Unafraid, Bi-Partisan, Uphold U.S. and Freedom

             

 

JVLV:  Donald, Ukraine is a more important issue than you may realize. So I’m going to give you the best advice I can, based on over 40 years of scholarship and experience! 

 

 

Paul is a good manager but he is unfortunately tainted by his former association with former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.  A Putin puppet, Yanukovych even outdid Hillary for corruption. He stole millions from his people, while keeping a private zoo in his palatial residence. In 2014 his practices evoked peaceful revolution. When pro-Yanukovych snipers shot into a crowd of demonstrators, the revolution turned bloody. Yanukovych was overthrown in a popular revolution by the Ukrainian people-- not an illegal coup organized by the West as Mr Putin maintains. 

 

 

As reported by the New York Times, August 15 ,2016, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine [NCBU] obtained a ledger from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, in which Manafort’s name “…appeared 22 times…over five years, with payments totaling about $12.7 million.” They don’t know how much money he really received.  No matter.  Your decision to replace Paul with Conway and Bannon was correct.  To help your campaign, Manafort, as your consultant, must explain and disavow his relationships with Yanukovych and Russia. 

  

 

Of course Hillary is attacking you on this issue along with the mere fact that you hope for a better U.S. relationship with Russia. But she also has problems there.  After her ill-advised “reset” of Russo-U.S. relations in 2009 -- only a year after Putin’s invasion of sovereign Georgia -- she herself engaged in a corrupt relationship with the Kremlin. She okayed the sale of Uranium1, a Canadian company with American-based Uranium mines, to Russian firm Rosatom.  Russia wound up with one fifth of U.S. uranium, while the Clintons benefitted from huge donations to their Clinton Foundation slush fund and speaker’s fees for Bill. 

 

 

The U.S. should seriously consider working with Putin against ISIS. But at the same time, you have to revise your stand on Ukraine. Russo-U.S. cooperation against Islamist terrorism cannot be forged unless a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict is found. Russia must end its intervention of the Ukraine.  If intervention continues, you, as president, must do what Obama didn’t -- order defensive arms for Kyiv.  For disclosure, our small institute was the first to suggest defensive arms to Ukraine in the April 2014 Kyiv Post. The Ukrainians are good fighters and Putin favors low-cost invasions.  

 

 

In an interview of me by Rutgers University Professor Alexander Motyl with the World Affairs Journal, I also proposed a solution to the Ukraine crisis: essentially a Swiss-Austrian model of armed neutrality, no NATO membership; cultural and linguistic interests granted to the Russian minority. There must also be negotiations over the status of Crimea acceptable to Ukraine and Russia. Putin’s key concern is permanent access to his naval base in Sevastopol, home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

 

 

As president you, not Germany’s Angela Merkel, must take the lead in the negotiations. The immigrant Muslim deluge she welcomed into her country is creating havoc; she’s also besieged by her political opposition.  You, not she must negotiate with Putin if you are elected.

 

 

We also suggest you hire as a consultant, Alexander Motyl, in my judgment our best expert on Ukraine. Finally, realize Ukraine matters because war in Europe will jeopardize any future U.S. relationship with Putin against ISIS.  

 

 

Moreover there is a significant eastern European community in America -- Poles, Ukrainians even many Russians, who disagree with Putin’s interventions into Ukraine, a country that aspires to democracy and freedom. Their vote is important to you.