It is a pity that both American foreign policy and domestic political wrangling have somehow become tangled up with what happens in Ukraine, and between Ukraine and Russia.
That country of 44 million, largely flat and stretching vulnerably between Western Europe and Russia, has always had a hard time of it, and the agony continues. The West and the Russians arm-wrestle over it, sometimes with heavy artillery. It is divided, including religiously, and very corrupt. There is sometimes the thought that Ukrainians keep their politics and business so forbiddingly corrupt to try to keep foreigners out of their affairs.
That said, its people who have come to the United States as immigrants have made a tremendous contribution to the economy and culture of their now not-so-new homeland. For that reason, and for the more general one of respect for Ukrainians as a people, it is regrettable that their dirty linen has become mixed with Americans’ as U.S. investigators try to sort out just what was the role of Russia in the 2016 elections.
It appears that President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, delivered a peace plan for Ukraine, intended to end the now nearly three-year-long war there, to the White House in early February; it was received by Michael Flynn, a week before he was fired as national security adviser. The plan involved, in part, Ukraine’s leasing Crimea to Russia long-term in return for Russia’s withdrawing its support for pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels in the east of the country. This would end the war and make Russia happy, although the Kiev-based Ukrainian government substantially less so.
It would not be a bad thing to bring the damage in eastern Ukraine to some kind of a halt. The death toll approaches 8,000. The problem with the plan in question was, in part, that it was being floated apparently without the knowledge of the Kiev government, the U.S. government foreign policy team or other legitimately interested parties.
It then has to be asked: Who would profit from its being implemented? That question spills over into a matter of importance to the United States: Might it constitute some sort of payoff to Russia for its role in the elections?
Ukraine is once more found in the middle of the pushing and pulling, just as it was during World War II, when Germany and the Soviet Union fought over it, and on its soil. From the strictly American point of view, the squeezing of Ukraine in the investigation of Russian involvement in U.S. elections needs to be brought to a clear end as soon as possible.
The partisanship on display in the congressional investigations of the affair does not help at all. It is neither Democratic nor Republican for Americans to want to know what role Russia played in our national elections. It is our country, and we need to know what role foreigners played in what is supposed to be our selection of those who govern us.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
