United States support for Ukraine has been weakened after years of progress in aiding the former Soviet satellite state and applying pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, top impeachment witness Kurt Volker said.
“It is a tragedy for the United States and for Ukraine that our efforts in this area, which were bearing fruit, have now been thrown into disarray,” Volker, who resigned as the lead U.S. negotiator for the war in Ukraine as the impeachment controversy erupted, told lawmakers Tuesday.
In his testimony, Volker distanced himself from other U.S. officials involved in Rudy Giuliani’s push for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accuse former Vice President Joe Biden of corruption. Volker’s opening remarks underscored how the controversy has damaged U.S. interests in Ukraine, which is fending off a Russian invasion and functioning as a bulwark for other European countries that might be threatened by Putin.
“This is critically important for U.S. national security,” Volker said. “If we can stop and reverse Russian aggression in Ukraine, we can prevent it elsewhere.”
The impeachment fight traces back to Giuliani’s coordination with a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor who claimed to have evidence of Biden’s wrongdoing as vice president, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.
Giuliani stoked Trump’s hostility for Zelensky’s team, leaving Trump with the impression that Ukrainian officials tried to “take [him] down” during the 2016 election, Volker testified. These negative reports undermined Zelensky, whom Volker and other U.S. officials regarded as an indirect threat to Putin’s grip on power in the Kremlin.
“If Ukraine, the cradle of Slavic civilization predating Moscow, succeeds as a freedom-loving, prosperous, and secure democracy, it gives us enormous hope that Russia may one day change — providing a better life for Russian people, and overcoming its current plague of authoritarianism, corruption, aggression toward neighbors, and threats to NATO Allies and the United States,” Volker said in his prepared testimony for the House Intelligence Committee.
In his testimony, Volker portrayed himself as a diplomatic fireman, working to rally Western allies against Russian aggression and fill any gaps in the Trump administration’s posture toward Russia — including the difficulties caused by Giuliani.
“As the most senior U.S. official appointed to work solely on the Ukraine portfolio, I needed to step forward to provide leadership,” he said. “I found myself faced with a choice: to be aware of a problem and to ignore it, or to accept that it was my responsibility to try to fix it. I tried to fix it.”
