Trump's first big test with Putin harkens back to one of the most controversial elements of his campaign

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said earlier this week that Trump was "being kept aware" of the developments in Ukraine and that t

That Trump has demurred from commenting on the Ukraine violence — even as he risked igniting diplomatic crises with Mexico and Australia last weekend over a border wall and a refugee agreement — likely reflects Trump's desire to nurture his warming relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But that relationship will be tested as the violence escalates and calls grow from within his own party to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons to fend off Russian aggression.

A shift in tone

In a statement from Belarus on Thursday, Putin seemed to appeal directly to Trump when he said that Ukraine was only accusing Russia of reigniting violence because Kiev supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election and now needed to "present itself as a victim of aggression" to gain sympathy from Trump.

In the early stages of his presidential campaign, Trump appeared sympathetic to Kiev's battle against separatists armed and funded by Moscow. He even traveled to Ukraine in September 2015 to speak at the Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting

But his tone on Ukraine and Crimea appeared to shift after he hired Paul Manafort to manage his campaign in April 2016, as Politico's Michael Crowley has reported.

At the end of July, for instance, Trump told ABC that "the people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were. And you have to look at that, also."

Days earlier, he had told reporters that he "would be looking at" the possibility of lifting sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea.

One of the representatives, JD Gordon, has denied intervening in the process.

"I understood that, yes, Ukraine is a fledgling democracy. There have been setbacks, there's corruption. But they're waving their flag to be free," Denman said. "I felt that if Ukraine needed resources then America should be willing to give them."

Denman's original amendment, which was corroborated by a separate subcommittee member who spoke to Business Insider, called for "

The amendment seemed consistent with language used by a group of Republican senators as early as 2014, when many in the GOP were actively pressuring the Obama administration to sendto the Ukrainian army to fend off Russian aggression. A bipartisan coalition in Congress ramped up that pressure in June 2015, and again 18 months later.

Denman said she read her amendment aloud at the subcommittee meeting, at which point "two men sitting over to the side of the room — I had no idea who they were, but later found out they were Trump representatives — jumped up and tore over to get behind the three co-chairmen."

"There was a lot of muted discussion among them," Denman recalled, "and then the men from the campaign approached me and asked if they could see my plank. So I gave them my copy. They read it, went back up to the chairmen, and the amendment was tabled."

Gordon, one of the representatives, then left the room to make a phone call, Denman said. Equal parts confused and angry over her proposal being scuttled, Denman said she confronted Gordon about who he was calling.

"I'm calling New York," Gordon

"I work for Mr. Trump and I have to clear it," she recalled him saying, apparently in reference to the amendment.

This change came from Trump staffers

Theplatform ultimately passed with a provision to "provide appropriate assistance" to the Ukrainian army rather than provide it with "lethal defense weapons."

Gordon, in an email, said Denman "sought to significantly elevate the Ukraine-Russia issue beyond the already strong position of RNC and Trump campaign," so the language had to be watered down.

"It was controversial if you hold Donald Trump's express views on Russia, but it wasn't controversial with regard to GOP orthodoxy on the issue," the committee member said."This change definitely came from Trump staffers — not from RNC staffers."

Gordon, one of the staffers, denied that.

"To be clear, all the decisions made in the national security subcommittee of GOP platform week were all made by people in that Cleveland Convention Center room," Gordon said in an email. "Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Manafort were involved in those sort of details, as they've made clear."

Manafort — who served as a top adviser to a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine from 2004 to 2012 and helped the Russia-friendly strongman Viktor Yanukovych win the Ukrainian presidency in 2010 — has deniedhaving anything to do with the platform change.

But a

The dossier also claims Manafort was receiving "kickback payments" from Yanukovych's associates in Ukraine, where Manafort "had been commercially active ... right up to the time (in March 2016) when he joined campaign team."

Secret ledgers uncovered by an anticorruption center in Kiev and obtained by The New York Times last year revealed that Yanukovych's political party, the pro-Russia Party of Regions, earmarked $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments to Manafort — who claimed he never collected the money — for his work from 2007 to 2012.

Yanukovych informed Putin of the payments, the dossier states, on August 15, 2016, after the western media began digging into Manafort's ties to Ukraine. Putin became "worried" that Yanukovych had sufficiently "covered the traces" of Manafort's role as a liaison between the Trump campaign and Russia.

For Putin, the dossier states, the money trail "remained a point of potential political vulnerability and embarrassment."

Manafort resigned four days later, on August 19.

Trump's first big test with Putin harkens back to one of the most controversial elements of his campaign

A shift in tone

This change came from Trump staffers

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