Donald Trump has appointed a very controversial campaign chairman – but all is not necessarily as it seems

Paul Manafort’s appointment has drawn fierce criticism from the Democrats with some saying his Russian connections must stop the Trump campaign from getting access, as presidential candidates do, to classified security briefings. It has also been claimed that Manafort bears responsibility for Trump’s supposedly pro-Kremlin views over the Ukraine and Crimea in particular

Donald Trump has appointed Paul Manafort chairman of his campaign team. (Getty Images)

Comments by Donald Trump about Russia and Vladimir Putin during the American election campaign caused surprise and alarm in the US and among its Western allies. Just in the past two weeks he had said that he may not come to the aid of Baltic states if the Russians invaded; questioned the viability of Nato; repeatedly mentioned that he should get on well with Putin; and invited the Russian intelligence service to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails after having benefited from the disclosure of 20,000 documents which were highly damaging for Clinton and the Democrats. He was accused, over the weekend, of condoning the Russian annexation of Crimea.

Trump has also appointed Paul Manafort the chairman of his campaign team. He is the man who engineered the election of Viktor Yanukovych to the Ukrainian presidency in 2010. And, after Yanukovych’s fall and exile in Russia (which led to the civil war which has left the country bitterly divided), he has been helping to organise opposition in Kiev to the Western-backed president Petro Poroshenko. He also has ties with a number of Russian businessmen, including the controversial oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Manafort’s appointment has, as is to be expected, drawn fierce criticism from the Democrats with some saying his Russian connections must stop the Trump campaign from getting access, as presidential candidates do, to classified security briefings. It has also been claimed that Manafort bears responsibility for Trump’s supposedly pro-Kremlin views over the Ukraine and Crimea in particular.

These views were expressed during an interview with George Stephanopoulos, the ABC anchor and former communications director for Bill Clinton, during an interview. Trump declared that he would ensure, on becoming president, that Putin would not send troops into Ukraine. “He’s not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want,” said Trump.

A somewhat surprised Stephanopoulos interjected: “Well, he’s already there, isn’t he?” Trump’s response, after a pause, was: “OK, well he’s in a certain way, but I am not there. You have Obama there, and frankly, that whole part of the world is a mess under Obama with all the strength that you’re talking about and all of the power of Nato and all of this.” Trump went on to say “the people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were. And you have to look at that, also.”

This shows a lack of general knowledge and confusion on the part of Trump, as well as a lack of articulacy which makes John Prescott look like a seasoned orator. But American presidents in the past have often “misspoken”, showing a lack of grasp of geopolitics; in 1976, 13 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, President Gerald Ford declared “there is no Soviet domination of eastern Europe”.

So does Trump really reveal a blatantly pro-Moscow stance in his views on Ukraine and Crimea?

I was in Crimea covering events leading up to the annexation and it was a turbulent and complex time. The speed at which key strategic points were taken over by Russian speaking separatists and the synchronised appearance of the soldiers in unmarked uniform, “the little green men”, was a strong indication that a takeover plan by Moscow had been in place.

The confrontation between Ukrainian and Russian forces and Russian separatist militias were highly emotive and, at times, violent affairs. The referendum to join Russia was boycotted by Ukrainian nationalists and the Tartars in Crimea, who believed it would be rigged anyway. The Russian loyalists voted: the result, to no one’s surprise, was 93 per cent in favour of embracing Moscow’s rule.

It remains the professed policy of the West that Crimea, which was part of Soviet Russia until 1954, must be returned to Ukraine. But no serious Western statesman or woman believes that is going to happen. The best that can be hoped for is trying to ensure that the rights and welfares of the Tartars and Ukrainians who live there are protected.

Eastern Ukraine, meanwhile, remains a frozen conflict, as I saw when revisiting the region recently. Reigniting it will not solve matters as the Minsk agreement which led to the ceasefire, recognises. Perhaps Trump, too, was just recognising the reality on the ground –especially when it came to Crimea.

Manafort, meanwhile, will continue to remain under scrutiny. That indeed should be the case; any ‘dodgy’ links should be exposed. He is, however, doing nothing wrong in helping the Ukrainian opposition to unite.

The government of President Poroshenko has been backed by millions of dollars of Western aid, but it has failed to tackle endemic corruption, economic woes continue and there is rising public disenchantment. It certainly needs an effective opposition.

Manafort does, however, pose a threat to the Democrats. He played a key role in reviving the political career of Viktor Yanukovych, which seemed all but over after Ukraine’s highest court stripped him of power in 2004. Two years later, with the help of Manafort, the Party of Regions, led by Yanukovych, won the highest number of seats in parliament and it did so again the following year. By 2010 the comeback was complete, with victory in the presidential election. (Yanukovych’s fall, four years later, was due to internal and international factors over which Mr Manafort had no influence.)

In engineering victory for Yanukovych in 2010, Manafort focused on regional and ethnic voting patterns and tapped into the sense of disenfranchisement of those who felt they had been ignored by the political elite in Kiev. Trump is tapping into the same kind disillusionment in America. It is Manafort’s abilities in the electoral field, rather than what happens with Russia, which are likely to be of real value to the Republican candidate.