bill taylor despite those conflicting feelings and that strong advice otherwise from his wife, he says yes to the posting, comes out of private life and rejoins essentially the diplomatic corps. once i arrived in kiev, i discovered a weird combination of encouraging, confusing, and ultimately alarming circumstances. i found it confusing and unusual arrangement for making u.s. policy towards ukraine. there appeared to be two channels of u.s. policy-making and implements, one regular and one highly irregular. as the chief of mission at the embassy, i had authority over the formal diplomatic processes, including the bulk of the u.s. effort to support ukraine against russian invasion and to help it defeat corruption. this regular channel of u.s. policy-making has consistently had strong bipartisan support both in congress and in all administrations since ukraine's independence from russia in 1991. at the same time, however, there was an irregular, informal channel of u.s. policy-making with respect to ukraine, one