American Democrats are well aware of the situation in Ukraine. This is one of the problems of Kiev’s elites
Two months have passed since Joe Biden, a 78-year-old Democrat, officially became president of the United States. Many experts and politicians in Kyiv thought that Biden, who had shown an interest in Ukraine as Vice President, would surely support it as President too. But Biden has so far ignored Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which has embarrassed Ukrainian politicians.
The position of the Ukrainian side in that situation was criticized by Ilia Kusa, an expert in international politics at the Ukrainian Institute of the Future. According to him, one gets the impression that Biden’s phone conversation with Zelensky is the main goal of Kiev’s foreign policy. At the same time, the expert named three reasons explaining the current state of affairs.
“The Biden administration is sceptical about Ukraine and is in no hurry to take concrete steps, being aware of the consequences if you go in the wrong direction”, – Kusa said confidently.
He also stressed that communication with Joe Biden would be more difficult for Ukraine than with Donald Trump. The latter viewed Ukraine as a tool to solve personal political problems. The expert is probably referring to Trump’s attempts to gather materials in Ukraine about the financial machinations of the Biden family. At the same time, Trump had little interest in Ukraine itself and did not know much about it.
It is different with Biden, but it only makes things worse for the Ukrainian elites. Now they will not be able to pretend that everything in the country is under control and that Ukraine itself is an effective liberal democracy.
The third reason has to do with Russia, says Kusa. Ukraine used to be of interest to the US solely as a platform for anti-Russian campaign. Now US-Ukrainian relations will largely depend on US-Russian relations.
“The Biden administration will build Ukrainian policy through Russian policy”, – the expert concludes. – “The Ukrainian direction will largely depend on where relations between Moscow and Washington will go.”