President Trump and his legal team want the American people to believe Ukraine is a corrupt hellhole. That narrative is central to the White House’s impeachment argument. As Mike Purpura, deputy counsel to the president, told the Senate in his opening arguments last Saturday, “The content of the July 25 call was in line with the president’s legitimate concerns about corruption.”
Strangely, Mr. Trump’s sudden interest in rooting out corruption in Ukraine only manifested in 2019, as the American presidential election was ramping up, and only after removing the ambassador to the country, Marie Yovanovitch, who had made anti-corruption work a priority of her time in Kyiv. The president’s defense not only strains credulity, it also undermines the progress Ukraine has made fighting corruption over the past six years.
Far from playing the simpering victim in a distant scandal, Ukraine’s new government seems committed to an agenda focused on peace and reform. The mood in Kyiv is one of cautious optimism, not agony. The United States should be nurturing this climate, not tearing it down. But casting Mr. Trump’s bullying as an anti-corruption crusade and ignoring Ukraine’s six years of reforms does exactly that.
Since he was elected president of Ukraine last April, Volodymyr Zelensky has undertaken a number of positive steps. In 2019, his government created a Ministry of Digital Transformation to try to bring the country’s notoriously complicated bureaucracy to heel. Mr. Zelensky has armed Ukraine’s existing anti-corruption bodies with more power and more independence, and he has overseen the opening of an anticorruption court, something for which Ukrainians have clamored since their 2014 revolution. And in a decision that might perplex certain American politicians, Mr. Zelensky signed a law establishing a procedure for presidential impeachment. More ambitious reforms are underway.
And even amid the impeachment scandal in Washington, and with far less Western political assistance than his predecessor, Mr. Zelensky is making tentative progress toward ending the bloodshed in the country’s east, where Russia continues to wage a war that has cost over 13,000 lives. Mr. Zelensky met with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in December. Despite worries that he would capitulate to Russia, he stood firm. In addition to a prisoner exchange that took place before the new year, the leaders agreed to new civilian crossings and a demining plan. What’s more, Mr. Zelensky laid out clear “red lines” he will not cross in future negotiations: Ukraine will not be federalized, allow Russia to influence its political decisions or acquiesce to Russian control of any of its territories, including Crimea.
American influence would be most useful for these peace negotiations and anticorruption efforts. A skilled replacement for Kurt Volker, America’s former special envoy to the country, will ensure that Ukraine isn’t left with an outcome that threatens its sovereignty. A more unified American voice might help in other areas, too: Worries remain about the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky’s influence over the government, as well as the new political elite’s relative inexperience. High-level American pressure could provide the guidance the Zelensky administration needs to continue to govern well, free of oligarchic influence.
Resolving these issues is in America’s interests. A democratic, prosperous and peaceful Ukraine can serve as a model for other transitional democracies — pushing back on Russian influence and adventurism and making room for citizen participation in government. American diplomats and civil servants continue to diligently assist their Ukrainian counterparts to achieve these goals, but their message is undercut by the drumbeat of conspiracy and accusations of corruption reverberating in the halls of Congress.
Members of Congress who were once among the most vocal supporters of Ukraine, including Senator Lindsey Graham, who has visited Ukrainian troops on the front lines in the country’s east, are now undercutting the progress Kyiv has made in the last six years. They claim that Ukraine is irredeemably corrupt despite the successful reforms they advocated under the previous president, Petro Poroshenko. These misplaced corruption concerns fuel unfounded narratives about Hunter Biden, Ukrainian election interference, the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory and secret cabals of “bad guys” within Ukrainian society allegedly working against Mr. Trump.
It is a dizzying array of falsehoods meant to confuse Congress and the American people, and everyone involved knows it. In recently released text messages, Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney and kingpin of Ukraine conspiracy theories, even admitted his fantasy about Ukrainian election interference is baseless.
For months, by using Ukraine’s corruption problem as an excuse for Mr. Trump’s aid freeze, the president’s defenders have put short-term domestic political gains ahead of American support of the country’s future. They risk perpetuating Ukraine’s problems when they use its struggles as the bedrock of the president’s defense. Mr. Zelensky told Time late last year that he worries that his country’s image is being undermined: “Everyone hears that signal. Investments, banks, stakeholders, companies, American, European, companies that have international capital in Ukraine, it’s a signal to them that says, ‘Be careful, don’t invest.’ Or, ‘Get out of there.’ This is a hard signal.”
With the president’s impeachment defense wrapped up, Congress has a chance to put that signal behind it. In their questions, senators should focus on the substance of the charges at hand — not try to use disinformation to deflect and diffuse them, or map them onto a country that wants no part of American scandals but relies on American advocacy.
This is a historic moment for Ukraine. A pulse of optimism has the potential to push the country down the road to democracy. Rather than distort reality and leech that lifeblood from Ukrainians’ future, Congress should now offer the country its full-throated support.
