Manafort’s nearly a decade of public relations work in Ukraine came to a halt in 2014, when a revolution against his and Putin’s man in the country, Yanukovych, led to Yanukovych and his allies fleeing to Russia to seek Kremlin protection.136 Putin’s subsequent illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula was part of his pushback to this rebellion; his actions led to the very sanctions on Russia that Trump and Manafort would thereafter oppose throughout the 2016 primary and general election seasons.
