KYIV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's precarious location -- on the friction point between Russian authoritarianism and Western democracy -- makes attention from the United States critical to politicians there. Meetings and even photo opportunities with American VIPs are invested with huge significance.
For the Ukrainian president, the holy grail is a White House meeting.
For many lower-ranking officials, just getting a selfie with an influential American is political gold, seen as "the epitome of success," as one former Ukrainian intelligence official put it recently.
With Secretary of State Mike Pompeo due to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Friday, Ukraine's leadership is looking for a signal on its standing with President Donald Trump.
Trump told officials during an Oval Office meeting in May, shortly after Zelenskiy's election victory, that Ukrainians "are all corrupt, they are all terrible people" who "tried to take me down," according to testimony from former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker during House impeachment hearings.
Zelenskiy ran for president on a platform of dealing with Ukraine's enduring problem of corruption and ending a war with Russia-backed separatists in the eastern region of Donbass.
But the signs for Ukraine are worrying.
Volker has not been replaced since his resignation in September. There has been no new U.S. ambassador appointed to replace Marie Yovanovitch, who was recalled by Trump in the spring. And a silence has descended over U.S.-Ukraine relations during the Senate impeachment trial over Trump's attempts to pressure Zelenskiy to investigate political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of Ukrainian company Burisma.
Another bad sign surfaced last week. NPR journalist Mary Louise Kelly said Pompeo, furious that she asked him about Ukraine and Yovanovitch in an interview, berated her by asking whether she thought Americans cared about Ukraine.
Volker was involved in negotiations with Zelenskiy aide Andriy Yermak over the summer for the Ukrainian president to announce the investigation Trump wanted in return for a White House meeting, according to text messages released during the impeachment process.
Volker on Tuesday called on Pompeo to announce the date for a White House visit.
"Pompeo's visit to Ukraine is an important opportunity to finally make that a reality," he wrote in Foreign Policy, arguing that Zelenskiy offered the best hope for Ukraine to fight corruption, implement reform and act as a bulwark against Russian aggression.
Yermak told Time magazine in December that a White House meeting would send a message that Zelenskiy's new leadership had already achieved a lot.
Ukraine is seen as a crucial counterweight to Russian power in the region. It is desperately reliant on U.S. military aid in its separatist fight in the east and still reeling from the loss of the strategic Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014.
Ukraine's political elite has been deeply frustrated at the derailment of U.S.-Ukraine relations by the impeachment hearings.
Even if Pompeo did deliver Zelenskiy a White House meeting, as Volker suggested, attention would turn to whether Zelenskiy had offered something helpful to Trump in return.
Zelenskiy has repeatedly denied that he felt pressure from Trump to announce the inquiry the president wanted when the two spoke on the phone on July 25 -- the call helped stir the impeachment.
"There is no doubt that this visit has a significant political and psychological component that is linked to U.S. impeachment agenda," said Makar Taran, a specialist on U.S. studies at the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv. "I dare say that the content of public statements afterward will meet Ukraine's and Pompeo's wishes."
Despite his hopes for a White House meeting, Zelenskiy cannot afford to be pulled deeper into U.S. politics in a U.S. election year, according to political analyst Taras Semenyuk of KyivStratPro think tank.
"The president of the United States has stooped from his legal obligations to the level of standard profit-for-profit arrangements," said Semenyuk. "It's Trump's logic: Benefit in return for benefit. I will give you military help, and you will give me incriminating evidence on Biden.
"Zelenskiy will not publicly help Trump in the elections because it would entail very unpleasant consequences for his ratings and Ukraine's ratings in general," he added.
Zelenskiy's main task is to reset U.S.-Ukraine relations without wading into American politics, added Andriy Buzarov, a foreign-policy expert on the public council of the Ukraine Foreign Ministry, an advisory body.
"Zelenskiy and his team will do everything possible to avoid getting involved in the internal political strife of the United States on one side or the other. Zelenskiy has two clear tasks: to get continued United States support for Ukraine, no matter who is president of the United States or Ukraine, and to minimize the involvement of the Zelenskiy team in the internal political disputes of the United States."
He said the United States impeachment drama had damaged Washington's standing in Ukraine.
"All the issues related to the impeachment and the politicization of U.S.-Ukraine relations has undermined the image of the U.S. president and the United States in Ukraine," Buzarov said.
Taran said Pompeo should prioritize security ties, where the two countries have common interests, rather than drift into domestic politics.
"Both sides," he said, "need to show that the bilateral relations, shaken by domestic politics, are in good shape and back on a sustainable track."
A Section on 01/30/2020