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A decade later, the aborted exercise is arousing new interest: American diplomatic cables and Ukrainian prosecutors say the anti-US, anti-NATO protests that threatened these Marines were largely partisan plants, organized by politicians who consulted with Paul Manafort, now the prominent campaign aide to presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Manafort’s long-standing, lucrative relationship with the now-banned Ukrainian Party of Regions and its leader, deposed president Viktor Yanukovych, has been the subject of intense media scrutiny since his elevation as Trump’s campaign manager this past spring. But the Yanukovych camp’s key role in the Feodosia protests raises serious questions about whether a key aide to a would-be American president was aware that his foreign clients’ alleged actions may have endangered US policy goals – and US troops.
“Ukraine wanted to come into NATO. We were trying to build our relations,” Doman says. “It was a total surprise we would get that type of [reception].”
A memo leaked to the Times of London on Wednesday suggests Ukrainian prosecutors Manafort actively helped to foment unrest in the incident, one of a long line of provocations they say may have contributed to Eastern Ukraine’s secession from the country and Russia’s interference in the region, known as Crimea. The reason for the protests, prosecutors say, was to give Manafort’s clients a domestic political advantage. If that was the aim, they succeeded spectacularly.
