last week to cancel a visit to Kyiv just two days after it was proposed did not help in this regard. Kyiv wants full U.S. backing as it prepares for the possible Normandy summit, especially as Ukrainians see the United States as the only Western country that can serve as a counterbalance to Russia.

SO, CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM

The bottom line is that Ukrainians are both optimistic and cautious about what Zelenskiy might achieve. Depending on whom one speaks to, the emphasis on optimism or caution varies, though caution seems to win out more than optimism, at least in the short term.

Zelenskiy faces two early tests: how he handles a Ukrainian-Russian-German-French summit meeting (assuming that it happens), and whether he can reassure the International Monetary Fund and others (both in Ukraine and in the West) that he will protect Privatbank and that there will be no compromise with Kolomoisky. These questions will affect judgments about Zelenskiy’s ability over the longer term to press forward with the kinds of economic reforms and anti-corruption measures that would enable a significant acceleration in Ukraine’s growth rate and in its movement toward European normalcy.

Originally for Brookings: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/11/04/five-months-…

For more than two weeks now, a stream of current and former U.S. officials, this week including Amb. Bill Taylor, have described to Congressional committees the White House’s sordid effort to outsource American foreign policy to the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who sought to advance the personal political interests of Donald Trump. Faced with compelling testimonies to the effect that the president subverted U.S. national interests to his own, the White House has begun to trash those officials.

Even for this White House, that is a despicable new low.

The testimonies make clear that President Trump insisted on a quid pro quo, as his Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney confirmed in an October 17 press conference (he later tried to walk it back, but watch the video of the press conference). The president wanted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate a long-debunked charge about former Vice President Joe Biden, his possible opponent in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. President Trump also wanted the Ukrainians to check whether the Democratic National Committee’s e-mail servers might have ended up in, of all places, Ukraine (no one has offered evidence to suggest that they have).

Smoking guns are the stuff of spy movies. In real-life intelligence-gathering, they are exceptionally rare. That’s why the business of intelligence typically requires collecting and analyzing fragments of information—putting together secret nuggets with unclassified information—to try to make sense of complex reality. If nothing else, the whistle-blower who filed a complaint against President Donald Trump clearly followed his or her training. SECOND PARAGRAPH I’ve spent 20 years reading intelligence reports and researching the U.S. intelligence community. And I’m not automatically inclined to believe the worst allegations about any administration; everyone has agendas and incentives to reveal information, some more noble than others. Trump and his allies have dismissed the complaint as hearsay and accused the whistle-blower of acting on political motives. But a close reading of the whistle-blower’s lengthy complaint, which accuses Trump of “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” yields a lot of concrete leads for investigators to follow.

Here are three things I learned:

Read the rest at The Atlantic

Over the past two weeks, a CIA whistleblower’s complaint, a White House record of a July 25 telephone conversation between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and texts exchanged by American diplomats have dominated the news and raised questions about the president’s handling of policy toward Ukraine. Here are five observations: SECOND PARAGRAPH First, President Trump was not doing the nation’s business on July 25. Trump has described the call as “perfect,” but the memorandum of conversation shows that he did not seek to advance U.S. interests. He did not ask Zelensky about progress in ending Russia’s war against Ukraine. He did not propose steps to facilitate more American trade. He did not raise how U.S. liquified natural gas might strengthen Ukraine’s energy security (something of interest to Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, whom Trump now says instigated a call that he did not want to make).

Read the Rest at FSI's Medium.com

CISAC’s Steven Pifer, former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine, looks at the dueling US foreign policies toward Ukraine – one aimed at U.S. national interests, the other at President Donald Trump’s reelection – and the risk that poses for Ukraine. “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Kyiv should take care, lest their country become a political football in America’s domestic politics,” writes Pifer in a piece for Brookings. Read the rest at Brookings.edu.

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