Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko dropped in to briefly meet President Donald Trump on Tuesday, a low-key visit that comes weeks before the U.S. leader’s expected sit-down with Russian President Vladimir Putin and as fighting flares in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian armed forces.
Experts told The Cipher Brief that Tuesday’s meeting offered Poroshenko a critical opportunity to push for continued U.S. assistance and support in the midst of tremendous uncertainty about the Trump administration’s policy toward the Kremlin.
"It's a great honor to be with President Poroshenko of the Ukraine, a place that we've all been very much involved in, and we've been seeing it and everybody's been reading about it,” Trump said during a photo-op with Poroshenko. “And we've had some very, very good discussions. It's going to continue throughout the day, and I think a lot of progress has been made.”
Poroshenko tweeted after the visit he was “delighted with the results of the negotiations” with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and “grateful to our partners for the support of Ukraine.” According to Kiev’s readout of the meeting, the agenda was broad and the leaders discussed topics such as economic cooperation, the energy sector, and military-technical cooperation. The U.S. also confirmed its commitment to the Minsk agreement to bring an end to the fighting, the statement noted.
“We received strong support from the U.S., support of sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of our state, as well as support in the continuation of reforms in Ukraine,” Poroshenko said.
The White House readout of the meeting stated Trump met with Poroshenko to "discuss support for the peaceful resolution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine and President Poroshenko's reform agenda and anticorruption efforts." There was no mention in the summary of Russia or U.S. sanctions.
Mark Simakovsky, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Patriciu Eurasia Center, said Tuesday’s meeting was very much about “political posturing,” with Poroshenko securing a face-to-face meeting with Trump before Putin did. But it also offered an important chance for Poroshenko to “show Trump the continued value of Ukraine and the role the U.S. will play in Ukraine and in Europe,” he said.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in April was heard asking a question that raised concerns in Ukraine. “Why should U.S. taxpayers be interested in Ukraine?” Tillerson asked at a meeting of the Group of Seven foreign ministers. The meetings today with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and later Tillerson presented a time for Poroshenko to address that offhand question, according to experts.
“It’s a critical question,” Simakovsky said. “The Ukraine question comes almost at a crossroads of transatlantic relations, particularly in light of Trump’s comments in Brussels and failure to enunciate his commitment to Article 5 there.”
Trump on June 9 explicitly endorsed NATO’s Article 5 that calls for members to come to the defense of another if attacked.
Hannah Thoburn, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute focusing on Russian and Ukrainian politics, said the large number of unfulfilled positions at the State Department and Department of Defense related to Ukrainian issues likely impacted talks.
“I’m sure the Ukrainians came with a whole bunch of requests, but whether the president, State Department, and White House are even in the position to actually think through or consider any of those questions is a very different one,” she said. “They are likely waiting to meet with Putin.”
It is unclear what will be discussed when Putin and Trump first meet — likely during the G20 summit in July — given the lack of a clear Russia policy from the administration. A BuzzFeed report on Monday detailed a classified three-point strategy by Tillerson for dealing with the Kremlin, in which the secretary of state proposes conveying to Moscow that aggressive actions are unproductive, working with Russia on areas of strategic interest to the U.S., and achieving “strategic stability” with Russia.
This is not unlike where many U.S. administrations start their relations with Russia, Simakovsky pointed out — “cooperate where we can, push back where we must.”
“There has been such failure in that approach that I assume this is doomed to failure,” he said.
In President George W. Bush’s first meeting with Putin in 2001, Bush came away saying, “I looked the man in the eye. I found him very straight-forward and trustworthy – I was able to get a sense of his soul,” while early on, President Barack Obama attempted an optimistic “reset” with Russia before relations deteriorated. During Obama’s presidency, Russia intervened militarily in Ukraine and Syria, annexing Crimea and supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
But the administration’s currently murky policy toward Russia will also be illuminated by how Trump handles Ukraine, Simakovsky noted.
“For better and for worst, a barometer for that policy is how the president chooses to treat Ukraine,” he said. “It’s almost the first sign of how the administration will seek to deter and respond to Russian aggression.”
Fighting has been ongoing in eastern Ukraine since Russia’s military intervention in 2014. “There are lulls in the scope of fighting day-to-day, but people are dying and being injured on a daily basis,” Simakovsky said.
The conflict’s impact on civilians has been devastating — landmines and unexploded ordinance are a major problem and there are over one million internally displaced persons, Thoburn noted. “This is a real humanitarian crisis that people have just totally forgotten about,” she said.
On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked if Trump sees Moscow as the aggressor in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
“I think we’ve been clear that yeah, obviously that’s part of the reason there are sanctions, is because until they are out of eastern Ukraine, we are going to continue to have sanctions on Russia, and we believe that that is a part of Ukraine, and so therefore, those sanctions will remain. It was something that obviously came up in the discussion with the president today, and we will continue to advocate for that,” Spicer said.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Treasury Department announced it reinforced existing sanctions on Russia by broadening the list of people and entities hit. The department said sanctions connected to Russian actions in eastern Ukraine "will remain in place until Russia fully honors its obligations under the Minsk Agreements" and the sanctions tied to Crimea "will not be lifted until Russia ends its occupation of the peninsula."
“These designations will maintain pressure on Russia to work toward a diplomatic solution,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “This administration is committed to a diplomatic process that guarantees Ukrainian sovereignty, and there should be no sanctions relief until Russia meets its obligations under the Minsk agreements.”
The U.S. Senate has also proposed additional sanctions measures against Russia, which the House must take up. The European Union is pushing for continued transatlantic coordination on sanctions against Russia, but the Congressional bill has drawn criticism from European countries over a provision in the legislation that would permit the U.S. to impose sanctions on European firms that are involved in business with Russian energy companies that are financing projects such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is being built to bypass Ukraine.
“Ukraine looks favorably on that provision, while the Germans, Austrians, and some of the other European countries involved in it are going to be very much against it,” Thoburn said. “It will be interesting to see where the Trump administration comes down on it.”
Ukraine’s stance during the 2016 presidential U.S. election, meanwhile, makes for a difficult starting point for the Trump-Poroshenko relationship.
“They felt because Paul Manafort was a part of Trump’s campaign, they were behind and they weren’t going to ever have much influence, so they went all in on Hillary Clinton,” Thoburn said. “When that didn’t happen, they found themselves in a very tight spot. For them, and for Poroshenko domestically, this trip was really important and helped them assuage some of their fears, or at least get a better handle on what they’re dealing with. They bet on the wrong horse and it was obvious — and the Trump campaign knew it and didn’t appreciate it.”
Mackenzie Weinger is a national security reporter at The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @mweinger.