Two days after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Artem Sytnik, the head of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, announced that his office would end its investigation of Paul Manafort, a former chairman of Trump’s campaign who is still in contact with the president-elect’s team. Ukrainian officials previously alleged that Manafort had been designated to receive undisclosed cash payments totaling $12.7 million from former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, a pro-Russian group that came to epitomize the corruption that contributed to Yanukovych’s ouster during the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution. Sytnik said his bureau had abandoned the case because it had “enough of its own officials” to prosecute. But the subtext of his remarks was clear: continuing to investigate Manafort might have threatened Ukraine’s standing with the next U.S. administration.
Kyiv hopes to establish a relationship with the incoming Trump administration that will ensure that Ukraine continues to receive the support it has enjoyed during the presidency of Barack Obama.
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