Although there is no way to link deaths directly to the lack of aid, military officials and other Ukrainians say they felt temporarily abandoned by their foremost ally: Washington.
When President Trump froze hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to Ukraine in July, Oleksandr Markiv was in a trench defending his country’s eastern front line against Russia-backed separatist militias.
“U.S. aid to Ukraine has been very complex and fluid, alternating between more economic aid in the 1990s to more civil society support after 2004 to more military assistance after 2014,” said Rory Finnin, a professor of Ukrainian studies at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.
The West, including the U.S., stepped in to provide billions of dollars in security assistance that included armored Hummer SUVs, military ambulances and medical supplies, radar and communications equipment, night-vision goggles and drones. “If the United States will drag us into their domestic affairs instead of supporting us … then you start to think on who could you rely?” said Hanna Hopko, a former member of Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada, where she was the leader of its committee on foreign affairs. Hopko is now the co-founder of a new nongovernmental organization lobbying for democratic reforms in Ukraine.
“All the soldiers were hiding in the trenches, holes and dugouts, but Sasha decided to climb on top of his dugout to visually spot where the fire was coming from to adjust our return fire,” he said, using the diminutive name for Oleksandr. Markiv was struck when their position took a direct hit from a mortar round. He died three hours later during an operation to remove the shrapnel from his head in a military hospital in Svitlodarsk.
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