“The United States of 2025 for the newly elected President Donald Trump and Ukraine in 2010 for the newly elected President Viktor Yanukovych in some ways.”, – WRITE: www.pravda.com.ua
The Ukrainian party system is extremely unstable, while the American consists of two major parties that have been dominated by politics for over 150 years. There are many more differences.
Despite this, the United States of 2025 for the newly elected President Donald Trump and Ukraine in 2010 for the newly elected President Viktor Yanukovych in some ways.
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Nine years ago, American and Ukrainian policies were strangely related to each other thanks to the infamous political figure of Paul Manafort.
The fruitful agitator and manipulator for authoritarian rulers around the world, Manafort was noticeable in Kiev in 2004-2010, and six years later was the focus of attention in Washington.
He played a role in the formation of the most controversial presidents of Ukraine and the US – Viktor Yanukovych and Donald Trump. Manafort’s interaction with Yanukovych (for several years) and Trump (over several months) preceded their striking victories in the 2010 and 2016 presidential elections, respectively.
Moreover, the political successes of Yanukovych and Trump are similar to the fact that both of them received support from Russia during the most important election campaigns.
Of course, Moscow’s participation in Ukrainian and American election policy was of varying intensity and had excellent results.
In Ukraine, the Kremlin has always been an important participant in the internal affairs by 2014. Moscow has used many secret and not very secret agents and tools.
However, the constant underlying influence of the Kremlin on Ukrainian statehood was insufficient to ensure the victory of the Yanukovych pro -Russian in 2004, in which Moscow was most active.
In the US, on the contrary, it was the Donald Trump Presidential campaign that in 2015–2016 and his public call to Russia “Find 30,000 emails (his competitor from the Democratic Party Hillary Clinton)” prompted the Kremlin to intervene in Trump and Clinton.
If the Kremlin interfered directly and openly in the internal affairs of Ukraine, then Moscow’s interaction with Trump was more secret and indirect. As we know, it was not a full -scale political conspiracy between the Trump and the Kremlin campaign, similar to numerous cases of cooperation between Moscow and pro -Russian Ukrainian politicians.
However, the intervention of Russian intelligence services in the 2016 American election campaign was large -scale. This is stated in the five -volume report of the Special Committee of the US Senate from Russian campaigns of active measures and interference with the 2016 US elections. It was published in 2019-2020.
Did Russia change the activity of Russia in 2016 the narrow result of the presidential election of that year, and does Trump thanks in this way with his political rise in Moscow? We will never know this for sure.
It is only clear that the 2016 election campaign would develop differently without Russia’s participation. The same can be said about the whole history of domestic Ukrainian politics until 2022.
There are other intriguing coincidences in Yanukovych and Trump’s biographies. Their approach to politics is transactional, cynical, patriarchal and not burdened with limitation of values, norms and ideology.
At the time of election by the Presidents in 2010 and 2014, Yanukovych and Trump were convicted of criminals. The fact that they violated the law was known to the masses, but it did not prevent the Ukrainian Party of Regions and the American GOP to put them on the post of heads of state. Although in most other democratic countries, this development is unlikely to be possible.
Moreover, there are some parallels in how Yanukovych and Trump tried to gain and retain power.
In 2004, Yanukovych, as the Prime Minister of Ukraine, tried to become president through large-scale falsifications in the second round of the fourth since 1991 presidential elections in Ukraine.
The Supreme Court of Ukraine prevented attempts to illegally seize the authorities by recognizing the election results invalid. He decided to re -vote that Yanukovych predictably lost.
At the beginning of 2021, Donald Trump as a 45th US President tried to cancel the results of the 2020 presidential election. In particular, by storming the crowd, storm the Capitol building in Washington and not allow Congress to formally recognize Joe Baiden’s victory.
Washington police and Congress, which continued to insist on the results of the election, prevented the coup attempt. After that, Moscow publicly supported Yanukovych and Trump, who did not recognize their defeat in the 2004 and 2020 elections, respectively.
In the spring of 2010, the former Prime Minister Yanukovych eventually won the presidential election in Ukraine in the current prime minister-women. Scoring less than 50% of the vote. Yanukovych received 49.33%and Yulia Tymoshenko – 46.03%.
Fourteen and a half years later, Donald Trump’s Explore won the 20124 presidential election in the US in the current vice-resident-a woman. Also gained less than 50% of the vote. While Trump received 49.8% of the vote, Kamala Harris gained 48.3%.
Moreover, Manafort or/and Russia contributed to the winners of Yanukovych and Trump in 2010 and 2024. They are rather the result of the ineptability of Ukrainian and American democratic political technologists and politicians.
Both of these fateful votes could probably win two democratic female contenders if their political allies and managers behaved smarter.
In particular, two current presidents – Viktor Yushchenko and Joe Biden – did not provide Tymoshenko and Harris with sufficient help to win.
Yushchenko refused to support Tymoshenko in the second round of the presidential election in Ukraine in 2010. And Biden was late with his candidate from the US presidential race in 2024.
Thus, Yushchenko and Biden became part of the accomplices of fateful electoral triumphs of Yanukovych and Trump’s anti -democrat.
However, the greatest similarity between Yanukovych and Trump is their close ties with the richest magnates of their countries. And also in the readiness of both to violate the internal order and external relations of their countries.
In 2010, Yanukovych and Trump used open and clear support for the richest people of their countries-Rinat Akhmetov and Ilona Mask, respectively, as well as a number of other prevailing oligarchs.
In 2010–2013, Yanukovych tried to recreate Ukrainian Plutocratium, which arose in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In contrast, Trump is currently engaged in the establishment of an isolationist oligarchy, which would be completely new to the modern United States (or in some ways will return them by the XIX century).
In 2010–2013, Yanukovych undermined the degeneration of Western integration and liberation of Ukraine from the care of Russia, having implemented a number of political turns. In 2010, Yanukovych initiated a change in the Constitution to his interests and excluded the purpose of Ukraine’s accession to NATO from the Law on the Fundamentals of National Security. At the end of 2013, he refused to sign an already parished association agreement with the European Union.
It is known that this deferral of the beginning of Ukraine’s European integration at the last moment provoked protest on the Kiev Independence Square, which became known as Euromaidan. Yanukovych tried to suppress this disagreement harshly, which he first turned a few protest to a rebellion across the country where millions of people participated.
Euromaidan turned into a bloody confrontation and eventually into the historical revolution of dignity. And she led to Yanukovych’s escape from Kiev, removed him from the post of President of the Parliament of Ukraine, the restoration of the Constitution changed for Yanukovych, and the signing of the Association Agreement with the EU.
To attention: the occupation of Crimea by Russia and thus the war against Ukraine began on February 20, 2014. In other words, Moscow’s military attack on Ukraine by regular Russian troops began before all these events took place and not, as it is believed, in response to them.
What is happening now and can happen in the near future in Trump’s presidency in the United States is different from the trajectory of Ukraine’s development for Yanukovych. Since the United States and Societies of the United States and Ukraine are not similar, these differences should not be surprised.
However, at the abstract level, the 47th President of the United States now attempts to change the direction of US domestic and external affairs as the fourth president of Ukraine in his country tried in 2010-2013.
In view of all, political institutions and international relations of the United States under Trump are undergoing a transition, the depth of which is increasingly compared to what was carried out in Ukraine for Yanukovych.
The question of a million dollars, which is becoming more and more relevant every week, is whether the Trump presidential finale can eventually look like Yanukovych’s presidency.
Of course, the full impeachment of Trump, which would be equivalent to the elimination of Yanukovych from the post of President of Ukraine by the Ukrainian Parliament at the end of February 2014, will have a politically different result. Trump will simply be replaced by Vice president J. D. Vance, who is ideologically close to Trump.
In contrast, Yanukovych was replaced by a spokesman for Parliament Alexander Turchynov, who was in opposition to Yanukovych. Turchynov became the acting President of Ukraine to join the newly elected President Petro Poroshenko, as well as opposition to Yanukovych politician, in June 2014.
Despite these and many other differences, the future trajectory of political development of the United States may resemble Ukrainian in 2010–2014.
Increasingly anti-democratic, disorders, plum- or autocratic, as well as in the end, the unpopular policy of the Trump administration can lead to mass demonstrations reminiscent of the Ukrainian uprising against Yanukovych at the end of 2013.
In the worst case, the confrontation between the Trump administration and the protest movement across the country can develop into violence and lead to collisions that are not inferior to Ukrainian in early 2014 or worse.
The international consequences of such internal escalation in the United States may be even larger than the tragic consequences of Ukraine’s internal destabilization eleven years ago.
Based on the previously prepared plans, the Kremlin quickly took advantage of Kiev’s ability to respond to external intervention in February 2014. In March 2014, Russia annexed the Ukrainian Black Sea Peninsula. And in April 2014, according to the definition of Jacob Hauter, the Russian Federation began a “delegated interstate war” on the mainland of Eastern Ukraine.
As the most powerful military superpower of the world, the United States should not be afraid of foreign invasion, occupation and annexation by another country – until the United States disintegrate into parts.
However, mass protests in the United States, similar to Ukrainian at the end of 2013, and their escalation in early 2014 will have consequences far beyond the United States.
If the current destruction of political institutions, economic relations and external relations by the Trump administration will continue, American civil society may sooner or later respond in the same way as Ukrainian in 2013.
It will also lead to deep changes in the US domestic and foreign policy, as it happened in Ukraine in 2014 is not clear.
American riots, even if they are stormy and violent, will not make the United States as vulnerable as Ukraine in early 2014.
However, undoubtedly, internal destabilization in the United States will have significant international consequences. They may eventually be even more tragic than echoing the Dignity Revolution for Ukraine’s security for eleven years ago.
Dr. Andreas Umland – Analyst Stockholm Center of Eastern European Research (Sceeus) Swedish Institute of International Relations (Ui)
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