“There is a real atmosphere of discomfort between the US and Ukraine in front of the Biden government,” said Daniel Vajdich, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, which specializes in Europe and Eurasia. “I think there are a lot of real, lasting consequences of accusation in that sense.”
The Ukraine portfolio is one of the more difficult foreign policy issues facing the new president, as he deals with domestic political considerations, promoting an anti-corruption agenda worldwide, and the US response to a prospective gas pipeline between Germany and Russia, which if completed, please an ally, be excited about an adversary and deprive Ukraine billions of dollars in revenue annually.
So far, Biden has been deliberate in his approach. In his nearly 50 days in office, he has spoken to nearly two dozen world leaders, from allies to opponents to frenemies. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a key partner on the front lines of the battlefield with Russia – and the man who found himself unconscious in the Trump indictment – is still waiting his turn.
“There is the merit of having Zelensky sit in turn and wait for a call,” said a former U.S. official who remains close to Biden’s government. “He does not struggle with all his might to fight corruption. In fact, pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine have gained tremendous power since Zelensky took over. So there must be hard love with Zelensky if that one-on-one conversation does take place. ”
A senior administration official stressed that America’s commitment to ‘Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and the Euro-Atlantic aspirations is a rock solid’, and discouraged the public from reading too much about the fact that Biden has not yet Zelensky did not call.
“I know he is looking forward to speaking with President Zelensky to discuss the ambitious agenda at the heart of our reviving partnership,” the official said. She added that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to their Ukrainian counterparts.
During Trump’s first indictment, Zelensky tried to lie low and work hard to stay out of the domestic political unrest. But he told reporters at one point during the saga that it was not wise to block aid to a strategic partner in war with a major Western adversary. The Biden government last month released half of the $ 250 million in security aid approved by Congress. The other half is dependent on Ukraine’s progress on anti – corruption reforms negotiated with Kiev in advance.
“We have to catch up a lot to show our commitment to an anti-corruption agenda and the rule of law,” said one former top aide to Zelensky, who continues to advise the government.
Zelensky is also unaware of the political forces at work, as he has seen Biden’s open calls for reform in Ukraine in the last two years of the Trump administration. In a now infamous phone call in July 2019, Trump tried to bribe Zelensky to investigate Biden’s trade in Ukraine to derail Biden’s election campaign. Trump has been charged over the episode. But his allies continued to use Biden and his son’s work in Ukraine as a political baton.
“You’d think the Ukrainians would have learned that in the past it was a good idea to follow a telephone conversation with the President of the United States,” joked former US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor. “Bad things came out of the last call.”
Zelensky’s former assistant said there was widespread recognition in Kyiv that Washington was pursuing a “difficult approach to reform” in Ukraine.
This is not an unusual strategy for Biden, who campaigned hard for anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine while vice president. At the end of 2015, he started stirring for Ukraine to remove his chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, and threatened to withhold up to $ 1 billion US support until Shokin was fired. It was the threat used by Trump allies as proof that he wanted to help his son’s business transactions – a charge that made little sense since Shokin was at the time not investigates the gas company Burisma, in whose board Hunter Biden sits.
Although President Biden Zelensky has not yet called or contacted the Ukrainians directly in any formal way, he has signaled to Kyiv that its reform initiatives should continue. In one important step this month, the State Department approved the powerful Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky in what both Ukrainians and US foreign policy experts see as a non-subtle hint that Zelensky should do more to restrain the oligarchs themselves.
‘I do think it is important that Zelensky for the [Ukrainian parliament] that US support did not suddenly come to a head, ‘said Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Ukraine caucus. “These are very different strings than those that existed during the Trump administration, but we still expect reforms to take place to make us a friend, partner and advocate.”
Oleksandr Danylyuk, who served as Zelensky’s national security adviser until the end of 2019, said Ukrainians had heard the message of the Kolomoisky sanctions loud and clear. “This is the sign of the United States to act,” he said. “Zelensky has all the tools he needs to tackle the oligarchs if he wants to.”
Case in point: Ukraine’s recent decision to sanction the powerful Ukrainian businessman Viktor Medvedchuk, a good friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who also serves as a senior official for the pro-Russian Ukrainian political party For Life.
U.S. and European officials generally viewed the Medvedchuk sanctions as a step in the right direction. But the US wants to see a broader de-oligarchisation campaign, and it is still unclear whether the sanctions were the first step towards such a campaign and whether it was simply the result of a domestic power struggle.
“If I were to sit in the White House, I would see that in Ukraine there has been a clear return on anti-corruption efforts” made during the Obama administration, Danylyuk said.
A concern for the Biden government was the efforts of the Ukrainian parliament to exercise greater control over the country’s national anti-corruption bureau – a bill passed by lawmakers last month would allow them to oust Artem Sytnyk, director of NABU, to resign.
Another bad sign from the government’s perspective was Kyiv’s recent struggle with the International Monetary Fund, which earlier this year suspended a $ 700 billion payment to Ukraine until the government makes more progress in reforming its legal system, natural. remove and re-establish gas subsidies for Ukrainian households – establish the independence of its central bank.
“After a very quick start, I think, Zelensky’s reform agenda is predictably stuck,” Murphy said. ‘In particular, NABU must be empowered and Sytnyk must be able to function independently – people must fear him and his operation. I think it is therefore important to make it clear at an early stage that if reforms take place in 2021 at the same pace as in 2020, it will be difficult to address the issue to Congress to continue supporting Ukraine. ”
Taylor, who served as US ambassador to Ukraine after former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was ousted from her position by the Trump administration, said he believed “Ukrainians should be reassured by this new government,” not only not only because it approved Kolomoisky, ‘one of the most destructive oligarchs in Ukraine’, but also because of the statement made by Biden last month and pledged never to acknowledge Russia’s alleged annexation of Crimea.
“You do not get presidential statements every day,” Taylor said.
But Crimea is just one of several thorny issues. Some Ukrainian government officials are nervous about this government’s approach to Nord Stream 2, a major gas pipeline in Germany and Russia under construction, which could deprive Kiev of up to $ 1 billion annually and give Russia more control over the region. Legislators expected a State Department report last month to identify more targets for Nord Stream 2 sanctions, as required by law. But the report identified only two Russian vessels involved in the project, which has already been approved by the Trump administration.
The former assistant to Zelensky said the internal concern was in particular that the Biden government would prioritize its relationship with Germany – which wants the Nord Stream 2 construction – to continue at the expense of Ukraine’s security.
The senior administration official reiterated that “we continue to look at entities that may be involved in sanctions activities and will take the necessary follow-up action from there.” The official added that Biden saw the pipeline “as a clear example of Russia’s aggressive actions in the region, which provide the means to use a critical natural resource for political pressure and malicious influence on Europe.”
Taylor, the former ambassador, acknowledged that there is a policy tension within the new government between seeking to restore US relations with Germany, which has been battered by Trump, and the protection of European energy security and Ukrainian sovereignty. But he noted that allies do not agree all the time while remaining friends and partners, arguing that the opposition of Russian President Vladimir Putin depends largely on the strengthening of Ukraine.
“There must be a return to the recognition that Mr Putin is succeeding as Ukraine,” he said. ‘If Ukraine succeeds in becoming a normal European country – a value-based, market-based part of Europe – then Putinism will fail. I think President Biden understands that. ”