DISINFO: Ukraine is a Deep State tool to destroy Trump
SUMMARY
Ukraine is a Deep State tool to destroy Donald Trump. The Ukrainian political class has actively worked to undermine Trump’s presidency on behalf of the Democrats since his first term. Ukrainian operatives dug up dirt on Trump concerning his alleged ties to Russia and leaked a fabricated ledger to undermine his campaign manager, Paul Manafort.
Former security chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko admitted Kiev interfered in the 2016 US election. In 2019, Democrats weaponised Ukraine again to impeach Trump, with US officials of Ukrainian origin Eugene and Alexander Vindman playing a prominent role.
The Trump-Russia collusion hoax deflected attention from Ukraine’s 2016 election meddling, Biden’s role in pressuring Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating Burisma, Biden's role in the 2014 Maidan coup, and from broader US involvement in post-2014 Ukrainian politics. Russiagate also sabotaged Trump’s ability to reset relations with Russia maintaining the rigid narrative of Ukraine as the virtuous ally and Russia as the ultimate villain.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives targeting Ukraine and promoting the notion of a US Deep State acting above elected officials. The claim aims to increase negative feelings about Ukrainians and ultimately undermine US aid for Ukraine’s self-defence against Russia.
Paul Manafort’s ties to Russia were accredited by the US Senate investigation into Russia’s interference in the US 2016 election, and he was convicted for fraud based in evidences found by the investigation of US special prosecutor Robert Mueller. It is true that Valentyn Nalyvaichenko made some allegations about Ukraine’s electoral interference in the US, but these claims are seen as suspicious given his ties to Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, who had previous links to the Kremlin.
The allegation that Joe Biden forced the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect Burisma is false and was presumably fed to Trump’s ally Rudolph Giuliani by Russian operatives, according to US intelligence. A House Committee investigation pushed by the Republicans on this topic found no wrongdoing by Biden.
There is a solid corpus of evidence on Russian meddling in US elections compiled in the two-volume Mueller report and the five-volume US Senate investigation. Mueller’s investigations led to the criminal indictment of 34 people, 26 of them Russian citizens or entities including the infamous Internet Research Agency. Many other findings by The New York Times and The Washington Post, for which they received the Pulitzer Prize in 2018, were later backed by the evidence presented in court, further investigations or confessions of those involved. Trump’s Department of Justice prevented further investigation of other additional ties between Trump’s environment and Russia.
Allegations portraying the 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine as a US or Western-backed coup have been debunked many times (see here, here, here and here).
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Five Eyes are afraid of Trump as they have much to hide from the "Russia hoax", that Russiagate was a fraud orchestrated by the West, that the US maintains sanctions on Russia even though accusations of interference proved to be unfounded, or that the Mueller report is another proof of how Russia is always falsely accused.