Ukrainian-Americans Protest Manafort’s Ties To Russia – Hartford Courant
As the FBI and Congress continue investigating whether Russia meddled in the presidential election, protesters called Sunday for a special prosecutor to investigate Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, and his ties to Ukraine and Russia.
The protesters held handmade posters in front of the entrance to Central Connecticut State University, which includes a sign designating nearby Paul Manafort Drive, named after the late New Britain mayor and Manafort's father.
About 20 members of the Ukrainian-American community and their supporters criticized Manafort for his work for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who has had close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Manafort "wanted to fill his pockets with the Russians' money against the Ukrainian people,'' said Valerie Menditto of East Berlin, a Ukrainian-American who voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. "Unfortunately, New Britain is where he was born, and it's a stain on New Britain's legacy. I think the election was corrupt. ... I'm sick of hearing stories that he was a good guy, a good student.''
Manafort, 68, learned the political trade under his father, a Republican who won three elections as mayor in Democratic-dominated New Britain starting in the mid-1960s. The young Manafort started working in President Gerald Ford's White House and eventually became one of the nation's top lobbyists at the powerhouse firm of Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly. He joined Trump's campaign in 2016 to corral delegates when Trump's nomination was in doubt, and led the campaign through the convention in Cleveland.
After The New York Times reported that Manafort had multiple contacts with Russian intelligence agents while Trump was running for president, Manafort responded that it was "absurd'' and that he had "never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers.''
But the crowd Sunday had no sympathy, and they want the United States to continue enforcing sanctions against Russia until Putin withdraws Russian troops from Ukraine.
"Manfort is the kind of guy who likes to operate behind the scenes, so we think it's important to out him,'' said Alex Kuzma of Glastonbury, who helped organize the protest. "We're urging the Senate to call him out and to come home and come clean. Our founding fathers warned us about people that have a stake in the success of an enemy of the United States. Putin clearly has an agenda to undermine democracy in Europe and in the United States and to disinform the public.''
He added, "We're afraid there's going to be undue influence on the U.S. government from Putin and from Manafort. It's hard to tell what is not known, but as Sen. [John] McCain said a few weeks ago, 'There's a lot more shoes to drop off of this centipede.' We do think there's a lot more to this story. This is a trail of blood and a trail of tears.''
Manafort has not spoken much publicly about exactly what he did in Ukraine, but he provided details last year in an interview. He has been criticized for being a political consultant for Yanukovych, who had close ties to Putin. Trump has repeatedly traded compliments with Putin, a former KGB officer who has clashed on major issues with the United States at times during two terms as prime minister and two terms as president.
"When people say that I was involved in a pro-Putin administration, number one, they don't understand that Yanukovych and Putin were enemies for most of the four years of his term,'' Manafort told The Courant. "Number two, the main accomplishment of Yanukovych was to set the stage for Ukraine to be in Europe, which is pro-American and pro-Western, not pro-Russian.''
While he was still working for Trump, Manafort said he had been unaware of a previous protest against him in New Britain and laughed upon being told about it.
"The narrative of my involvement has gotten very politicized, not just in the West versus Russia context, but also in the Ukrainian context, which is a very fragmented and divisive community,'' Manafort told The Courant. "You've got a religious division and regional divisions, meaning western Ukraine versus eastern Ukraine. You've got political divisions. It makes U.S. politics look very simple. It was within all of those divisions that narratives get created that are not necessarily true.''
He added, "The role that I played in Ukraine ended up resulting in Ukraine becoming part of the European community. The kind of work I did when Yanukovych was president was to get the IMF deal to put the financial solvency of the country in balance, and then for the rest of that term I worked really as a back channel with the European Union negotiators on the terms of the agreement that ultimately was signed that got Ukraine into Europe. It was a Nixon-goes-to-China kind of situation. There weren't too many people who could have gotten that agreement done, and Yanukovych was one of them. I was the point guy in getting it done."
Manafort emphasized that he has never represented clients against American interests.
"There are a lot of campaigns in Western democracies that I've done that you don't read about," Manafort said. "They were always in concert with U.S. foreign policy, never contrary to it. That's what gets lost in the media messaging."
But Roma Romaniv, a 21-year-old University of Connecticut senior who was born in Ukraine and moved to the United States at age 7, said Americans still don't know the whole story.
"I hope there's a full investigation that is completely transparent,'' Romaniv said. "This is a huge scandal. There's still a lot that's unknown.''
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Ukrainian-Americans Protest Manafort's Ties To Russia - Hartford Courant