'Alarming circumstances': A distressed diplomat tells a tale of venal intrigue
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Source: Washington Post
Ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. looked out over the front lines of Ukraine’s long war with Russian-backed separatists last July, taking in a damaged bridge and then, farther in the distance, an “armed and hostile” enemy.
Taylor had taken the job of acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine reluctantly, he said in congressional testimony Tuesday. His decision came only after assurances from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in late May that President Trump was committed to helping Kyiv hold off forces, armed and funded by Moscow, that had besieged the country for nearly five years.
Now it was July and Taylor was already doubting both his decision and his country’s intentions.
The Trump administration’s official policy, which had bipartisan backing, was to support a young democracy “struggling to break free of its past” and battling Russian aggression. But it was becoming increasingly clear to Taylor that those noble intentions were being “fundamentally undermined by an irregular, informal channel of U.S. policy-making” in which Trump and a handful of allies were withholding desperately needed military aid in exchange for political favors that would benefit Trump’s reelection campaign.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/alarming-circumstances-a-distressed-diplomat-tells-a-tale-of-venal-intrigue/ar-AAJbQUB?li=BBnb7Kz
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