Trump supports Ukraine against Russian aggression, insists Pompeo

US president held up military aid in bid to pressure country into investigating his political rivals

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insists the Trump administration is committed to supporting Ukraine in its defence against aggression by Russia, which invaded and annexed part of the country and is supporting a separatist insurgency.

“Today I’m here with a clear message: The United States sees that the Ukrainian struggle for freedom, democracy and prosperity is a valiant one,” Mr Pompeo said at a news conference on Friday after meeting with Ukraine’s leader in Kyiv. “Our commitment to support it will not waver.”

Ukraine is a “bulwark between freedom and authoritarianism in Eastern Europe”, Mr Pompeo added.

His visit, in which he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was aimed at calming unease among Ukrainian officials about the relationship between Washington and Kyiv, which has been thrust into the spotlight because of the impeachment of Donald Trump, based on charges of abuse of power and obstruction over the president’s actions on Ukraine.

Mr Pompeo and Mr Zelenskiy met before noon in the president’s office in central Kyiv, and the Ukrainian leader said they had talked about new steps to strengthen the partnership between the two nations.

“I don’t think these friendly and warm relations have been influenced by the impeachment trial of the president,” Mr Zelenskiy said at a news conference with Mr Pompeo when asked whether Mr Trump’s impeachment had affected ties between Kyiv and Washington.

While the two officials offered reassurances that relations were strong, Mr Pompeo did not give Mr Zelenskiy one thing he has sought since his election in April: an invitation to meet Mr Trump at the White House, which would be an important signal to Russia of US support for Ukraine. Mr Pompeo’s message that Trump was not ready to receive Mr Zelenskiy at the White House was a blow to the Ukrainian president’s national security efforts.

Evidence that Mr Trump had earlier demanded, in return for such a visit, that Ukraine announce the start of an investigation that could benefit him, became an important part of the impeachment inquiry. In response to a question on Friday, Mr Pompeo said a White House visit by Mr Zelenskiy was not dependent on the kind of investigation that Mr Trump had sought.

Ukrainian officials are angry the Americans have granted Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, two visits with Mr Trump in the White House, most recently in December.

In renewing his request for a meeting on Friday, Mr Zelenskiy said: “If we have an important subject for this conversation other than strategy and tactics, but important things we can negotiate over, something to sign and that I can bring back, then I am ready to go tomorrow!”

Mr Pompeo was the first official from Mr Trump’s cabinet to meet with Mr Zelenskiy since the impeachment inquiry began in the autumn. Mr Trump met briefly with the Ukrainian leader 25 September on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York — the day after Democrats in the House of Representatives announced the opening of the inquiry.

The Democrats’ move was prompted by a formal complaint filed by a CIA whistleblower who said that Mr Trump had pressed Mr Zelenskiy in a 25 July call for political flavours at the same time he was withholding from Ukraine $391 million (£296m) of military aid mandated by Congress.

The impeachment trial in the Senate began this month but appeared as of early Friday to be moving to a swift close.

The military aid from Washington, which the White House released 11 September, after Mr Trump heard about the formal whistleblower complaint, is aimed at helping Ukrainian soldiers fight a years-long Russian-backed insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine and other European nations want the Trump administration to get involved in talks with leaders in Kyiv and Moscow to help settle the conflict.

Analysts say Mr Trump’s actions on Ukraine — which critics say centred on gaining political advantage for his re-election campaign this year — and his open admiration of President Vladimir Putin of Russia have weakened decades of US support for Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, left, gestures as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stands beside after their joint news conference following the talks in Kyiv Ukraine Friday Jan 31 2020 (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)

Mr Trump and his aides deny that he withheld the aid for political reasons and say they were asking that Ukraine conduct legitimate investigations into corruption. And Mr Pompeo said on Friday that “the United States under President Trump has been the world’s fiercest defender of Ukraine’s sovereignty".

Alyona Gemantchuk, director of the New Europe Center in Kyiv, a research group, welcomed the move by Mr Pompeo and Mr Zelenskiy to reaffirm US aid for Ukraine, including military support, but said there were still major concerns.

“At the same time, we feel that Ukraine has become toxic in Washington, and there is a lack of new initiatives toward Ukraine,” she said. “There’s also a lack of US support and US involvement in peace negotiations with Russia.”

On Friday morning, as snow fell lightly in Kyiv, Mr Pompeo met with Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s foreign minister, and went to the golden-domed St Michael’s Cathedral downtown to attend a wreath-laying ceremony for the soldiers who have died fighting in the Donbas. In the evening, Mr Pompeo visited wounded soldiers at a hospital.

More than 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have been killed since the war began in 2014, the same year Russia invaded and occupied the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea. The conflict has become grinding trench warfare in open fields with regular shelling.

The Ukraine trip is a fraught one for Mr Pompeo, who arrived Thursday night after a stop in London and plans to travel afterward to three more nations that became independent from Moscow.

Mr Pompeo has been dogged by sharp questions over his role in the Ukraine affair and, more recently, an acid comment he made about Ukraine in a 24 January conversation with a National Public Radio reporter. The reporter, Mary Louise Kelly, a veteran national security correspondent, said that after she asked about Ukraine, Mr Pompeo shouted at her and asked her to locate Ukraine on an unmarked map. She added that, using the “F-word,” he asked, “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?”

Mr Pompeo enabled Trump’s actions on Ukraine by ordering the recall of Marie L. Yovanovitch, the respected ambassador to Ukraine, in April. Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and associates with Ukraine business ties had been pressing the president hard for the ouster of the ambassador, who had been an anticorruption advocate.

Mr Trump’s main demand of Mr Zelenskiy had been that he announce investigations into Joe Biden, the former vice president and a leading Democratic presidential candidate, and his son Hunter Biden, who had been on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company.

There is no evidence that the older Biden acted inappropriately on Ukraine policy because of his son’s corporate ties.

On several occasions, Mr Pompeo, an ardent Trump loyalist, has reiterated Mr Trump’s conspiratorial assertions about Ukraine, the Bidens and questions of interference in the 2016 presidential election — assertions that have been discredited and have angered the Ukrainians.

“As secretary of state and CIA director, Mike Pompeo had every opportunity to put his mark on Russia and Ukraine policy,” said Andrew Weiss, a former US official who worked on Russia and Ukraine and is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But at nearly every turn he focused instead on the audience of one — Donald Trump.

“That’s why he turned a blind eye when Trump and cronies like Rudy Giuliani decided to totally dismantle the Ukraine policy framework that has been in place since 1991 and, knowingly or unknowingly, did a huge solid for the Kremlin,” he added. “Making a short pit stop in Kyiv hardly begins to undo the damage that has been wrought.”

Mr Pompeo canceled planned trips to Ukraine twice — once in November and once at the start of January.

William Taylor, the veteran diplomat whom Mr Pompeo appointed to be chief of mission after Ms Yovanovitch was forced out, wrote a 26 January opinion piece for The New York Times in which he tried to address Mr Pompeo’s angry, dismissive question to National Public Radio about Ukraine.

“Russia is fighting a hybrid war against Ukraine, Europe and the United States,” Mr Taylor wrote. “This war has many components: armed military aggression, energy supply, cyber attacks, disinformation and election interference. On each of these battlegrounds, Ukraine is the front line.”

In an interview in Kyiv with ABC News, Mr Pompeo said he “absolutely” wanted the Ukrainains to get the military aid and did not deny that he had argued to the president to lift the hold on aid, as The New York Times reported. But he also said Mr Trump wanted to ensure that “resources get to the right place", and Mr Pompeo would help “deliver for him".

The New York Times