Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

The U.S. Is Corrupting Ukraine

Trump's alleged meddling in the country's notoriously corrupt political system is setting its new president up for failure.

September 24, 2019 at 12:34 PM UTC

By Leonid Bershidsky

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Give him a chance.
Photographer: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images

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The scandal over Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political rival might ultimately have no consequences for the U.S. president. It could, however, undermine a historical opportunity for Ukraine’s new leadership to drain its own swamp.

Various U.S. news outlets reported this week that Trump ordered his administration in July to withhold about $400 million in military aid to Ukraine. Later that month, he reportedly pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate the alleged involvement of Democratic front-runner Joe Biden and his son Hunter in influence-peddling in Ukraine. This is a problem for Trump if someone can demonstrate corrupt intent — that is, that he was using the state’s resources as a lever to achieve his personal campaign goals.