According to reporting from The Hill, four Republican senators have joined the Democrats in pressing the Trump administration for information about whether Pentagon officials ordered restrictions on Ukraine’s access to the satellite-based Starshield network, which Ukrainian officials said limited their ability to intercept Russian drones. Ukraine also uses Starshield to target sites inside Russia. Restricting Ukraine’s access to the network hampers its ability to wage war with Russia.
Restricting Ukraine’s access to Starshield may be a move to force the Zelensky regime to the negotiating table. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that a resumption of full peace talks is unlikely due to Ukrainian drone attacks, as well as ongoing disagreements over territorial and security demands. Too many lives have been lost in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
For the record, I have always opposed US assistance to Ukraine. I have been writing about this conflict on Freedom and Reason from the start of the war and made my position explicit (see my initial essay, which provides the historical context, History and Sides-Taking in the Russo-Ukrainian War). In my view, it was always a bad idea to allow the Zelensky regime access to satellites to target Russia.
However, in light of recent developments, the more important question may be why some Republicans are upset about Trump restricting Ukraine’s access to the Starshield network (if, in fact, this is what Trump did). How are there any Republicans who insist on aiding Ukraine? Ukraine is corrupt and authoritarian. Democrats are neck-deep in the corruption.
Newly declassified State Department emails and documents show that former US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch received frequent briefings from top aides on Hunter Biden’s relationship with Burisma, a Ukrainian company, contradicting her congressional impeachment testimony. The emails show that her deputy in Kyiv believed the Burisma-Biden relationship was adversely affecting US policy. Trump’s phone call to Zelensky concerned these ties. He was not only acting in his role as Magistrate-in-Chief, but also to secure the integrity of US foreign policy.
Impeachment managers withheld this information at Donald Trump’s Senate trial concerning the Ukraine phone call. Trump ultimately prevailed in that case (Senator Mitt Romney of Utah was the sole Republican lawmaker to break party lines), but the fact that Democrats concealed information that would have allowed managers to turn this back on Democrats is deeply concerning. This is a massive scandal. Will the MSM treat it as such? Readers know the answer to this question.
It appears clear now that the impeachment of Trump over the Ukraine phone call was a desperate attempt by Democrats to deflect from Hunter Biden’s involvement in Burisma and, more deeply, Joe Biden’s relationship to Ukraine corruption. (See The Conspiracy to Overthrow an American President.) If this information had been public, it might have shone a light on the Biden crime family. It might have made 2020 too big to rig. Instead, the impeachment gave Democrats a propaganda weapon to drive down support for a successful president seeking reelection.
