When in January 2017 Donald Trump took the oath, in Kiev there was a kind of panic. Most analysts were extremely gloomy about the prospects for Ukrainian-American relations. Many predicted that Ukraine would be the victim of the ambitious foreign policy of the Trump administration. At that time, these gloomy forecasts seemed quite justified. The new US president made no secret of his desire to establish relations with Vladimir Putin, which deteriorated because the Kremlin launched a war in Ukraine, writes the Atlantic Council researcher, the magazine publisher Business Ukraine and Lviv Today, Peter Dickinson.

But now, looking back at the first year of Trump's presidency, it becomes clear that these problems seem to have been swollen. Now there are reasons to believe that the Trump administration, on the contrary, has established itself as one of the most pro-Ukrainian in the whole of modern US history.

The White House showed strong support for Ukraine throughout the whole of 2017. The December decision to provide Kiev with defensive weapons became a Christmas present for Ukraine and a powerful signal for the Kremlin. Moscow has so long and so difficultly kept Washington from supplying weapons to Ukraine, trying to portray this issue in the form of a red line, the crossing of which will inevitably lead to an aggravation of the conflict. Ignoring the "concern" of Moscow, the White House provided weapons to Ukraine, thereby emphasizing its determination. And this gesture of the United States is likely to resonate for a long time in the Kremlin.

The position of Trump's government in respect of Ukraine was also noticeable with regard to the personnel reshuffles that occurred over the past year. The choice of Kurt Volcker as a special representative for Ukraine was, perhaps, the most important. Volcker made a dialogue about the war in Ukraine as frank as possible, often deliberately refusing diplomatic subtleties to emphasize the direct responsibility of the Kremlin for the conflict in the Donbass, and clearly speaking of "100% Russian command and control" in the so-called separatist republics.

Trump also included US National Security Advisor Lieutenant-General Herbert McMaster, an "excellent" military historian who wrote a book on the Russian hybrid war, and US Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who has long been uncompromising about speaking out about Ukraine's support for her confrontation with the Kremlin. Such a well-known figure in the Trump administration, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, also makes it clear that the path to improving relations between the US and Russia depends directly on Ukraine.

But at the same time, numerous pro-Russian members of Trump's camp fell into disgrace. The most famous victim was the former US National Security Adviser, Lieutenant-General Michael Flynn, who resigned in February 2017 because of his contacts with Kremlin officials. And Flynn remains the central figure in the investigation of the alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election. Other peripheral figures from the campaign in 2016 also left, including those suspected of having ties to the Kremlin. That is, the White House spent most of 2017 to create a team that demonstrates unequivocal support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

And no successes in the widely anticipated "thaw" in relations between Washington and Moscow did not happen. Russian politicians, although openly talking about the fact that they "slipped their man" into the White House, but there is back evidence. Bilateral relations deteriorated significantly during the first year of Trump's rule. This included the consistent imposition of additional sanctions against Russia, the recent publication of the new US National Security Strategy that defines Russia as an enemy country that seeks to undermine US security and prosperity. Therefore, Russia's initial joy at the triumph of Trump now looks naive, and the huge number of souvenir figures of Trump that appeared on the shelves of Moscow stores in late 2016 turned into a historical curiosity.

And it is clear, as a day, that the investigation of the collusion between the Trump team and the Kremlin continues. Over the past 12 months, the "Russian footprint" has remained the main topic in the headlines of the media, attracting increasing attention to every comment or political decision of Trump associated with Russia. Skeptics, however, argue that, in the light of such accusations, the US president had no choice but to pursue an obviously harsh policy towards the Kremlin.

Regardless of the fact that Trump would have preferred a geopolitical deal with Putin. Perhaps this is so. But this does not concern Ukraine.

As Bismarck once remarked, politics is the art of a possible. And the current political opportunities in America are clearly favorable to Ukraine's support as part of a broader opposition to Washington's Russian hybrid aggression. In this respect, Kiev has significantly more reasons for optimism in 2018 than Moscow.

Translation of HB.