The Republican Party has been vocal in opposing further aid for Ukraine in its war against Russia. Republicans once a staunch opponent of Russia and its longtime leader Vladimir Putin have recently called for the United States to stop its military funding for the pro-democracy opposition to Russia in Ukraine. Although it appears that this is a sudden shift from Republicans toward an anti-Ukrainian stance. The roots of this change can be traced back to Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign and his campaign manager at the time Paul Manafort.
Shortly before the 2016 Republican National Convention, party officials approached the Trump campaign with GOP proposals for the party’s agenda. According to an NPR article the Trump campaign had only one issue with the Party’s platform.
“When Republican Party leaders drafted the platform prior to their convention in Cleveland last month, they had relatively little input from the campaign of then-presumptive nominee Donald Trump on most issues — except when it came to a future Republican administration’s stance on Ukraine. It started when platform committee member Diana Denman tried to insert language calling for the U.S. to provide lethal defensive weapons to the Ukrainian government, which is fighting a separatist insurrection backed by Russia. Denman says she had no idea she was “going into a fire fight,” calling it “an interesting exchange, to say the least.”
Denman is a long-time GOP activist from Texas. When she presented her proposal during a platform subcommittee meeting last month, “two gentlemen,” whom Denman said were part of the Trump campaign, came over, looked at the language, and asked that it be set aside for further review.”
For some unknown reason at the time, the Trump campaign was adamant about one thing regarding Republican policies and that was to change its stance going forward on aiding Ukraine for future defense against Russia. The sudden shift from the Trump camp raised questions about what was the motivation behind this decision. It caused some military officials to wonder if Trump would support Ukraine if they needed the United States’ support.
“Rachel Hoff, is a national security analyst with the American Action Forum and believes the final platform language signals that a Trump administration would refuse to send lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine.
“This puts Trump out of step certainly with Republican leadership but I would also say mainstream conservative foreign policy or national security opinion,” Hoff said.”
The man heading up Trump’s 2016 campaign at the time was Paul Manafort. A person who had a long history in Ukrainian politics. He was a vital figure behind a pro-Russian Political Party and its main character.
According to an NBC News report “Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign chief from May to August 2016, spent nearly a decade as a consultant to Ukraine’s Party of Regions and its standard-bearer, Viktor Yanukovych.
Backed by Russian-leaning oligarchs, the party opposed NATO membership and spouted anti-Western rhetoric that once helped fuel violence against American marines. Its reign ended when Yanukovych fled to Russia after bloody street protests against his personal corruption and pro-Moscow actions.
Viktor Yanukovych had been governor of Donetsk, a Russian-speaking region close to the Russian border, and then the prime minister of Ukraine. He and his faction, the Party of Regions, were thought by many Western observers to have links to organized crime. As a young man, Yanukovych had been convicted of robbery and assault.
A leaked U.S. State Department cable from 2006 said that Manafort’s job was to give the Party of Regions an “extreme makeover” and “change its image from … a haven for mobsters into that of a legitimate political party.”
While other American consultants, both Democratic and Republican, were working on the campaigns of Ukraine’s pro-Western “Orange” parties, Manafort was working for a party whose base was in Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine. Manafort’s new bosses were oligarchs friendly to Moscow, and hostile to America’s principal military alliance, NATO.
Critics of Manafort, however, insist his gameplan for the 2006 election was to drive a wedge into the electorate. Chornovil, Serhiy Leshchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and former investigative journalist, and Taras Berezovets, who advised one of Yanukovych’s main political foes, all say Manafort’s strategy was based on polarizing the voting public. They say he wanted to set Russian speakers against Ukrainian speakers, and supporters of Moscow against supporters of NATO.
Along with advocacy of making Russian the second, official state language, Manafort pushed “anti-NATO propaganda,” said Chornovil.
Berezovets called anti-NATO rhetoric “one of the key ideas of Paul Manafort.”
From January through April 2008, the Party of Regions mounted a slick, well-coordinated campaign against Ukraine’s NATO membership. The “NATO No” slogan appeared on giant television screens and mass-produced blue signs at rallies where Yanukovych spoke. The same slogan was emblazoned on blue and yellow signs carried by the party’s members of Parliament onto the floor of the Parliament in February.
A year into Yanukovych’s presidency, his administration prosecuted his chief political rival, former “Orange” Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, for allegedly abusing her position during her time in office. She was sentenced to seven years in prison. Many international observers condemned the prosecution as politically motivated.
Around the same time, however, the Yanukovych administration began to strengthen its ties to the Putin regime and to further Russify the Party of Regions.
According to Inna Bohoslovska, who was a Party of Regions-aligned member of parliament at the time, starting in 2012, “[Ethnically] Russian candidates were placed in all the strong positions. Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Security Service.”
After three months of demonstrations, Yanukovych was ousted as president in February 2014. He fled to Russia. Activists broke into Mezhyhirya, his ornate presidential palace, and were outraged by its gold-plated opulence. “[Manafort] knew that the president’s salary was not enough for the luxury of the Mezhyhirya, so he should have been aware that it was anything but legal money,” said a top Ukrainian anti-corruption investigator.
Russian troops invaded Crimea shortly afterward, citing Ukrainian unrest and Yanukovych’s ouster as justifications. Russia has now annexed Crimea.
Yanukovych remains in Russia. He has been sanctioned by the EU and the U.S. for the Crimea invasion, and is wanted by Ukraine for a long list of charges that have included corruption and murder.”
With Manafort being in Trump’s ear as his campaign manager Trump single-handedly changed the Republican Party’s narrative on Ukrainian backing leading up to the Republican National Convention. It appears since Manafort was unsuccessful in undermining the Ukrainian government from within, the alleged Putin puppet decided to take his cause to America where he could have Putin fanboy Donald Trump implement his plan. Trump, against the recommendations of his military advisors, tried to undermine the United States NATO alliance at every opportunity. While routinely praising Vladimir Putin and his leadership of Russia.
With Trump out of office and President Joe Biden uniting NATO and its military partners into international support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. The pressure is mounting on Trump, who may owe his presidency in 2016 to Russian interference in American elections. To reinstate Republican opposition to supporting Ukraine in their fight for independence and democracy. If Trump and his cohorts’ attempts to undermine democracy in the United States on January 6th haven’t deterred Republicans from supporting him. Then the Ukrainian government and its citizens don’t stand a chance if Republicans continue to push Trump’s anti-Ukraine pro-Russian agenda if he is Re-elected in 2024.
For the articles quoted in this column click the links below
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/what-did-ex-trump-aide-paul-manafort-really-do-ukraine-n775431
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