What is happening in eastern Ukraine is gaining attention for two reasons: the likely financial involvement in Ukraine’s affairs by President Donald Trump and some of his close advisers, and the fact that fighting there has resumed between US-backed Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists.

US support of Ukrainian government forces and Russian support of Ukrainian separatists is troubling. The conflict continues to evolve into a proxy war between Russia and the United States. The conflict is expensive and really of no profound interest to the US. Does NATO need one more member? If the United States were able to influence European Union decision-making, does the EU need one more poverty-stricken member? Does the United States need to be at war with Russia?

America should be concentrating its resources on repairing and modernizing its own infrastructure, not fiddling around in combat in Avdiivka, Donetsk and Luhansk -- in effect, in Russia’s backyard.

It is true that fighting has resumed in eastern Ukraine. It is also true that the conflict there has continued for three years, with an estimated 10,000 killed and many thousands more Ukrainians displaced.

It is also true that US policy under Trump toward Russia and Ukraine remains relatively opaque. Trump has talked on the phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin and to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, to what end the American people don’t know yet. Trump’s new ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, made a statement at the UN Security Council Feb. 2 to the effect that the United States favors extending economic sanctions against Russia until it withdraws from Crimea, occupied since 2014, in spite of Trump’s intention to improve relations with Russia.

US policy needs to become clear and unambiguous. If America is to remain involved in Ukraine, Trump needs to enunciate a cogent rationale for that involvement. He will need to square it with improving relations with Russia, if that is also his intention.


(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)