Mediaboss Marketing

U.S. and Ukraine relations go further back than the now infamous phone call between Trump and Zelensky. We explain their relationship. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

Sen. Ted Cruz joined the list of Republican lawmakers who have argued President Donald Trump had legitimate reasons to ask Ukraine to investigate the 2016 election because they believe thatcountry meddled in the 2016 election.

Cruz said on NBC News' "Meet the Press"there was "considerable evidence" that "Ukraine blatantly interfered in our election," though he could only point to one op-ed from a former Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S.as proof of that interference.

Cruz said the news media has been "misleading" byacting as if only one country could have interferedwhen it could have been both Ukraine and Russia.

"Of course Russia interfered in our election. Nobody looking at the evidence disputes that," Cruz said. "But here's the game the media is playing. Because Russia interfered, the media pretends nobody else did."

More: How to stay updated on USA TODAY's impeachment coverage

During the 2016 election, many Ukrainians and several officials expressed concern about then-candidate Trump's positive words forRussian President Vladimir and an interview in which he indicated he would consider recognizing Putin's military annexation of Crimea.

Host Chuck Todd told Cruz an op-ed and expressions of policy concerns were of an entirely different magnitude from Russia's interference, which former special counsel Robert Mueller's report called a "sweeping and systematic" effort in Trump's favor that included sophisticated cyberattacksand a massive social media campaign.

"Youre trying to make them both seem equal. I don't understand that," Todd said.

Despite Cruz's assertion that no one was disputing Putin's guilt, Trump has expressed doubt about Russian election meddling on several occasions. And Trumphas continued topromotethe same discredited theory he referenced in his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whichsays Ukraine, and not Russia, stole emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign.

Last week, Todd had a heated exchange over the same issue with Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who also insisted "both Russia and Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election."

Todd had asked Kennedy if he was concerned he had been duped as part of a Russian disinformation campaign becauseformer National Security Council officialFiona Hill had warned lawmakersat an open hearing in the impeachment inquiry last month that the idea that Ukraine, and not Russia, was behind 2016 election interference was a "fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves."

'Parroting Russian propaganda': Hillary Clinton slams Sen. Kennedy for Ukraine claim

'I was wrong': Sen. Kennedy takes back claim that Ukraine may have been behind 2016 election email hack

Kennedy, who had retracted a previous claim that Ukraine and not Russia had been behind the DNC hack, said Hill was "entitled to her opinion," but he stood by his assertion that Ukraine intervened in other ways.

During a Senate hearing on U.S. policy toward Russia, Democratic lawmakers sought to put the Trump administration on the defensive by questioning top State Department officials about official U.S. policy toward Ukraine. (Dec. 3) AP

He listed several publications that he said printed articles backing up his claim, including Politico and CBS News. He included The Financial Times in his list, but that paper's U.S. national editor, Edward Luce, told MSNBC he could find no Financial Times article that fit Kennedy's description.

"The idea that Ukraine intervened in the U.S. election specifically is not something Sen. Kennedy can point to The Financial Times as supporting," Luce said.

The Democratically-controlled House is preparing articles of impeachment against Trump for allegations he used military aid as leverage to get Ukraine to open a probe into the 2016 election, as well as an investigation intoan energy company with ties to former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter.

Democrats say both investigations were intended to help Trump politically, but Cruz, Kennedy and other Republicans argue Trump had legitimate concerns on both counts.

Trump took notice of the defense mounted by Cruz, thanking him in a tweet, and retweeting several other posts, headlines and clips referencing his "Meet the Press" performance.

On "Meet the Press," Todd asked Cruz about a New York Times report that said U.S. intelligence officials had briefed senators that Russia had engaged in a"yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscows own hacking of the 2016 election."

"I have been in multiple briefings, year after year after year, about foreign interference in our election. Russia has tried to interfere in our elections. China's tried to interfere in our elections. North Korea's tried to interfere in our elections. Ukraine has tried to interfere in our elections. This is not new. 2016's not the first year they did it. And they're going to keep trying," Cruz said.

Sen.Roger Wicker, R-Miss., is another lawmaker who has said Russiansand"alsoUkrainians tried to interfere."

But other Republican senators have rejected their colleagues' efforts to equate Russian and Ukrainian election interference.

"Theres a big difference between pulling for someone and hoping someone wins in the American election and interfering the way that Russia did," Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, told the Times.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told Politico "its important to distinguish op-eds" from "the systemic effort to undermine our election systems."

"Theres no way to compare any other efforts to what Russia did in 2016," Rubio said. "Theres nothing that compares, not even in the same universe.

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/12/08/ted-cruz-says-ukraine-interfered-2016-election-cites-one-op-ed/4377080002/

Read the original post:
Ted Cruz says Ukraine 'blatantly interfered' in 2016 election during testy exchange with Chuck Todd - USA TODAY

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

An analyst mocked Donald Trump's false claim that CrowdStrike is a Ukrainian company during the American cybersecurity firm's earnings call last week.

"I just wanted to clarify, you guys are based in California, not Ukraine, right?" Needham analyst Alex Henderson asked.

"That would be correct Sunnyvale, California," CrowdStrike's cofounder and CEO, George Kurtz, replied.

Henderson confirmed he was poking fun at the US president's claim about CrowdStrike in an email to Business Insider. "They are as American as apple pie," he said.

CrowdStrike was cofounded by Dmitri Alperovitch, who was born in Moscow and moved to the US as a teenager. Yet in an Associated Press interview in 2017, Trump said he'd "heard it's owned by a very rich Ukrainian" and it's "Ukraine-based."

Trump's suspicions about CrowdStrike are rooted in the Democratic National Committee's hiring of the firm to fight off hackers that gained access to its email and chat servers and stole data in 2016. CrowdStrike traced the attacks to a Russian group, and worked with the DNC and government investigators to decommission and rebuild the compromised computer systems.

CrowdStrike's involvement with the DNC and the false rumors about its Ukrainian links sparked a wild conspiracy that it's hiding a computer server in Ukraine containing incriminating evidence about the Democrats and the 2016 election.

Trump referenced the conspiracy during his infamous July phone call with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, according to the transcript released by the White House.

"I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike ... I guess you have one of your wealthy people ... the server, they say Ukraine has it," Trump told Zelensky.

The ongoing impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives are centered on whether Trump tried to secure a quid pro quo with Zelensky: the release of US military aid to Ukraine in exchange for the opening of an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter.

Read more here:
'You guys are based in California, not Ukraine, right?' an analyst mocked Trump's CrowdStrike conspiracy on the firm's earnings call - Business...

KYIV, Ukraine Washington may be obsessed with the impeachment inquiry over President Trumps dealings with Ukraine, but it was far from the minds of a few thousand protesters who gathered on a recent frosty night in Kyiv to vent their anger at their own countrys president, Volodymyr Zelensky, over his peace overtures to Russia.

If he struggled to resist demands by Mr. Trump for investigations affecting next years United States elections, some protesters said, imagine what will happen when he meets President Vladimir V. Putin on Monday for talks on ending the war in eastern Ukraine. As speakers derided Mr. Zelensky as soft on Russia, the crowd answered with cries of No to capitulation! and Treason!

Mr. Zelensky campaigned for the presidency on a two-plank platform of fighting corruption and ending a grinding war with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that has killed at least 13,000 people.

While the peace effort has received less notice, it is undoubtedly the more politically treacherous of the two undertakings. Everyone is against corruption, in theory at least, but there are sharp divides over how to deal with Russia, which is widely despised by Ukrainians outside the breakaway eastern territories.

Domestic political opponents are concerned that Mr. Zelensky, having no clear American diplomatic backing, may be too willing to make concessions to Moscow in the talks. Any widespread perception that he has done so could weaken him politically, hampering his ability to follow through with his anticorruption efforts.

If the president signs anything granting Russian influence in Ukraine, it would cause riots, said Volodymyr Ariev, a member of Parliament in the party of former President Petro O. Poroshenko, which is in opposition to Mr. Zelensky.

Mr. Ariev said that the talks with the Trump administration over opening investigations related to the family of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. were unprofessional, and that is why we are concerned about what will come in talks with Russia.

Already, the critics say, Mr. Zelensky has made unilateral concessions intended to pave the way for the peace talks. And they are alarmed at comments by Ihor Kolomoisky, a businessman with ties to Mr. Zelensky, suggesting that Ukraine should swivel toward Russia amid the chaos in Ukraine policy in the United States.

In the worst-case scenario, they say, Mr. Zelensky would give amnesty to rebel leaders and grant sweeping autonomy to the breakaway regions, while allowing Russian forces to linger in or just outside Ukraine even after any political settlement.

In the peace talks, scheduled for Monday in Paris, most analysts see Russia seeking at a minimum to trade de facto control over the two separatists zones in eastern Ukraine for influence in domestic Ukrainian politics, including a veto on membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

In its post-independence history, Ukraine has twice tilted from pro-Western to pro-Russian governments, in 1994 and 2010. Its a back-and-forth common to many former Soviet states as they have tried to play the powerful east-west geopolitical forces off against each other for advantage at home. In Ukraines case, on both occasions the country lurched back into the Western orbit, most recently in the Maidan revolution of 2014.

In recent years, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova have all at some point pivoted to closer ties with Russia and then back, in some cases. In an interview, Mr. Kolomoisky said that Ukraine should do just that if America tries to pressure Kyiv again.

Analysts saw the comments as self-serving, in that Mr. Kolomoisky stands to lose billions of dollars under a banking sector overhaul backed by Western governments. Mr. Zelensky issued a statement distancing himself from the comment.

Working as an actor in Moscow in 2014 as Russian troops invaded his country, Mr. Zelensky joked that Russian soldiers were not moving inside Ukraine, but were just standing on the border, and the Ukrainian border is just slightly pushed forward.

But through the summer, Mr. Zelensky sought a White House visit to urge Mr. Trump to press Russia and side with Ukraine in the negotiations. It never materialized.

To the contrary, at a news conference in New York in September, Mr. Trump backed away from Mr. Zelensky and his troubles in the war, telling the Ukrainian leader, I really hope you and President Putin get together and can solve your problem.

By distancing himself from Mr. Zelensky in the negotiations, as stressed by many of the security professionals who testified in the recent impeachment hearings, Mr. Trump has raised doubts about how far he will go to support Ukraine and made it harder for the Ukrainian government to defend the concessions it is making to end the war.

Some analysts say that despite Mr. Zelenskys weak hand going into the talks, worries of a pivot to Russia are overblown and mostly whipped up by domestic political opponents.

Accommodation with Russia would be a very hard sell inside Ukraine, Steven Pifer, a former United States ambassador to Ukraine, said in a telephone interview.

Ivan Yakovina, a foreign policy columnist with Novoye Vremya magazine, concurred, saying that allies of Mr. Poroshenko, the former president, were fanning fears of a geopolitical pivot to undermine Mr. Zelensky.

They dont think he is worthy of being president, Mr. Yakovina said of Mr. Zelensky, who before his election as Ukraines leader played a president in a television series. They see him as a clown from a television show. They are doing everything so he fails.

To pave the way for talks, Mr. Zelensky rebuilt a bridge across the de facto border with the breakaway republics, pulled troops back from the front line in three locations, negotiated a prisoner exchange and agreed to the outlines of a political formula for an eventual settlement.

Mr. Zelensky has said that each step was worthwhile in its own right. He secured the return of Ukrainian captives, eased hardship for people living in separatist areas and ended some of the senseless skirmishing along the front.

In the settlement road map signed in early October, Mr. Zelensky agreed to a timeline for local elections and to other political steps needed to reintegrate the breakaway regions with Ukraine without any corresponding timeline for Russia to withdraw its troops. Mr. Zelensky says the Russian troop withdrawal is implied.

Three protests ensued on Independence Square the largest of which drew about 20,000 people, far fewer than the gigantic crowds that gathered on the square in the 2014 revolution and drove the pro-Russian leader Viktor F. Yanukovych into exile in Moscow.

There are clear red lines that Ukrainian society, and especially the active part of Ukrainian society, is not willing to cross and not willing to let anybody cross, including the leaders of the country and the president, said Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, the leader of the opposition Holos political party.

Mr. Vakarchuk pointed to polls showing that a majority of Ukrainians oppose a settlement on terms of the so-called Minsk agreements, the framework deal under which Mr. Zelensky will negotiate in Paris.

Under 20 percent of Ukrainians support the political framework that Mr. Zelensky is pursuing, about 25 percent want to continue fighting to free the separatists territory, and about 35 percent want to declare the regions as occupied by Russia but not pursue military efforts to recover them for now, according to a poll by Rating Group, which conducts social surveys.

Mr. Vakarchuk says he is consulting with Mr. Zelenskys party in Parliament and would support any agreement that emerges from the Paris talks if it defends Ukrainian interests.

That will be harder to pull off with America distracted, though.

For a long time, the United States was considered the leader of the free world, and I think that was fair enough, Mr. Vakarchuk said. But remember the Bob Dylan song The Times They Are a-Changin.

Maria Varenikova contributed reporting.

Read the original:
Zelenskys Opponents Fear He Is Ready to Capitulate to Russia - The New York Times

A former Ukrainian member of parliament who has claimed to have dirt on a company linked to the Bidens was arrested earlier this week in Germany, The Daily Beast has confirmed. Oleksandr Onyshchenko, who worked closely with Ukraines previous president before fleeing the country after being accused of embezzlement, has been living in Europe for several years. German authorities arrested him in Aachen on Friday.

Oleg Ishemko, an attorney for the former member of parliament, confirmed the arrest.

We are analyzing information in particular about the fact and basis for the detention of our client, Ishemko said in a text. According to our information, Oleksandr was in the process of seeking international protection and could not be arrested in accordance with Article 33 of the international convention relating to the status of refugees. Attorneys for Oleksandr are doing everything so that his rights, both in Ukraine and outside, are upheld in the necessary manner.

Onyshchenkos arrest comes as efforts by Trumps American allies to find information about Burisma Groupwhere former Vice President Joe Bidens son was once a board memberhave reached a fever pitch. Rudy Giuliani, Trumps personal attorney, is currently in Kyiv, Ukraine, holding meetings on the subject. Efforts by Giuliani and other Trump administration officials to win political goodies from Ukrainian government officialsincluding an announcement of an investigation into Burismaare a central focus of Democrats impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump. Democrats next impeachment hearing is scheduled for Dec. 9.

German authorities arrested Onyshchenko based on a request from Ukraines National Anti-Corruption Bureau and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office (SAPO). According to a report from the UNIAN news agency, Ukrainian officials are awaiting a ruling from a German court on whether or not to extradite Onyshchenko.

After fleeing Ukraine in 2016, Onyshchenko claimed to have evidence of widespread corruption by then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and he said hed contacted the FBI with his claims. Two sources familiar with the events confirmed that he did meet with U.S. law enforcement officials in 2016 in an effort to build goodwill. The sources said Onyshchenko appeared to want to share information in hopes of obtaining a visa to travel to the U.S. The U.S. Justice Department confirmed meeting with him at the time but said it had no plans to have further meetings or communications with him after that, according to RFE/RL. His allegations were widely seen in Ukraine as part of a Kremlin-orchestrated disinformation campaign meant to undermine the Ukrainian government as it sought to strengthen ties with the West.

As the impeachment proceedings against President Trump took hold in October, Onyshchenko claimed to have inside information about Hunter Biden and his work for Burisma. He told Reuters that his friend Mykola Zlochevsky, who founded Burisma, had placed the vice presidents son on Burismas board as insurance against criminal investigations. The claim echoes those made by Rudy Giuliani and former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. It was to protect (the company), he said.

In early November, Onyshchenko told the obscure right-wing news site CD Media that there were official and unofficial payments to the Biden family made by Burisma and that an FBI agent directed the coverup of the Biden scandal at the time, in concert with the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, and other Deep State American government assets in-country. The claim resembled the same conspiracy theories spun by Giuliani in his successful campaign to oust former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.

In subsequent interviews, Onyshchenko made other fantastic claims, including that Burisma had paid $10 million to Hillary Clintons presidential campaign through big bags of cash sent instead of wire transfers.

On Tuesday, as news of Onyschenkos arrest broke, CD Media published a report claiming he was heading to the U.S. to testify against Biden when he was arrested in Germany. The report was accompanied by a screenshot of a U.S. visa application the Ukrainian politician had purportedly submitted last week to the U.S. embassy in Budapest, Hungary.

The fugitive Ukrainian was stripped of parliamentary immunity in 2016 and accused of embezzling some $64 million from a subsidiary of Naftogaz, Ukraines state-owned gas company. A former member of ousted Kremlin-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanuykovychs Party of Regions, Onyshchenko was also accused by Ukraines Security Service of treason in late 2016 of allegedly helping Russian intelligence destabilize Ukraine.

He has long denied the allegations, insisting they are the result of his criticism of Poroshenkos administration. Shortly after fleeing Ukraine in 2016, Onyshchenko publicly claimed to have recordings with damning evidence of corruption by Poroshenko. Onyschenko even published a book with his allegations titled Peter the Fifth: True Story About Ukrainian Dictator.

Onyshchenko changed tack after the election of President Volodymyr Zelensky, writing on his personal website that he intends to return to Ukraine and help President Zelensky in fighting the corrupt structures put into place by the old government.

Onyshchenko is known in Ukraine as a vocal critic of financier George Soros and of the Obama administration. In his latest posts on Facebook he defends former Ukrainian prosecutors Lutsenko and Viktor Shokinboth of whom have faced criticism at home for working with Giuliani on his Burisma investigative endeavors. He has also echoed claims made by Giuliani that the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv worked against Trumps campaign in the 2016 election, claiming evidence against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was fabricated. The whole thing was made up in advance," he said in an interview for 112 Ukraine television channel. The U.S. Embassy helped to stage it.

--with additional reporting from Allison Quinn and Anna Nemtsova

Read more from the original source:
Ukrainian Fugitive Who Claimed to Have Dirt on Biden Firm Is Arrested - The Daily Beast

Since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, the United States has provided Ukraine with $3 billion in reform and military assistance and $3 billion in loan guarantees.U.S. troops in western Ukraine train their Ukrainian colleagues.Washington, in concert with the European Union, has taken steps to isolate Moscow politically and imposed a series of economic and visa sanctions on Russia and Russians.

The furor over President Donald Trumps sordid bid to extort the president of Ukraine into investigating his potential 2020 political opponent raises an obvious question:Why should the United States care so much about Ukraine, a country 5,000 miles away?A big part of the reason is thatU.S. officials told the Ukrainians the United States would care when negotiating the Budapest Memorandum on security assurances, signed 25 years ago this week.

In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the United States, Russia, and Britain committed to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine and to refrain from the threat or use of force against the country.Those assurances played a key role in persuading the Ukrainian government in Kyiv to give up what amounted to the worlds third largest nuclear arsenal, consisting of some 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads.

When the USSR broke up in late 1991, there were nuclear weapons scattered in the resulting post-Soviet states. The George H. W. Bush administration attached highest priority to ensuring this would not lead to an increase in the number of nuclear weapons states. Moreover, as it watched Yugoslavia break apart violently, the Bush administration worried that the Soviet collapse might also turn violent, raising the prospect of conflict among nuclear-armed states. Ensuring no increase in the number of nuclear weapons states meant that, in practice, only Russia would retain nuclear arms. The Clinton administration pursued the same goal. With the prospect of extending the Non-Proliferation Treaty indefinitely looming, an alternative course that allowed other post-Soviet states to keep nuclear weapons would have set a bad precedent.

Eliminating the strategic nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and strategic bombers in Ukraine was a big deal for Washington.The ICBMs and bombers carried warheads of monstrous size all designed, built, and deployed to attack America.The warheads atop the SS-19 and SS-24 ICBMs in Ukraine had explosive yields of 400-550 kilotons each that is, 27 to 37 times the size of the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima.The 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads more than six times the number of nuclear warheads that China currently possesses could have destroyed every U.S. city with a population of more than 50,000three times over, with warheads left to spare.

Before agreeing to give up this nuclear arsenal, Kyiv sought three assurances.First, it wanted compensation for the value of the highly-enriched uranium in the nuclear warheads, which could be blended down for use as fuel for nuclear reactors.Russia agreed to provide that.

Second, eliminating ICBMs, ICBM silos, and bombers did not come cheaply.With its economy rapidly contracting, the Ukrainian government could not afford the costs.The United States agreed to cover those costs with Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction assistance.

Third, Ukraine wanted guarantees or assurances of its security once it got rid of the nuclear arms.The Budapest Memorandum provided security assurances.

Unfortunately, Russia has broken virtually all the commitments it undertook in that document.It used military force to seize, and then illegally annex, Ukraines Crimean peninsula in early 2014.Russian and Russian proxy forces have waged war for more than five years in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, claiming more than 13,000 lives and driving some two million people from their homes.

Some have argued that, since the United States did not invade Ukraine, it abided by its Budapest Memorandum commitments.True, in a narrow sense.However, when negotiating the security assurances, U.S. officials told their Ukrainian counterparts that, were Russia to violate them, the United States would take a strong interest and respond.

Washington did not promise unlimited support.The Budapest Memorandum contains security assurances, not guarantees.Guarantees would have implied a commitment of American military force, which NATO members have.U.S. officials made clear that was not on offer.Hence, assurances.

Beyond that, U.S. and Ukrainian officials did not discuss in detail how Washington might respond in the event of a Russian violation.That owed in part to then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin.He had his flaws, but he insisted that there be no revision of the boundaries separating the states that emerged from the Soviet collapse. Yeltsin respected Ukraines independence and territorial integrity.Vladimir Putin does not.

U.S. officials did assure their Ukrainian counterparts, however, that there would be a response.The United States should continue to provide reform and military assistance to Ukraine.It should continue sanctions on Russia.It should continue to demand that Moscow end its aggression against Ukraine.And it should continue to urge its European partners to assist Kyiv and keep the sanctions pressure on the Kremlin.

Washington should do this, because it said it would act if Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum.That was part of the price it paid in return for a drastic reduction in the nuclear threat to America.The United States should keep its word.

Original post:
Why care about Ukraine and the Budapest Memorandum - Brookings Institution