PARSIPPANY, N.J. – Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump has outraged Ukrainian Americans, and others, with his recent comments indicating that he would consider recognizing Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
“I’m going to take a look at it,” Mr. Trump said in an interview broadcast on July 31 on the ABC-TV news program “This Week.” He added fuel to the fire when he added: “But you know, the people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were. And you have to look at that, also.”
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 is not recognized by the United States or the West, which have imposed sanctions on Moscow. Mr. Trump has said he would consider lifting those sanctions. Nor do the U.S. or Western countries recognize the illegal referendum organized in occupied Crimea by Russia, whereby voters purportedly said they wanted the peninsula to join Russia.
The host of ABC’s “This Week,” George Stephanopoulos, asked Mr. Trump: “Why did you soften the GOP platform on Ukraine?” Mr. Trump’s response: “[Vladimir Putin’s] not going into Ukraine, okay? Just so you understand. He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down and you can put it down, you can take it anywhere you want.”
Mr. Stephanopoulos countered with, “Well, he’s already there, isn’t he?”
Mr. Trump then replied: “Okay, well, he’s there in a certain way, but I’m not there yet [apparently a reference to the U.S. presidency]. You have [President Barack] Obama there. And frankly, that whole part of the world is a mess under Obama, with all the strength that you’re talking about and all of the power of NATO and all of this, in the meantime, he’s going where — he takes — takes Crimea, he’s sort of — I mean…”
Writing on Facebook, Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov called Mr. Trump’s remarks “shameful,” adding that “a marginal who supports Putin’s dictatorship cannot be a guarantor of democratic freedoms in the U.S. and the world.”
Former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk called Trump’s comments “a challenge to the values of the free world.” He added, “It can hardly be called ignorance. This is a breach of moral and civilized principles.”
(For more reaction to Donald J. Trump’s latest pronouncements, see materials on pages 6, 7 and 8.)
Mr. Trump has denied having any kind of relationship with Mr. Putin, saying he’d neither met the Russian president nor spoken on the phone with him. It has been widely reported that Mr. Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort previously had been a lobbyist for Ukraine’s ousted pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovych.
Diane Francis, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, pointed out in an August 1 post on the council’s website: “Trump may be a master of branding but his co-branding with Russian President Vladimir Putin will damage him where he needs the most support. A voter living in Ohio or Pennsylvania doesn’t have to be Ukrainian to understand that Putin and his nuclear arsenal is more dangerous to the United States than ISIS. And a significant percentage of Americans in the Rust Belt are from countries, like Ukraine, that have been victimized by Russia for generations.”
Ms. Francis quoted Michael Sawkiw Jr., director of the Ukrainian National Information Service, as saying: “These communities pride themselves on their interaction with their elected representatives advocating issues of concerns” and “active participation in U.S. elections.” He explained, “Many share an acute apprehension of resurgent Russian aggression.”
Ms. Francis commented: “Frankly, Trump has made a mistake by fanning the Cold War flames. To these Americans in the Rust Belt and their relatives everywhere, Trump’s coziness, admiration and inner circle of advisers linked to Putin are unacceptable. It is also contrary to his promise to keep America safe.”
Writing in The Washington Post on August 4 about the presidential candidate’s latest statements, opinion writer George Will noted that “Vladimir Putin’s occupation of Crimea has escaped Trump’s notice.” He commented: “It is, surely, somewhat noteworthy that someone aspiring to be this nation’s commander in chief has somehow not noticed the fact that for two years now a sovereign European nation has been being dismembered.”
Sources: RFE/RL, AP, ABC-TV, Reuters, The Washington Post, Atlantic Council.