VIEW from behind the plow - -

The Trump-Biden Ukraine corruption discussion provides insight into the problems with the central government leftist Americans are fighting hard to attain for America.

Nolan Peterson, former U.S. Air Force pilot and now the Heritage Foundation’s foreign correspondent in Ukraine discussed the corruption that carried over from the old Russian regime there in a recent podcast with Heritage interviewer Daniel Davis.

The conversation between Davis and Peterson follows:

Davis: Can you talk a little more about corruption? Is this just a massive problem in Ukraine in the government that’s been there for a long time? Are there signs that Voldodymyr Zelenskyy (Ukraine’s newly-elected president) is cracking down on it? Because in his phone call with the president, in the transcript, it said that he talked about draining the swamp in Kyiv. Is that happening?

Peterson: “Yeah, I think one problem for Ukraine’s post-revolutionary government has been the fact that there are remnants of the old regime of former President Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian former Ukrainian president who was ousted during the 2014 revolution, his old political allies, many of whom remained in government after the revolution.

“So Yanukovych left, the head of the snake was cut off, but the body in many ways still remained. So since 2014, it’s been an uphill struggle for Ukraine to root out that sort of endemic corruption.

“The country has made measurable progress. I think that there’s a long road ahead, but I’ve lived in Ukraine for more than five years and I can tell you it’s a totally different country than it was in 2014. So there has been a lot of positive progress made on fighting corruption.

“I think, if anything, Ukraine should be rewarded for what it’s done. Obviously, the United States and the EU would do well to sort of keep holding Ukraine accountable to that positive progression.

“But I think Ukraine, at this point, is a success story. And that sends, in my opinion, a strong message to the Russian people that if you choose a pro-democratic, pro-Western future, you can get good things, too.”

(The Whistleblower complaint over a phone call between President Trump and the Ukraine president, alleged that Trump put pressure on the Ukraine administration to reopen an investigation of corruption of a Ukrainian gas company on which Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, serves as a director, drawing a $50,000 a month salary. President Trump released a transcript of the call indicating that he suggested reopening the corruption investigation but making no requirement of the action to continue receiving American aid. The Ukrainian president in observing he was working on “draining the swamp” in Ukraine paraphrases the Trump campaign pledge to drain the Washington swamp.)

The more centralized America’s government becomes with more unelected bureaucrats in charge of writing regulations affecting citizens, the more it resembles the corruption of socialist systems.

The Ukraine government leaders are concerned that the political divide in America will damage the former bilateral support for Ukraine from both American parties.

Ukraine officials realize that the control of the presidency has traditionally switched back and forth and wish to avoid alienating either party due to actions regarding the investigation of Biden’s son.

Davis pointed out that President Trump did put a temporary hold on military aid money to Ukraine during the period where he made the phone call and then released those funds weeks later.

The president gave a couple of reasons for that, one of which that European nations haven’t done much of anything to pitch in and help Ukraine counter Russian aggression.

Peterson observed:

“I think definitely when it comes to military aid, the U.S. is way out in front of Europe. The EU has given Ukraine billions of euros worth of loans. In fact, the EU has given more loans to Ukraine than any other nation ever outside of the bloc. ...

“So the EU has done things to help Ukraine’s economy rebound from the revolution. But when it comes to military aid, the U.S. stands alone. But you know, U.S. aid to Ukraine is really a pittance compared to say U.S. aid to Israel. So I think Ukraine is grasping at straws a little bit as far as getting military aid from any country.”

However, he also pointed out that Ukraine is the world’s 12th largest weapons exporter and is capable of fighting the war against Russia’s invasion.

Ukraine fought back the Russian invasion in 2014 successfully because of the bravery of its soldiers who fought with limited means and limited technology very briefly to propel that invasion.

U.S. military aid certainly gives Ukraine a technological edge on the battlefield. Most importantly, it sends a really strong message to Ukraine’s soldiers and civilians that they have the backing of the world’s most powerful military, that of the United States.

“But the notion that Ukraine is somehow incapable of defending itself without U.S. military aid is not accurate,” Peterson said.

Peterson voiced his opinion that the election of Zelenskyy came because younger Ukrainians were dissatisfied with the slow progress of reforms there. adding:

“Ukraine has done a lot to decentralize power from the central government and giving local towns and other cities control over their own budgets in a way that they’ve never had in either the post-Soviet or Soviet era. So you’re starting to see infrastructure improvements in cities that you’ve never seen in living memory.

“So I think that there was measurable progress, but I think people wanted things faster, they wanted the things now, particularly the younger generations who are constantly exposed to Western lifestyles, Western expectations of economic opportunity than the older generation. …

“I don’t have any data off-hand to justify this, but just from sort of the street-level perception of living Ukraine, it seems like many young people were excited by Zelenskyy because he offered that fresh face. He’s a young president, and he is going to kind of give new life to that dream of the revolution, which was a pro-Western future, that I think maybe some of the young people felt like former President Petro Poroshenko didn’t deliver on.”

Our thought: America remains the world’s beacon of freedom despite the left’s relentless efforts to turn it into a European style socialism.