While the Democrats are seeking to impeach U.S. President Donald Trump for pressuring Ukraine to go after his political rival, ex-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, in Ukraine, local interest in the overseas political drama is slowly fading, overshadowed by domestic issues.
President Volodymyr Zelensky now has the difficult task of convincing his perplexed nation that the plan for Russian-occupied Donbas, which involves elections under Ukrainian law and granting local autonomy, does not mean capitulation to the Kremlin and legitimization the Kremlin-controlled proxies that have held control of the territory for more than five years.
The U.S. House of Representatives has launched an impeachment inquiry into whether Trump betrayed his oath of office and compromised U.S. national security when he asked Zelensky to investigate his potential Democratic rival in 2020 election, Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who had worked for the largest private oil and gas company in Ukraine, during a July 25 phone call.
Prior to talking to Zelensky, Trump ordered the freezing of $391.5 million of military aid to Ukraine, allegedly, to use it as leverage in his demands.
Read more: Trump, Giuliani drag Ukraine into wild conspiracy theories
Trump’s back-channel diplomacy carried out by his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani has come under congressional scrutiny. But the testimonies of witnesses and key figures may also spill many insights into the politics of Ukrainian officials.
The former U.S. envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, will testify to three House committees behind closed doors on Oct. 3. Volker resigned last week after a little over two years in office where he mediated talks between Kyiv and Moscow on the Minsk agreements to stop the war in the Donbas. Volker helped shape U.S. policy on military and economic aid to Ukraine that has been fighting against Russia-backed separatists in the east.
Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch will reportedly speak to the House on Oct. 11.
Yovanovitch was fired from her post in May 2019 amid accusations of “anti-Trump bias.” In one of his interviews with a controversial American journalist John Solomon, former Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko claimed that Yovanovitch had pressed him not to investigate Anti-Corruption Action Center, a Ukrainian civil watchdog.
Solomon might have been part of the disinformation campaign by Trump administration against Yovanovitch that the Democratic House representatives are looking into, according to Reuters.
Both Volker and Yovanovitch were viewed as major friends of Ukraine and supporters of its pro-reform course and sovereignty.
Read more: Trump whistleblower scandal, explained from Ukraine
Furthermore, the House issued a subpoena to Giuliani and sent letters to three of his business associates.
Giuliani has been a central figure in Trump’s efforts to convince Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden’s alleged pressure to wind down a corruption probe into Burisma, the oil and gas giant that employed his son, Hunter.
Giuliani has also pushed Ukraine to investigate unfounded allegations that Ukrainians in 2016 had falsified evidence of payments from the Party of Regions to Trump’s then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort, in order to help Trump’s rival Hillary Clinton. Manafort is in prison now for bank and tax fraud related to his work in Ukraine.
Giuliani used help from two obscure Soviet-born Florida businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, according to a July investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Project. They traveled extensively to meet with Ukrainian prosecutors and officials and set up meetings for Giuliani.
Questions have been raised whether the three carried out any activity subject to registration as foreign agents.
Parnas, Fruman, and a Ukrainian-born American businessman Semyon “Sam” Kislin are expected to provide documents and give depositions to the House by Oct. 14.
Giuliani has not confirmed whether he will comply with the subpoena, while Kislin told Buzzfeed news that he agreed to appear before the House.
The House requested that Giuliani supply all documents and information about his communication with Lutsenko, former President Petro Poroshenko, ex-lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko, oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, oligarch Pavel Fuks, Zelensky’s aides Andriy Yermak and Serhiy Shefir, Kharkiv Mayor Gennadiy Kernes, former Ukrainian diplomat Andriy Telizhenko, among others.
Trump called the impeachment inquiry “a hoax.” In a Twitter post, he said the Democrats are “wasting everyone’s time and energy on BULLSHIT.”
Answering a reporter’s question at a news conference in Washington D.C. on Oct. 2, Trump called Joe Biden and his son Hunter “stone-cold crooked.”
“Why are we the only one that gives the big money to the (sic) Ukraine, and it bothered me from day one how come the U.S. gets ripped,” Trump said. “Frankly, we do want to help Ukraine. I do like the new president because he said there was no pressure exerted on him by the president of the U.S.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials are trying to distance themselves from the scandal that may lead to unseating the U.S. president.
Lutsenko left for London, reportedly, to take a prep course for an English-language proficiency test. Shortly before that, he told the BBC there was no reason to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden by Ukrainian law.
His predecessor, Viktor Shokin, fired for gross inefficiency after he failed to prosecute any corruption cases, is trying to get his old job back through the courts. Shokin’s claims—that he had been fired at the request of Biden who tried to protect Burisma from a corruption probe—are at the heart of Trump and Giuliani’s allegations against Biden. In a lawsuit against Poroshenko and parliament, Shokin asked the court to declare his April 2016 dismissal illegal in light of new evidence.
Poroshenko, now a lawmaker, denied Shokin’s allegations made in an affidavit to lawyers of Ukrainian tycoon Dmytro Firtash, who is fighting extradition to the U.S. from Austria. Shokin had repeated his allegations to Giuliani in their January interview, FoxNews reported.
“Position one, he (Biden) never said it. Position two, even if he did, I never said to anyone, including Shokin, Biden, Trump or my advisers, a word Burisma or Biden’s son,” Poroshenko told Ukrainian investigative show Schemes.
He also told the Associated Press that he had discussed investments with Giuliani back in 2017 but had not talked about any specific companies or U.S. officials.
Zelensky told reporters that his office was unlikely to publish the Ukrainian version of a transcript of his July 25 call with Trump, according to Reuters. It is known that Zelensky spoke Ukrainian and Trump spoke English.
The White House published its memorandum of the call, compiled from notes taken by the officials. The memo showed that Trump asked Zelensky for “a favor.”
