President Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “do him a favor” dig up dirt on Hunter Biden. And that Trump would withhold Javelin Anti-Tank Missiles if President Zelenskyy refused. The very same Javelin Anti-Tank Missiles that made it possible for the Ukrainian Army to stop the Russians.
“In a phone conversation with Haaretz this weekend, Vindman – an Iraq War veteran who immigrated to the United States from Ukraine with his siblings and father at age 3, said the then-U.S. president had been “really cheerleading for Vladimir Putin – in everything from taking Putin’s perspective on election interference to dividing NATO.” This created an atmosphere of “hyperpolarization in the U.S. political establishment, which suggested that the United States was weak and distracted,” he added.
“It was a hands-off policy under the Trump administration, after the scandal and all the way into the Biden administration,” he said, claiming that the January 6 attack on the U.S. Congress also gave Putin the impression that America was too distracted with internal problems to thwart Russia’s ambitions in Eastern Europe.
Vindman called it “a particularly important milestone in [Putin’s] decision to go after Ukraine, due to the Russian perspective that Ukraine would not garner a great deal of support when there are other bigger issues.
“Trump was out there bandwagoning for Putin in a way that suggested the Republicans would not punish Putin for his aggression, so that half of the political elites in America would not go in heavy. That was Putin’s assumption.
This hyperpolarization “also undermined Biden’s efforts” in the days and weeks before the invasion, Vindman said, noting that some Republican lawmakers had opposed bills to fund Ukrainian forces and suspend trade with Russia and its ally Belarus.
Vindman, 46, served as director for European affairs on the NSC from July 2018 until February 2020, leaving a few months after testifying in Congress against Trump. He said he had already predicted last year that even if the United States were to apply maximum pressure to deter Russia, moving U.S. forces into Eastern Europe and levying sanctions on Moscow, it probably would not have been enough to avoid the war – “because there was just too much inertia behind it…”
Ultimately, he said, what is happening in Ukraine is “close to genocide. Putin doesn’t believe in the fact that Ukraine is a sovereign, independent state. And the idea here is: if the free world had done more to defeat Nazism in the 1930s, we wouldn’t have had the Holocaust. We now have an opportunity to prevent genocide in Ukraine.”
MORE AT:
How D.C. Emboldened Putin, According to Key Trump Impeachment Witness
Lt. Col. (ret.) Alexander Vindman, the whistleblower from Trump's first impeachment trial, told Haaretz how U.S divisions encouraged Putin to attack Ukraine, and why Israel should adopt a tougher stance on Moscow
Sam Sokol Apr. 3, 2022 5:28 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment
You can add your voice to this blog by posting a comment.