Russia begins moving troops into eastern Ukraine

[GMDino]

(02-26-2022, 10:18 PM)Tiger Teeth Wrote: Just interested in your opinion.  How could Trump have stopped this?

So as I was reading Twitter this morning I saw a meme about this story from February 2020.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/30/mike-pompeo-aims-to-smooth-relations-with-kyiv-on-ukraine-visit

We have to remember that Trump was going through a second impeachment because he was trying to withhold funds from Ukraine so he could get the announcement of an investigation into the Bidens at this time.

Quote:Mike Pompeo aims to smooth relations with Kyiv on Ukraine visit
This article is more than 2 years old

Secretary of state arrives after asking reporter: ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’

Pompeo will try to put a positive spin on relations with Kyiv amid Trump’s impeachment trial. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Andrew Roth in Moscow
Thu 30 Jan 2020 10.38 EST

• [/url]
• [url=https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Mike%20Pompeo%20aims%20to%20smooth%20relations%20with%20Kyiv%20on%20Ukraine%20visit&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2020%2Fjan%2F30%2Fmike-pompeo-aims-to-smooth-relations-with-kyiv-on-ukraine-visit&CMP=share_btn_tw]
  
  

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, arrived in Kyiv on Thursday amid a bruising Washington impeachment battle and a storm around his alleged remarks to an NPR reporter: “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?”

Pompeo is scheduled to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday, as he seeks to put a positive spin on relations between the two countries at a crucial moment in the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump.

The visit, Pompeo’s first to Ukraine, was important to “highlight US support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”, a spokesperson told reporters. That support has come into question because of Trump’s apparent affinity for Vladimir Putin and accusations that he delayed $392m in military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure Zelenskiy into announcing an investigation into the Biden family.


Zelenskiy, meanwhile, will look for commitments to diplomatic and military aid in his country’s conflict with Russia, which has left more than 14,000 dead in south-east Ukraine, and may also seek an invitation to the White House. The Ukrainian president would look past Pompeo’s reported faux pas and roll out the red carpet, said the Kyiv-based political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, because Ukraine’s need for US support was paramount.

“He can’t really complain about what has been said. Ukraine needs a close, partner relationship with the United States,” said Fesenko. “We are just in different weight classes.”

But Zelenskiy was likely to resist any efforts to have him weigh in on the impeachment battle, Fesenko added, noting that the US was preparing for 2020 elections and Zelenskiy understood that Trump was “just one of the candidates”.

The discussions are likely to cover bilateral relations and Ukraine’s conflict with Russia, gas politics and the US’s sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, possible investment opportunities and the progress of reforms in Ukraine. Pompeo is also scheduled to meet with Ukraine’s foreign and defence ministers, as well as representatives of Ukraine’s religious, civil society, and business communities.

The trip is the first leg of a four-country tour through the former Soviet Union for Pompeo that will also take him to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. But it is in Kyiv where the spotlight will focus most firmly on Pompeo and his attempts to repair the damage done over the past two years.

Former officials say the scandal has hollowed out the ranks of senior Ukraine experts in the US government and reduced US interest in the peace talks over the war in south-east Ukraine. Trump still has not nominated an ambassador to Kyiv and Pompeo has faced criticism for failing to support the former US ambassador Maria Yovanovitch against Trump’s political supporters, including Rudy Giuliani.

In an op-ed published in Foreign Policy, Kurt Volker, Trump’s former special envoy to Ukraine, blamed “partisan politics” and the impeachment process for leaving Zelenskiy “exposed and relatively isolated”.

He called on Pompeo to propose a state visit for Zelenskiy to the White House, a carrot that the Trump administration had previously dangled before him, and to appoint a new ambassador and point person for future Ukraine negotiations, to help replenish the expertise lost in the last year.

[/url]

Video appears to show Trump ordering Marie Yovanovitch's removal

Read more
[url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/26/video-appears-to-show-trump-ordering-marie-yovanovitch-removal-ukraine-ambassador]

“Partisan politics, and in particular the impeachment process, caused most officials dealing with expertise on Ukraine either to leave government or hunker down to avoid getting caught in the crossfire,” he wrote.

While Pompeo’s visit could be beneficial, “the Trump administration has withheld high-level contacts for entirely wrong-headed reasons and made milestones like Pompeo’s visit to Ukraine far more the exception than the rule”, said Andrew Weiss, the vice-president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“They’ve left Ukraine alone in the room with both Moscow and Europe and having to fend for themselves,” he said.

Add in that Trump left a LOT of important positions unfilled or filled with temporarily appointed people who would agree with him or get fired immediately.

Trump didn't care about Ukraine...or really anything.  So what he might have done was hold a bunch of press conferences where he said he trusted Putin and that they had a very good relationship ("Putin really likes me") and that he know Putin is strong and will do what his best for his country.  Then he would have called any question about that "stupid" and berated people not understanding that he is always right.

Or something like that.