Using a translator, President Volodymyr Zelensky seemed to dodge a question on whether he or his office were concerned about the contents of his July 25 call with U.S. President Donald Trump during an all-day press conferences in Kyiv on Oct. 10.
“Were you concerned about the contents of that phone call? The whistleblower memo says that it was referred to as crazy, as frightening. Did you or anyone in your administration concerned about the contents?” CBS News journalist asked Zelensky at the press conference.
Zelensky, who usually understands questions by Western journalists in English and answers in the same language, asked a translator to interpret the question. But the translator, instead, misinterpreted what the journalist asked.
“Does what was released in the transcript of the telephone conversation correspond to the actual content of the telephone conversation? Was it really like this?” the translator said.
“What was released? Yes, that was the call,” Zelensky answered, but not the journalist’s, but the interpreter’s question.
The journalist then wanted to follow up on the question, but Zelensky and his press secretary cut him short to give other journalists an opportunity to ask their questions.
“But it was called crazy…” CBS journalist said.
“I’m so sorry,” Zelensky said.
The July 25 Zelensky-Trump call is central to the whistleblower scandal that has led the U.S. House of Representatives to open an impeachment inquiry into Trump.
In the memorandum of the call released on Sept. 25, Trump openly asks Zelensky to investigate former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, his most likely competitor in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. He does this after discussing the U.S. military aid in Ukraine.
The New York Times have reported that Trump suspended the $250 million defense aid to Ukraine before the July 25 call, a decision that was reached in early July, citing a former American official.
Answering the journalists’ questions, Zelensky confirmed that the aid was blocked before the call but said he didn’t know about it while speaking to Trump on July 25. He said he learned about it from Defense Minister Andriy Zahorodniuk before Zelensky’s meeting with the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence in Warsaw on Sept. 1.
“This information I’ve got from our minister. This information I’ve got before September, before the meeting in Warsaw with Vice President Mr. (Mike) Pence. I think so,” Zelensky said.
Trump’s administration has unblocked the $250 million defense aid for Ukraine on Sept. 11, and lifted the hold on an additional $141.5 million prepared for Ukraine by the State Department. Zelensky said that the unblocking “was in no way connected to Burisma,” a company connected to Trump’s allegations against Biden.
Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani alleged that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general in order to hamper an investigation into Burisma Holdings, the oil and gas company where his son Hunter served on Burisma’s board of directors from 2014 to 2019.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka said on Oct. 4 that his office would review investigations into Burisma led by his predecessors. At the press conference, Zelensky said that his office doesn’t want to “bury” any investigations and is open to creating “an international investigatory committee on the Biden case.”
At the same time, Zelensky repeatedly refused to evaluate Trump’s conduct during the July 25 call, saying that he doesn’t want to interfere in the U.S. presidential elections.
“I don’t have to evaluate the actions of other presidents that are regulated by the laws of another country. I did not feel pressure and influence,” Zelensky said
