Pompeo: U.S. Launched Airstrikes on 5 Bases in Iraq and Syria

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo arrives in Ukraine this week to voice support for the embattled nation, a message muddled by Rudy Giuliani’s latest visit there in search of dirt on Joe Biden and by the pending Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.

Pompeo will “reaffirm U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” when he visits Friday, the State Department said in announcing travels that will also take him to Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Cyprus.

But even as the top U.S. diplomat, Pompeo may struggle to convince his counterparts in Kyiv that he really runs America’s Ukraine policy after he acquiesced to demands from Giuliani -- and Trump -- including the purging of an ambassador who resisted efforts to pressure Ukraine’s new president.

Pompeo’s visit will make him the highest-ranking administration official to travel to Ukraine since Trump’s July call with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy evolved into an impeachment debacle. At stake is whether the U.S. withheld support in an effort to press for a probe into Biden, a potential opponent in the 2020 election.

But Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer who met with him as recently as Dec. 21 in Florida, was back in Kyiv this month pushing the discredited theory -- embraced by the president -- that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind U.S. election interference in 2016.

Hundreds of hours of debate and testimony in the impeachment saga haven’t clarified U.S. policy toward Ukraine. Senior officials in Kyiv -- who avoided Giuliani on his last visit -- may have reason to question whether the Trump administration sees their nation primarily as a fledgling democracy and bulwark against Russian aggression, or just a pawn in a political effort to attack Democrats ahead of the 2020 election.

Pompeo and other officials say Ukraine -- which has been in conflict with Russia since it invaded Crimea in 2014 -- is a national security priority and point to the delivery of almost $400 million in aid as proof. But critics says the actions of Trump and his personal lawyer outside normal diplomatic channels, including holding up that aid for months, suggest all they cared about was obtaining political dirt.

“The idea that this administration has prioritized or dealt effectively with the Ukraine crisis is a political fiction,” said Andrew Weiss, a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The priority of Ukraine on the diplomatic front basically disappeared on day one of the Trump administration.”

Pompeo will have to navigate the divide between official and unofficial U.S. policy without upsetting Trump or providing more fodder to the president’s critics. He ensured his visit would be a little less awkward by relieving acting Ambassador William Taylor -- his hand-picked envoy who provided damaging criticism during the impeachment inquiry -- of duty on Jan. 1, a few days before Taylor says he was scheduled to come home anyway.

Zelenskiy’s administration -- which still covets a White House meeting that Trump has withheld -- made it clear it welcomes Pompeo’s visit.

“The U.S. is our strategic partner and we are very grateful for its bipartisan support in all sectors,” Iuliia Mendel, Zelenskiy’s spokeswoman, said in a phone interview. “We hope we will expand our cooperation. We are glad that such a high-ranking official from the U.S. will visit us. And some time in the future we will be happy to visit the U.S.”

But the secretary of state still has his work cut out for him.

Testimony in the impeachment inquiry indicates Pompeo had little control over Giuliani’s efforts. Pompeo prefers to emphasize the eventual delivery of the military aid that had been held up. Beyond that, he has deflected questions about the president’s pressure to probe the Bidens by saying he supports efforts to clamp down on corruption.

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