Roman Popadiuk, 1st US ambassador to Ukraine: 'I think we handled it wrong from the get-go'

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That’s how Popadiuk, born in Austria to displaced Ukrainians who then immigrated to America, in 1992 became the first US ambassador to Ukraine following the breakup of the Soviet Union. The experience placed him on the ground floor of relations between the two nations over three decades preceding today’s allied efforts to help Ukraine fend off Russian aggression.

And he offers a blunt verdict on the US government’s performance during that time: “I think we handled it wrong from the get-go.”

That’s not a partisan statement. Popadiuk spent his career not as a political appointee but as a foreign service officer. He has a quintessentially American story.

His family, assisted by a Catholic charity, ended up in Brooklyn after a brief stint on an Iowa farm. In 1959, when Popadiuk was 9 years old, an immigration official handed him a citizenship certificate for his adopted country just before Thanksgiving.

“He said, ‘Do you like turkey?’ ” Popadiuk recalls with a chuckle. ” ‘You’re an American.’ “

A Ph.D. in international affairs and a foreign service exam later, he wound up detailed to a nonpolitical job in President Ronald Reagan’s White House. Press secretary Larry Speakes ended up making Popadiuk his deputy for international affairs, a job he held into the next administration until Bush sent him to Kyiv.

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the US lavished diplomatic attention on Russia to encourage economic modernization and security cooperation from its former Cold War adversary. Former Soviet republics such as Ukraine, Popadiuk says, didn’t get nearly enough

As ambassador, he initiated discussions over what became known as the Budapest Memorandum. Under its terms, Ukraine surrendered a large nuclear arsenal within its borders in return for security assurances from Russia, the US and Britain.

Ukraine’s concession was less than met the eye, since Russia had retained the nuclear launch codes for those weapons. But Popadiuk says the fledgling government in Kyiv should have…

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Source : cnn