There’s been a lot of talk about President Trump having an antipathy for Ukraine going back to the 2016 election when his chairman Paul Manafort was exposed as a pro-Putin crook and Trump felt compelled to ask for his resignation. In that case, a black ledger was discovered detailing the payments the ousted Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych had improperly made to various people and contractors. Manafort featured prominently in its pages. Yanukovych fled to Russia. Manafort took over Trump’s campaign.

But I think it creates an incomplete picture to focus on Trump’s sour grapes. His dislike of Ukraine isn’t simply a matter of longstanding grievance. To understand what I mean, we can begin on page 253 of deputy assistant secretary of state George Kent’s deposition before the House Intelligence Committee.

At that point, Kent is discussing the influence of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Victor Orbán on President Trump’s opinion of Ukraine and its new president Volodymyr Zelensky. I strongly suggest you read this testimony for yourself, but if you are in a rush you can read this October 21, 2019 article in the Washington Post that was written prior to the deposition being made available to the public. It turned out to be an accurate characterization of Kent’s testimony.

The basic point Kent wanted to make is that Putin and Orbán talked to Trump after Zelensky was elected and took the opportunity to badmouth him.

Trump’s conversations with Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and others reinforced his perception of Ukraine as a hopelessly corrupt country…

…their disparaging depictions of Ukraine reinforced Trump’s perceptions of the country and fed a dysfunctional dynamic in which White House officials struggled to persuade Trump to support the fledgling government in Kyiv instead of exploiting it for political purposes, officials said.

The role played by Putin and Orban, a hard-right leader who has often allied himself with the Kremlin’s positions, was described in closed-door testimony last week by George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state, before House impeachment investigators, U.S. officials said.

Kent cited the influence of those leaders as a factor that helped sour Trump on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the months leading up to their July 25 phone call — a conversation that triggered an extraordinary whistleblower complaint as well as a House impeachment inquiry.

My interest in bringing this up stems from the root problem that has caused Trump’s impeachment. It isn’t just the fact that Trump doesn’t “give a shit” about Ukraine and only cares about investigating Joe and Hunter Biden, as E.U. ambassador Gordon Sondland told State Department official David Holmes in Kyiv back in July. It isn’t merely that he blames Ukraine for costing him the services of Paul Manafort.

The core problem is that Trump listens to Vladimir Putin and serves his interests. He has more affinity for Hungary’s anti-Western and undemocratic Victor Orbán than he does for the leaders in Germany, France or the United Kingdom.

The dispute about Ukraine that unfolded in the national security community during 2019 was really a result of Trump not sharing any of their assumptions about what is in the country’s interests. They unanimously wanted to show support for incoming Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. They wanted to send a high-level delegation to his inauguration. They wanted to give him an official White House visit. They wanted to deliver military and State Department aid. Trump wanted none of these things. Trump prevented all of these things from happening.

This created a situation where everyone from National Security Adviser John Bolton down to low-level embassy officials in Kyiv were trying to figure out how to counter the influence of Putin and Orbán and change the president’s mind. Some, like ambassadors Kurt Volker and Gordon Sondland, concluded that the only way to do this was to convince Zelensky to give in to the president’s demand for politicized investigations. Others resisted this step and sought more traditional ways of improving Trump’s opinion of Zelensky and Ukraine.

In the context of that choice, we will of course look at the illegal and improper nature of what Trump was requesting, but it wasn’t Ukraine’s reticence to cave to his demands that irked Trump. He never saw Ukraine as an ally in the first place. He’s always expressed the opinion that Russia was somewhat justified in seizing Crimea and occupying the Donbass region. He’s consistently questioned whether sanctions should be maintained against Russia for these intrusions. He openly trashes both NATO and the European Union, both of which are institutions that Ukraine would like to join.

He’s also shown an unnatural concern that American policies might displease Putin, starting all the way back in March 2017 when he resisted expelling Russians and seizing Russian property in retaliation for their election interference and then seethed when he realized that he’d taken a harder position than our European allies.

To be clear, President Trump can absolutely declare that Russia is our ally and Ukraine is our enemy. But he has never had the courage to do that. It would cause mass resignations and an open revolt from congressional Republicans. So, reluctantly, he has tolerated our alliance with Ukraine, even agreeing to give them lethal defensive aid that President Obama had denied them. But cowardice isn’t a policy.

In his typical style, he did everything he could to signal to Putin that he doesn’t support Ukraine or their new president, but he also sought to get something out of the assistance he felt compelled to provide. But that’s almost an afterthought in the greater context of Trump’s relationship with Putin.

Trump may like the bullshit Putin feeds him because it soothes his ego. If Ukraine tried to get Clinton elected, then it’s not such a big deal that he sought and received Russia’s help in 2016. If Ukraine is uniquely corrupt, then denying them aid can be seen as righteous. But this is all just cover to do what Putin wants Trump to do.

So, the president’s supporters might somewhat justly complain that the establishment or “Deep State” is out to get Trump, but this is mainly because they’re trying to implement official U.S. policy and Trump is thwarting them. He won’t actually change the policy even though he can absolutely do that if he wants to. Instead, he just undermines his own policy at every turn.

As much of a pain in the ass as this was for the people in charge of implementing U.S. policy in Ukraine, it didn’t become actionable until Trump sought to enlist Ukraine in his effort to smear a likely 2020 Democratic opponent. The Biden witch hunt may be an impeachable offense, but it’s actually just the last straw. Trump’s behavior towards Putin has been impeachable since before he was elected.