“There is a real sense of strangeness between the United States and Ukraine on the front end of the Biden government,” said Daniel Vajdich, a non-resident senior member of the Atlantic Council who specializes in Europe and Eurasia. “I think there are very real residual consequences of impeachment in that regard.”
Ukraine’s portfolio is one of the most complicated foreign policy issues facing the new president, while juggling domestic political considerations, promoting a global anti-corruption agenda and the US response to a future Germany-Russia pipeline that, if completed , please, an ally, thrill an opponent and deprive Ukraine of billions of dollars in revenue annually.
So far, Biden has been deliberate in his approach. In his nearly 50 days in office, he spoke to about two dozen world leaders, from allies to opponents and enemies. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a key front-line partner on the battlefield with Russia – and the man who unconsciously found himself in the spotlight of Trump’s impeachment – is still waiting for his turn.
“There is merit in having Zelensky sit and wait for his turn to be called,” said a former US official who remains close to the Biden government. “He is not struggling with all his strength to fight corruption. In fact, pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine have gained immense power since Zelensky took office. Therefore, there must be strong love with Zelensky when this face-to-face conversation takes place. ”
A senior government official emphasized that the United States’ commitment to “Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and Euro-Atlantic aspirations is rock solid” and discouraged the public from reading much about the fact that Biden has not yet called. for Zelensky.
“I know he is looking forward to speaking with President Zelensky to discuss the ambitious agenda at the heart of our revitalized partnership,” said the official. She added that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with their Ukrainian colleagues.
Zelensky tried to remain discreet during Trump’s first impeachment, working hard to stay out of domestic political turmoil. But he told reporters at one point during the saga that it was not wise to block aid to a strategic partner at war with a major Western opponent. The Biden government released last month half of the $ 250 million in security assistance appropriated by Congress – the other half depends on Ukraine’s progress on anti-corruption reforms that are negotiated in advance with Kiev.
“We have a lot to do to show our commitment to an anti-corruption agenda and the rule of law,” said a former Zelensky adviser who is still advising the government.
Zelensky is also not unaware of the political forces at work, having witnessed how Biden’s open calls for reforms in Ukraine have been turned into weapons in the last two years of the Trump administration. In an infamous phone call in July 2019, Trump tried to bribe Zelensky to investigate Biden’s negotiations in Ukraine in order to sabotage Biden’s election campaign. Trump was impeached because of the episode. But his allies are still trying to use the work of Biden and his son in Ukraine as a political cudgel.
“You would think that Ukrainians would have learned that, in the past, seeking a call with the President of the United States turned out not to be a good idea,” joked former US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor. “Bad things came out of that last call.”
Zelensky’s former aide said there is widespread recognition in Kiev that Washington is taking a “tough approach to reforms” in Ukraine.
It is not an unusual strategy for Biden, who pushed hard for anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine while he was vice president. In late 2015, he started agitating for Ukraine to remove its main prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, and threatened to withhold up to $ 1 billion in U.S. aid until Shokin was fired. It was this threat that was used by Trump’s allies as proof that he was trying to help his son’s business – an accusation that made little sense, since Shokin was at the time no investigating the gas company Burisma, on whose board Hunter Biden was a member.
Although President Biden has not yet called Zelensky or engaged directly with Ukrainians in any formal way, he has signaled to Kiev that his reform initiatives must continue. In a significant step this month, the State Department sanctioned the powerful Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, in what both Ukrainians and American foreign policy experts perceived as a not-so-subtle suggestion that Zelensky should do more to control the oligarchs themselves.
“I think it’s important for Zelensky to be able to represent for the [Ukrainian parliament] that US support has not suddenly become untied, ”said Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of Ukraine’s Senate Caucus. “They are very different strings from those that existed during the Trump administration, but we still hope that there will be reforms so that we are friends, partners and defenders.”
Oleksandr Danylyuk, who served as Zelensky’s national security adviser until the end of 2019, said the Ukrainians had heard the message of Kolomoisky’s sanctions loud and clear. “This is the signal from the US to act,” he said. “Zelensky has all the tools necessary to face the oligarchs if he really wants to.”
Case in point: Ukraine’s recent decision to sanction the powerful Ukrainian businessman Viktor Medvedchuk, a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who also serves as a senior official in the Ukrainian pro-Russian political party For Life.
American and European officials have seen Medvedchuk’s sanctions as a step in the right direction. But the United States wants to see a broader de-ligand campaign, and it is still unclear whether the sanctions were the first step towards such a campaign or whether they were simply the result of a domestic struggle for power.
“If I were sitting in the White House, I would see that in Ukraine there was clearly some setback in the anti-corruption efforts” that were led during the Obama administration, said Danylyuk.
One area of concern for the Biden government has been efforts by the Ukrainian parliament to exercise greater control over the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau – a bill passed by lawmakers last month would authorize them to fire NABU director Artem Sytnyk.
Another bad sign from the government’s perspective was Kiev’s recent dispute with the International Monetary Fund, which suspended a $ 700 billion payment to Ukraine earlier this year until the government makes further progress in reforming its judicial system, removes natural gas subsidies for Ukrainian families and – establishes the independence of its central bank.
“After a very quick start, I think Zelensky’s reform agenda is predictably stagnant,” said Murphy. “In particular, NABU must be enabled and Sytnyk must be able to operate independently – people need to fear him and his operation. So I think it is important for us, from the beginning, to make it clear that if reforms continue in 2021 at the same pace as they did in 2020, it will be difficult to get Congress to continue supporting Ukraine. ”
Taylor, who served as the US chargé d’affaires in Ukraine after former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was forced out of office by the Trump administration, said she believed “Ukrainians should be reassured by this new government”, not just because sanctioned Kolomoisky – “one of the most destructive oligarchs in Ukraine” – but also because of the statement that Biden released last month pledging never to recognize Russia’s alleged annexation of Crimea.
“You don’t get presidential statements like that every day,” said Taylor.
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 large Germany-Russia pipeline under construction that could deprive Kiev of up to $ 1 billion a year and give Russia more control over the region. Lawmakers 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 that had already been sanctioned by the Trump administration.
The former Zelensky aide said that one of the main concerns internally is that the Biden government prioritizes its relationship with Germany – which wants the construction of Nord Stream 2 to continue – at the expense of Ukraine’s security.
The senior administration official countered, saying that “we continue to look for entities that may be involved in sanctionable activities and we will take the necessary follow-up measures from there”. The official added that Biden sees the pipeline “as a clear example of Russia’s aggressive action in the region, which provides the means to use a critical natural resource for political pressure and malign influence against Europe.”
Taylor, the former ambassador, acknowledged that there is a political tension within the new government between wanting to repair the U.S. relationship with Germany, which was damaged by Trump, and protecting European energy security and Ukrainian sovereignty. But he noted that the allies disagree all the time, although they remain friends and partners, and argued that facing Russian President Vladimir Putin depends in large part on strengthening Ukraine.
“There needs to be a return to the recognition that, if Ukraine is successful, Putin will fail,” he said. “If Ukraine succeeds in becoming a normal European country – a value-oriented, market-based country, part of Europe – then putinism fails. I think President Biden understands this. ”