In 2008, I took part in drafting the first Charter on Strategic Partnership between Ukraine and the US. At the time, it was difficult to imagine that less than two decades later I would be seriously asking whether Ukraine is in danger of losing its principal strategic partner – and at the most critical moment in our country’s modern history. To be sure, warning signs appeared long before Russia’s full-scale invasion. One of them was the Obama administration’s weak response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014. Barack Obama proceeded from the assumption that Ukraine will always be “vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Joe Biden made important adjustments to the Democratic Party’s approach, arguing that supporting Ukraine was in the US’ “vital national interest.” Ukraine managed to withstand the initial stages of Russia’s full-scale invasion largely thanks to the assistance provided by the anti-Putin coalition created and led by the US. (Biden’s inconsistency and his obvious miscalculations are a subject for a separate discussion.) Serious doubts about the future of our strategic partnership emerged with Donald Trump’s second presidential term, although the roots of his skeptical – and at times openly negative – attitude toward Ukraine can be traced back to his first administration. That period was marked by his unsuccessful attempts to obtain compromising information about Joe Biden and by the political trauma of his first impeachment.