The Wall Street Journal - Ukraine’s Poroshenko Meets With Trump

The Wall Street Journal - Ukraine’s Poroshenko Meets With Trump

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June 20, 2017. Alan Cullison.

Ukrainian leader pushing for more U.S. pressure on Moscow.

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump met briefly Tuesday with Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko, who used his first White House visit to stress his country’s alliance with Washington as he pushes for more U.S. pressure against Moscow’s support for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.

The two leaders spoke during a photo session in the Oval Office, but avoided potentially difficult issues. Mr. Trump called Ukraine a place that “everybody’s been reading about,” and said “we’ve had some very good discussions.”

Mr. Poroshenko told Mr. Trump that it was a “great honor and great pleasure” to visit the White House, calling the two countries “strategic partners.”

He was also scheduled to meet Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson later in the day.

Mr. Poroshenko’s visit presented challenges for Mr. Trump, who has said he wants to improve relations with Russia, but is under pressure to distance himself from the Kremlin amid burgeoning investigations into the aftermath of alleged hacking by the Kremlin into U.S. elections. Russia denies the interference.

Tuesday’s meeting came just weeks before Mr. Trump attends the Group of 20 summit in Germany, where he’s expected to speak in person with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time. For months, Mr. Poroshenko has been angling for a meeting so he could push for more U.S. pressure on Moscow to stop its support of pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. Before now, the presidents had only spoken by phone.

The visit Tuesday was a low-profile event, compared to how Mr. Trump has hosted other world leaders. Mr. Trump met briefly with the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office, in what White House officials said described as a “drop by” that took place while Mr. Poroshenko met separately with Vice President Michael Pence.

On Monday, Mr. Trump personally welcomed the visiting president of Panamá, hosted him for an Oval Office meeting that included a photo-op with their wives, and treated him to a luncheon.

Last month, Mr. Trump hosted Russia’s foreign minister and U.S. ambassador in the Oval Office, and officials in Kiev had feared the U.S. leader would meet Mr. Putin before Mr. Poroshenko.

In the brief Oval Office appearance Tuesday, Mr. Trump didn’t publicly mention pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. A White House statement after the meeting said the two leaders discussed “support for the peaceful resolution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine and President Poroshenko’s reform agenda and anti-corruption efforts.”

Mr. Poroshenko, who made a fortune in a chocolate-making business before going into politics, has hoped his background as an entrepreneur may give him a means to forge ties with Mr. Trump, officials close to the Ukrainian president said.

“This is a good thing that this meeting is taking place before a Trump-Putin meeting,” said John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine who is now at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, DC. “It’s important that there be a real exchange between the two presidents.”

The Trump administration has voiced support for Ukraine, saying the U.S. would maintain sanctions on Russia until it reversed its annexation of Crimea. But Ukrainian officials have been unsettled by some other signals. During the presidential campaign last year, Mr. Trump suggested sanctions against Moscow should be eased, and earlier this year Mr. Trump met briefly with a domestic political rival to the Ukrainian president, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Both U.S. and European officials have expressed frustration over a lack of progress in implementing a peace plan for eastern Ukraine that had been brokered in 2014 and 2015 in the Belarus capital of Minsk with the help of European mediators.

Tenets of the so-called Minsk agreement included holding local elections in Ukraine’s breakaway Donbas region and returning the border with Russia to Ukrainian control.

Last week, Mr. Tillerson suggested the U.S. would back an entirely new peace deal, saying it would support efforts of Ukraine and Russia to resolve the conflict outside of the Minsk accord.

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