The Donbas Conflict During Trump’s First Term and What
During the 2024 U.S. presidential election, several Ukrainian Americans said they believed that former President Donald Trump would be a good option for both the US and Ukraine. They argued that Trump would be tough on Russian President Vladimir Putin and could negotiate a deal with Putin because the former president is a “winner.”
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Some members of the Ukrainian American community went as far as to say that there was no war in Ukraine during Trump’s first term blaming former President Barack Obama for the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and President Joe Biden as being responsible for the current invasion of Ukraine.
This group says that Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine would have never happened under Trump. Given what has occurred in Ukraine during the war, these Ukrainian Americans believe he will be able to end the war “quickly and effectively.” They, along with the rest of us, will soon see if their theories are correct.
Last week, numerous news outlets reported the promise president-elect Trump has made to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine within the first 24 hours of his presidency. While it remains to be seen how or if this will occur, his actions and policies towards Ukraine during his first term may offer insight into how he will proceed.
The belief by many Ukrainian American Trump supporters that wars did not occur during Trump’s presidency is factually incorrect. Trump’s first term ran from January 2017 to January 2021. During this period, the war in Donbas, which Ukraine referred to as an “Anti-terrorist operation” (ATO) was the first Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in 2014.
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Trump appointed Ambassador Kurt Volker to serve as the US Special Representative for Ukrainian Negotiations. Volker filled the post from July 2017 to September 2019, during which he met constantly with Ukrainian officials to discuss the war, Kyiv’s relationship with Russia, and how the invasion could end.
This work, however, was very challenging – during his first year in the position 2017 was considered to be the “deadliest year” in the Donbas since the start of the invasion.
“A lot of people think that [the war in the Donbas] has somehow turned into a sleepy, frozen conflict and it’s stable and now we have… a ceasefire Volker said. “That’s completely wrong. It is a crisis. 2017 has been the most violent year.”
Volker tried to urge Trump to aid Ukraine, but his requests were largely ignored. It was not until March 2018, one year after the deadliest year of the war, that the US provided its first shipment of defense equipment to Ukraine.
According to the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, Ukraine was provided with $47 million worth of Javelin anti-tank Command Launch Units (CLU). The weapons did not enter combat at the time, they were stored in a military base in western Ukraine, hundreds of kilometers away from the battles occurring in the Donbas.
We also learned that not all defense aid allocated to Kyiv was sent to Ukraine during that time but would in fact become the center of a scandal involving Trump. In July 2019, in a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss US-Ukrainian relations and the Donbas, Trump asked for assistance in a personal matter.
It seemed that former Vice President Joe Biden would become the Democratic nominee for the 2020 presidential election. Trump asked Zelensky to investigate the Biden family’s connections to Ukraine to undermine his political opponent. Zelensky did not confirm that he would investigate this matter, which members of Trump’s administration then reported.
It seems Trump had ordered a hold on defense aid to Ukraine in advance of the call. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the agency that audits the federal government, investigated the matter and ruled that the president had broken the law by withholding previously approved aid to Ukraine. An investigation by the Department of Defense’s Comptroller Office determined that Trump had withheld the assistance so as to pursue a personal matter.
Shortly afterward, the United States House of Representatives launched its own investigation. After holding hearings and speaking with Trump administration officials, the House introduced two articles of impeachment. The Senate then held a series of bipartisan hearings that failed to remove Trump.
As Congress investigated Trump’s actions, the war in Donbas raged on. According to a report published by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), that between April 2014 and February 2022, over 16,000 Ukrainian civilians died in Donbas. As Russia continued their operations in the region, the US did little to try and stop the war during Trump’s term in office.
Trump ran for re-election in 2020 but was defeated by Biden but vowed that he would return to the political scene.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump was very vocal about his position on Ukraine. He said that the US was sending too much aid to this Eastern European state and proposed that the it should cut back on its assistance.
He also said that he would force Ukraine to negotiate with Russia, and that once elected, he would end the Russian invasion in a day. He then went on to blame Zelensky for Putin’s full-scale invasion. He also said that Biden was responsible for the war which should have never happened.
Now that he has been elected, it remains to be seen how Trump will end the war. Given Ukraine’s determination not to capitulate to Russia and its desire to expel Moscow’s forces from its borders, it is unlikely that Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine will work. Instead, it is destined to fail.
In short, Trump’s relationship with Ukraine is very complicated. His previous term suggests that he was unwilling to work with Ukrainian leaders to help end the first invasion of Ukraine, and rather than providing additional assistance during the current full-scale invasion, he has suggested cutting future aid to Ukraine and wants to forcefully end the war.
Despite these events, members of the Ukrainian Americans who voted for Trump believe that he will stand up to Russia. They are convinced that Trump will be good for Ukraine, and they have promoted his talking points about the war and hope they are right about the newly elected president. Time will tell how Trump’s relationship with Ukraine will unfold during his second term.
Mark Temnycky is an accredited freelance journalist covering Eurasian affairs and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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