Ambassador Bill Taylor gained fame for a text message in which he challenged President Donald Trump’s decision to withhold aid to Ukraine until it announced an investigation into Hunter Biden. “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Taylor wrote to Ambassador Gordon Sondland, on September 9th. The text became a key piece of evidence in the impeachment of Trump on charges of abusing power for political gain. Taylor testified on the first day of the House impeachment hearings that he had adamantly opposed the decision to withhold aid. “I could not and would not defend such a policy,” Taylor said.
Among his colleagues, Taylor is also famed for a small notebook he carries with him, in which he takes copious notes on meetings and conversations. The notebook chronicled how Ukraine policy played out during the suspension of U.S. military aid after President Trump’s call to President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25th.
Taylor has served the United States—as a soldier, in senior positions at the Pentagon and the State Department, and finally as an Ambassador—for a half century. He graduated in the top one per cent of his class at West Point and served in Vietnam, where he was awarded a Bronze Star and an Air Medal with a “V” device, for valor. After the war, he received a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School.
He spent most of his life dealing with conflict or post-conflict environments. In the course of his career, he coördinated U.S. aid efforts to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republic, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The George W. Bush Administration deployed him to Jerusalem as the U.S. special representative to the Quartet peace process and to Kyiv as the U.S. Ambassador from 2006 to 2009. President Obama appointed him to coördinate aid to Middle Eastern countries in transition after the Arab Spring. In June of last year, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo personally asked Taylor to return as acting Ambassador after Marie Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled. Taylor did so despite having serious doubts and a warning from his wife not to take the assignment.
For years, Taylor has been my guide on Ukraine and many issues in the Middle East and Afghanistan. We sat down on Friday to discuss the impeachment drama, Russia, the Ukraine crisis, U.S. foreign policy, and the dangers that the world will return to the law of the jungle. The text has been edited for length and clarity.
Today, Lieutenant Colonel Alex Vindman, another key witness in the impeachment hearings, was dismissed from the National Security Council and escorted off the grounds of the White House. His lawyer, David Pressman, said in a blunt statement, “There is no question in the mind of any American why this man’s job is over, why this country now has one less soldier serving it at the White House. L.T.C. Vindman was asked to leave for telling the truth.” His twin brother, Yevgeny, who also worked at the White House lawyer, was fired, too. Are you concerned about the dangers of retribution, whether it’s overt or implicit, against the career or lives of the seventeen witnesses who testified at the impeachment hearings?
I’ve not experienced any retaliation.
The House hearing and the Senate trial are now over. What was it like being in the middle of the impeachment of President Trump, as one of the first witnesses in the hearings?
It felt like a duty that needed to be accomplished. It was not as emotional as you might have thought, in that I was there not to make a judgment on the President; I was there to tell people what I knew, what I had heard, what people have told me, what they had heard from the President. I’ve talked to some of my colleagues who testified or gave depositions, and they told me it was the most stressful thing they’ve ever been through. But I felt comfortable and pretty relaxed. It was a little amusing, frankly, to walk into that House hearing room and see this big bank of cameras and photographers. I’ve never experienced that.
You returned to Ukraine in June at the request of—and as a favor to—the Trump Administration. What were your emotions when you discovered what was happening in U.S. policy about Ukraine? How did it dawn on you?
Ukraine is an important place for our security. If Ukraine succeeds, we succeed. If Ukraine fails, then it’s bad for us. So I was glad to be back to be able to make some kind of contribution. The Embassy was shaken with the departure of Ambassador Masha Yovanovitch. No one really understood why she was pulled out so quickly. And so the Embassy was discombobulated, disrupted, uncertain.
I got there with assurances from Secretary Pompeo that the policy that I was familiar with, of strong support for Ukraine, would continue. I told him that I couldn’t execute a policy that didn’t have strong support for Ukraine. When I got out there, it became clear to me gradually that there was another channel that was also forming, maybe even executing some of U.S.-Ukraine policy. Ambassador Gordon Sondland introduced me into that channel on occasion. Some of these texts are now famous, sad to say. But every now and then, I would get a glimpse into that, and on phone calls as well.
A lot of that conversation had the goal of good U.S.-Ukraine relations and a good relationship between the new President Zelensky and President Trump, which I agreed with. I’ve met President Zelensky a couple of times, found him to be very competent, very promising, very charming. I thought that a meeting would be a good thing and would help U.S. support for Ukraine to consolidate and go forward. So then, when they were talking on the phone, there were references to certain things that President Zelensky or his team had to do in order to get that phone call. These were veiled and vague, but it was clear that people in that other policy channel knew what they were referring to. Gradually, I began to realize that there were some things that I was not part of but that were real, and there were steps to be taken before a phone call would take place.
In your testimony, you described how the National Security Council was spending “a lot of energy” on the question of the U.S. purchasing Greenland. Were you concerned that Ukraine might be betrayed, forgotten, or abandoned as that discussion went on in Washington?
No, I wasn’t. That was more amusing than concerning. The joke at the time in Ukraine was “We should sell Crimea to the United States, and then they can give it back to us.” I was confident that, for good and bad reasons, Ukraine was getting a lot of attention. So the Greenland thing was not something I worried about.
What might have happened if Washington had withheld military aid any longer? How dependent is Ukraine on the United States?
Ukraine counts on the United States for a range of things, most importantly in Ukraine’s confrontation with the Russians. Ukraine is trying to defend itself, and therefore us, against Russian attack. So when they heard that military support, security assistance was held up, they couldn’t understand it. They were clearly worried. They made it clear to me in phone calls and questions about what’s going on. And, of course, I couldn’t tell them. I didn’t know why. Because I thought, at the time, it was just a mistake.
What this military assistance is trying to do, or is helping them do, is to deter further attacks. There’s no thought that the Ukrainians are going to militarily push the Russians out. The concern is to keep the Russians from taking more, from invading further. It’s that military assistance that helps them deter Russians but also helps them negotiate a way to get the Russians out of Donbass.
In your deposition, behind closed doors, you described the existential stakes in Ukraine, for that country as well as Europe and the United States. You said, “If Ukraine succeeds in breaking free of Russian influence, it is possible for Europe to be whole, free, democratic, and at peace. In contrast, if Russia dominates Ukraine, Russia will again become an empire oppressing its people and threatening its neighbors and the rest of the world.”
If Russia controls Ukraine—if Ukraine is reabsorbed—Russia will become an empire. And that would prohibit it from ever evolving into a democracy. By the same token, if Ukraine becomes independent, joins Europe, Europe is stronger. And it is a demonstration that countries can be democratic and can be free of domination from larger powers that they live next to and that they can be a part of an economic community and a security community that they choose. That’s what’s still at stake for Ukraine.
Ukraine is almost the size of Texas. It shares borders with seven countries, including a twelve-hundred-mile border with Russia. But Kyiv is almost five thousand miles from Washington. Why should the average American care about Ukraine?
The average American should care about Ukraine because the Russians are attacking us. Ukraine is on the front line. Had Ukraine been able to defend itself—with our help or other help—from those attacks from Russia on their elections in 2014, that would have been the first battle. The Russians then attacked militarily, using cyber weapons, energy weapons, information warfare. The Russians attacked first in Ukraine, and then they attacked in Europe, and then they attacked us, in 2016. So I strongly believe that we should care about Ukraine’s success in order to stop Russian attacks.
Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election, Ukraine’s election in 2014, and Britain’s Brexit referendum, in 2016. What are your fears about Russian intervention in the election this year?
My fears are the same as the U.S. government. The U.S. government is concerned about any interference. But Russia in particular, because they’ve demonstrated that they can and are willing to and have done it. Now it is also true that we can push back. The Ukrainians have learned to push back. In 2014, the Russians did succeed in getting into the Central Election Commission and nearly succeeded in changing the outcome. I was there. The Ukrainians, at the last minute, within an hour of reporting this, were able to adjust, fix, reject the Russian attempt to meddle with it, to change those results. We now have a way to push back on election interference, on hacking, on cyberattacks. And we are doing that.
When you say “push back,” what does that mean? And are we doing enough?
We can identify bad actors in Russia, and we have ways to let them know that we know who they are and, if they persist, it will be bad for them. It is possible to build defenses against this kind of interference. We’ve come a long way since 2014, 2016. We, of course, should do more.
So what do you think Vladimir Putin thought as the drama of impeachment and the Ukraine crisis played out in the United States?
Mr. Putin and his security services are adept at exacerbating, taking advantage of cleavages in the United States, in Ukraine, and in Europe. He hones this skill in Ukraine. There are plenty of cleavages in Ukraine—east, west, Russian, Ukrainian. These cleavages have been dramatically reduced by his invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine is much more unified now. But he does the same thing in Europe. We’ve seen the divisions between Hungary and the rest of Europe, Hungary and the rest of NATO. And he’s exacerbated fissures, divisions, cleavages in our society. We’ve seen the interfering in the 2016 elections. He can exacerbate racial fears, regional fears, fears of social media. This is what he does.
Ukraine seems like a microcosm of the challenges the West faces from Russia under Vladimir Putin. How much is the modern Western experience—the democracies built, often at great cost in human life, in the past three centuries—at threat from Russia today? In what ways?
Ukraine is on the front line of how we govern ourselves. Ukraine has demonstrated a commitment to democracy. They have had six Presidents just since 1992. Last year, the incumbent President, President Petro Poroshenko, ran against this political neophyte, Volodymyr Zelensky, who had only announced that he was a politician four months before the election. He put together a party. He tried to win support the old-fashioned way. Ukrainians knew him, but as a comedian with a very successful entertainment business. He used democratic processes to be elected. That’s not how President Putin has been elected and stays in power. Ukraine’s on the dividing line between democracies in Europe and the Russians.
In your Times Op-Ed, you mentioned the dangers of “a return to the jungle,” if Russia prevails. What does that mean?
We have benefitted—the United States and the West more broadly—from rules that regulate, guide, even enforce, relations among nations. These rules are legion. They are alliances. They are organizations. They also have principles of behavior, and one in particular: that nations are sovereign. Nations, no matter how big they are, should be able to govern themselves. We also believe that borders are inviolable, that you can't change by force.
There is another principle of peaceful resolution of disputes. This order has insured that those disputes, in Europe in particular, or among great powers, haven’t resorted to war for seventy years, since the end of World War Two—until 2014. In 2014, the Russians violated all that. The Russians invaded their neighbor. They annexed part of Ukraine, Crimea. They violated the sovereignty of Ukraine. They violated the borders of Ukraine. And they didn’t resolve disputes peacefully. That is a road back to the jungle. Jungle rules are that the strongest dominates the weaker, so big countries dominate small countries. And that’s the way it was, for centuries, before 1945.
The front line—or the so-called “line of contact”—between the militia forces led by the Russians and the rest of Ukraine is two hundred and eighty miles long. Fourteen thousand Ukrainian troops and civilians have died since 2014. What does the front line look like?
The front line looks like World War One trenches. I was at one of these points where the two sides are trying to pull back. Zelensky has taken some risks pulling back in order to facilitate peace. Both sides generally agree that they need to pull back, but neither side wanted to go first because they were worried that the other side would take advantage and take back some territory, which had happened earlier.
The line now is waist-high trenches. The trenches lead to bunkers, where the soldiers eat, and other bunkers, where the soldiers sleep. They are now constructing new trenches a kilometer back because they are trying to pull back from this line. It looks like World War One.
How confident are you that President Zelensky, who was a political neophyte, can deal with the rampant corruption in his country? In the Transparency International Index on corruption, Ukraine ranks one hundred and twenty sixth out of a hundred and eighty countries. On a scale of a hundred, it scored only three. What has Zelensky accomplished and what are the prospects of tangible progress?
One of the reasons that Zelensky was so popular is that he ran on cracking down, defeating high-level corruption. He has made more tangible progress than his predecessors. There are two examples. He got into office in May, then there was a parliamentary election in July, where his Servant of the People Party won sixty per cent of the seats. Right away, he made a significant change in the anti-corruption effort by eliminating immunity for parliamentarians. Up until that time, members of parliament in Ukraine were guaranteed immunity from prosecution on virtually anything. The oligarchs, these corrupt officials, bought their way into parliament. They bought elections so they could pursue their corrupt practices without worry of being prosecuted.
Many previous Presidents have said they’d get rid of prosecutorial immunity, and none did, because you had to get parliament to change the constitution, which requires three hundred votes, a majority, which was really hard to get. He got the constitution changed.
So to give President Poroshenko, Zelensky’s predecessor, credit where it’s due, several judicial bodies and investigatory bodies were set up specifically to go after corruption. Those bodies were designed pretty well but in most cases were not functioning. One of those was the high anti-corruption court that was established to deal with major cases of corruption. The problem was they didn’t have a courthouse, so they hadn’t met. Within about three weeks of the new cabinet being put in place, they found a very appropriate building for the court. They opened it up in early September.
Do you regret going back to Kyiv?
I don’t. I’d do it again.
What impact has it had on your life?
It has given me the ability to highlight an issue that I feel strongly about, which is the importance of Ukraine’s security to our security. The United States, I am convinced, is more secure if Ukraine is more secure. And if Ukraine can help reëstablish those rules we were just talking about, if it can reëstablish its sovereignty over its borders, which have been agreed internationally, we are stronger, in that we are also better off if we are pushing back on the Russian attack. So it’s given me the ability to make that case.
You returned to the United States on January 2nd, after going out at the personal request of Secretary Pompeo? Have you heard from anyone in the Administration, Secretary Pompeo especially, since you returned?
When I got back, I had one week, until the 10th of January, to go around Washington and various offices, mainly to push forward on policies that I was working on before, in Ukraine, but also to check out and debrief. And at virtually all of those briefings, people thanked me. I asked for and got a meeting with Ulrich Brechbuhl, who is Secretary Pompeo’s counselor. He thanked me for what I had done. I asked if I should see the Secretary. There was no response. But I did see the new Deputy Secretary of State, Steve Biegun, who was in town. Steve thanked me for the work I’ve done. So I feel like I got that appreciation.
