Why Donald Trump ‘hates Ukraine’ The once and possibly future U.S. president blames the country for his political woes. April 18, 2024
KYIV — Donald Trump doesn’t easily forgive or forget.
As Trump’s Republican allies in the United States Congress block military aid that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Kyiv desperately needs to avoid defeat in its war with invading Russian forces, it’s clear the former U.S. president’s ill will toward Ukraine has deep roots.
It was, after all, a phone call with Zelenskyy that led to Trump’s first impeachment in December 2019, after he was accused of seeking to influence the 2020 election by leaning on the Ukrainian leader to investigate current President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.....
As the presumptive Republican candidate, Trump has already triggered fear in Kyiv by boasting he could end the war in 24 hours and musing that he hopes it ends before he is forced to decide whether to give Ukraine to Moscow.
Trump’s hunt for the Democrats’ server
Trump’s antipathy to Ukraine is also rooted in his belief that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Parnas said.
“It began when Russiagate started,” Parnas said, referring to allegations of Russian election hacking that would eventually lead to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. “People in Trump’s campaign told him that it was Ukrainians not Russians meddling in the elections.”
Trump’s election victory was marred by accusations, later confirmed by U.S. intelligence agencies, private intelligence firms and federal investigators, that Russia had hacked the emails of the Democratic National Committee, the party’s strategic and funding arm, and released them in 2016 to discredit Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Trump has consistently promoted a conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine that performed the hacking, in order to frame Russia, and that the country was still concealing a server with the data.
Trump apparently held that belief well into his presidency, raising it in July 2019 during what he would later describe as a “perfect” phone call with Zelenskyy, the interaction that led to his being impeached.
“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,” Trump told Zelenskyy.
“The server, they say Ukraine has it,” he added.
Later that year, Trump defended his decision to freeze military aid to Ukraine as owing in part to his suspicions that “a Ukrainian company” was in possession of the server.
“I still want to see that server,” he told the television show Fox & Friends. “You know, the FBI has never gotten that server. That’s a big part of this whole thing.”
Mueller, the special counsel, indicted 12 Russians in 2018 for hacking into the Democratic Party’s computers two years before.
In 2022, the Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin admitted that Russia had intervened in the U.S. democratic process. “We have interfered (in U.S. elections), we are interfering and we will continue to interfere,” Prigozhin said. “Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do.”
Zelenskyy and the perfect phone call
Trump’s July 2019 phone call with Zelenskyy would play a central role in one of the most embarrassing episodes in his political career: his first impeachment, which stemmed from his effort to pressure Ukraine’s president to open an investigation into Biden.
During the phone call Trump urged Zelenskyy to launch an investigation, saying he would put him in touch with Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.
....There is no evidence to support Guiliani’s accusations. While Biden did seek Shokin’s removal, it was as part of a coordinated effort with the U.S. State Department and the European Union over concerns the prosecutor was blocking corruption investigations in the country. Shokin was not investigating Hunter Biden or Burisma at the time Biden advocated his ouster.
Parnas said his aim was to convince Ukraine to cooperate with President Trump and thereby secure his backing. “For that, we needed one of the presidents [Poroshenko or Zelenskyy] to announce an investigation into Biden,” he said. “We thought, if they do what he wants, Trump will owe Ukraine.”
During the phone call with Trump, Zelenskyy promised to check what could be done, but Ukraine ultimately did not open an investigation. “So now Trump hates Zelenskyy with passion,” said Parnas. “And Zelenskyy knows it.”
Ukraine has never had any evidence that Biden or his son violated the country’s laws, Lutsenko acknowledged in an interview.
Ukraine preparing for a Trump presidency
As the U.S. presidential election approaches, Ukraine’s government is doing its best to stay out of American politics.
Zelenskyy has asked Trump to come to Ukraine to see what Russia did to the country with his own eyes. With a $60 billion military aid bill stalled in Congress, his office has been wooing Republicans, trying to persuade them that helping Ukraine is in America’s national interest.
“I don’t believe anybody who represents the party of Ronald Reagan will abandon Ukraine,” Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, told POLITICO earlier this month.
Meanwhile, however, Ukrainians are working to be as self-sufficient as possible, ramping up domestic weapons production and attempting to diversify their sources of military aid.
“Zelenskyy and Yermak know they are not only fighting Russia for their lives but also Republicans,” he said.
“If Trump loses, Ukraine is going to get all the money and weapons it needs. Russia will be done,” he added. “If Trump wins, things will be very bad.”
