A Ukrainian comes to Washington, urging his nation not be forgotten

A Ukrainian comes to Washington, urging his nation not be forgotten

00:07, 19 May 2017 | The New York Times

WASHINGTON — It had been a long day for Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk by the time he finally sat down at a sidewalk table outside his hotel and sipped a glass of wine one evening this week. He had been to the White House and the State Department, stopped by Congress and visited a think tank.

For Mr. Yatsenyuk, one of the leaders of the 2014 revolution that toppled a pro-Russian government in Ukraine and who went on to become the country’s prime minister, there was little time to waste. He had come to President Trump’s Washington on a mission: to make sure Ukraine is not forgotten as a new administration makes friends with Moscow.

Once a central focus of American foreign policy, the Ukrainians have been largely marginalized in the new era. With Mr. Trump intent on forging strong relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Ukrainians like Mr. Yatsenyuk fear being left behind even as Moscow still holds Crimea and stirs the pot in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists continue to wage a low-grade insurgency against the state.

If there is one thing Mr. Yatsenyuk wants Mr. Trump to understand, it is this: Mr. Putin is not a friend.

“It seems to me President Trump, he needs to get a better understanding of what Putin really is,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said. “It’s important to understand him. He’s the enemy of my country. But he’s a very smart, sophisticated political animal. And his primary objective is to outplay President Trump.”

This is an important moment for Ukraine as Mr. Trump leaves on Friday for his first overseas trip as president. After stops in the Middle East and at the Vatican, the president will head to Brussels to meet with other NATO leaders, most notably the Europeans who have been holding the front line against Russian adventurism in recent years.

The allies were relieved when the president did not drop sanctions against Russia, as he had suggested he would, and eventually dropped his criticism of NATO, saying the alliance was “no longer obsolete,” as he had described it only months earlier.

But as a candidate, Mr. Trump suggested that under his leadership, the United States would defend only NATO allies that have spent enough money on their own security. And he has yet to publicly reassure the Europeans that he is truly committed to Article 5 of the alliance charter that calls on all members to come to the aid of any that is attacked.

Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and neither the United States nor Europe has seen fit to help it defend itself against Russia by providing arms, as some in Congress and inside President Barack Obama’s administration unsuccessfully urged the last commander in chief to do. Mr. Trump is even less inclined to do so and has made clear that Ukraine is not a top priority. During the campaign, he said he would consider recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Since taking office, he has said little about the continuing standoff in Ukraine.

But Mr. Yatsenyuk, who stepped down as prime minister last year in a domestic political dispute with President Petro O. Poroshenko, nonetheless sees some hope. He takes solace in Mr. Trump’s decision not to ease sanctions and said his meetings with administration officials this week were encouraging. “We are on the agenda,” he said.

While Ukraine’s Washington lobbyists have tried and so far failed to secure a meeting between Mr. Poroshenko and Mr. Trump, the president did call the Ukrainian leader in February. More significantly, Mr. Trump hosted Ukraine’s foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin, at the White House last week on the same day the president met with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.

Still, the way the White House handled the meeting with Mr. Klimkin was striking. While Mr. Lavrov’s visit was listed on the public schedule, the White House made no mention of Mr. Klimkin’s. It did not become public until a day later when Mr. Trump mentioned it on Twitter: “Yesterday, on the same day- I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the FM of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin. #LetsMakePeace!”

As a former prime minister, Mr. Yatsenyuk was not able to secure a meeting with the president or secretary of state, but he met this week with Fiona Hill, the top White House adviser on Russia, and Andrea Thompson, the national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. On Capitol Hill, he met with sympathetic lawmakers like Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. He also met with Mr. Obama while in town.

Mr. Yatsenyuk wants Mr. Trump to see Mr. Putin as he does. “I don’t believe the U.S. and Russia could get along,” he said. “You are not just on different sides of the aisle, you guys are in different universes. You were, you are and you will be adversaries. You stick to the values of the free world. He sticks to the values of dictatorship and autocracy.”

For the president, Russia has become a domestic political millstone because of Moscow’s meddling in last year’s election and multiple investigations into whether Mr. Trump’s campaign associates had anything to do with that. Mr. Trump has adamantly denied any collusion and no concrete evidence has emerged publicly, but a new special counsel was appointed this week.

Mr. Yatsenyuk said Russian interference in elections in the United States as well as those in France, the Netherlands and other European countries should make clear what Mr. Putin’s real aim is. “He wants to set a fire to the whole house of the free world, to distract everyone,” he said.

Where Mr. Yatsenyuk holds out hope is that Mr. Trump will eventually view Mr. Putin as a challenge to his manhood. “The only language that President Putin understands is the language of strength,” he said. “The good news is that President Trump wants to be a very strong, masculine leader. And you can’t have two masculine folks on one block.”