Editor’s Note: The following are key excerpts of remarks that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made to journalists in London, ahead of his Jan. 30-31 trip to Ukraine.
QUESTION: I have a Ukraine question, but I will wait and ask it if you will commit to coming back to talk to us on the way to Kyiv.
SECRETARY POMPEO: You should ask it now.
QUESTION: I should ask it now because you can’t do that? (Laughter.) Obviously, corruption is a big part of the administration’s focus in Ukraine.
SECRETARY POMPEO: Yes, sir.
QUESTION: And so not wanting to rehash all of the – everything that has been talked about before. But when you talk to them about corruption, are you including the Bidens and Burisma? Is what we’ve seen from Ambassador Bolton’s manuscript regarding you and your concerns about the legitimacy of the complaints about Ambassador Yovanovitch, is that accurate? But more importantly, is Burisma-Biden something that you want to bring up in person with Zelensky?
QUESTION: Yeah. Will it be in the conversation?
SECRETARY POMPEO: So I’ve been working on this for 20 months as Secretary of State and trying to do my part as the CIA director as well developing the facts and data. When we were talking about corruption, we talked about every element of corruption inside of Ukraine, whether it was corruption that took place inside of commercial entities, private businesses, quasi-private businesses, corruption inside the government, and Ambassador Volker’s work in the southeast, right? He was working to help deliver a good outcome in the Donbas region. He was also focused on trying to help us deliver a proposal where we could create an environment where we would stamp out this longstanding corruption, and we continue to work on those very same programs today.
I don’t want to talk about particular individuals. It’s not worth it. It’s a long list in Ukraine of corrupt individuals and a long history there. And President Zelensky has told us he’s committed to it. The actions he’s taken so far demonstrate that, and I look forward to having a conversation about that with him as well.
QUESTION: And then this could be off the record if you like it be and my colleagues agree, but there’s no ambassador there now. Are you looking at —
SECRETARY POMPEO: We have a charge. We have a charge there now.
QUESTION: Well, I know. Yeah, but there’s someone in line, and I’m just wondering if you don’t think it would be a good time when you’re in Kyiv to announce —
SECRETARY POMPEO: I’m sorry? What’s the question?
QUESTION: If there would be – if it would be a good time while we’re there for you to say hey, the President’s going to —
SECRETARY POMPEO: No, I’m not —
QUESTION: No imminent staffing announcement?
SECRETARY POMPEO: I’m not in the position to make that announcement.
QUESTION: No, no. You not – no, but I mean he could. And then you can say by the way, here we now have ambassador, nominee —
SECRETARY POMPEO: I have confidence in the team that’s there in Kyiv today.
QUESTION: All right.
SECRETARY POMPEO: Thanks, everybody.
The entire transcript can be read here
