Former Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman has said that the 6 January insurrection was a signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to begin amassing troops on the border with Ukraine in preparation for the invasion.
The Ukrainian-born former director of European affairs at the US National Security Council said the division that emanated from the Capitol riot provided a path for the Russian invasion of its neighbour.
“Starting just months after January 6, Putin began building up forces on the border. He saw the discord here,” Lt Col Vindman told The New York Times Magazine. “He saw the huge opportunity presented by Donald Trump and his Republican lackeys.”
“These folks sent the signal Putin was waiting for,” he added.
Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine early on 24 February. Several former officials in the Trump administration said Mr Trump’s scandal-plagued time in office allowed Mr Putin an opportunity to attempt to take power in Ukraine.
Both Lt Col Vindman and the former senior director for Europe and Russia at the United States National Security Council, Fiona Hill, mentioned Mr Trump’s first impeachment trial – where both acted as witnesses – as an important moment. Mr Trump was facing allegations that he had withheld military aid to Ukraine, which had been fighting Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2014, in an effort to get them to investigate then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and his family.
Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton told the Times that Mr Trump was emboldened when the Senate, at the time controlled by the Republicans, acquitted him in February 2020.
“This is Trump saying, ‘I got away with it.’ And thinking, ‘if I got away with it once, I can get away with it again’,” Mr Bolton told the Times. “And he did get away with it again.”
Mr Trump was impeached and acquitted a second time following the Capitol riot on a charge of inciting the insurrection.
Lt Col Vindman was pushed out of his role after he testified against Mr Trump. He told the Times that with time, he started to see the scandal involving Ukraine and Mr Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election as being “part of a broader tapestry”.
“The domestic effects of all this are bad enough. But there’s also a geopolitical impact,” he said. “We missed an opportunity to harden Ukraine against Russian aggression.”
Lt Col Vindman said Ukraine became “radioactive” for as long as Mr Trump remained in office and that they were without “serious engagement” with the US.
“Putin had been wanting to reclaim Ukraine for eight years, but he was trying to gauge when was the right time to do it,” he said.
Mr Bolton added that the Trump-Ukraine episode undermined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was new in the job in 2019.
“It made it impossible for Zelensky to establish any kind of relationship with the president of the United States — who, faced with a Russian Army on his eastern border, any Ukrainian president would have as his highest priority,” Mr Bolton said. “So basically that means Ukraine loses a year and a half of contact with the president.”
Last month, Lt Col Vindman told Salon that Mr Trump’s praise of Mr Putin and his refusal to go against him, encouraged the Russian president to be more aggressive.
“Putin could have done this at any time. The reason he acted now is not coincidental … Putin, like Trump, smells vulnerability and exploits it,” he said. “Vladimir Putin perceived that the United States was distracted and vulnerable. He’s been testing our resolve. He’s been getting positive signals in that regard.”
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