This story originally appeared in The New York Times Oct. 22, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/22/us/politics/william-taylor-ukraine-testimony.html?te=1&nl=impeachment-briefing&emc=edit_ib_20191022?campaign_id=140&instance_id=13300&segment_id=18145&user_id=038349a638c905fe535ab4f1b9a1f29d®i_id=43777086
Read the Ukraine Envoy’s
Statement to Impeachment Inquiry
OCT. 22, 2019
William B. Taylor Jr., the
United States’ top diplomat in Ukraine, delivered testimony to
impeachment investigators on Tuesday that described an effort by President Trump to withhold aid for Ukraine until the country’s leader agreed to investigate Mr. Trump’s political rivals.
Opening Statement of Ambassador William B. Taylor – October 22, 2019
Mr.
Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to appear today to provide my
perspective on the events that are the subject of the Committees’
inquiry. My sole purpose is to provide the Committees with my views
about the strategic importance of Ukraine to the United States as well
as additional information about the incidents in question.
I have
dedicated my life to serving U.S. interests at home and abroad in both
military and civilian roles. My background and experience are
nonpartisan and I have been honored to serve under every administration,
Republican and Democratic, since 1985.
For 50 years, I have
served the country, starting as a cadet at West Point, then as an
infantry officer for six years, including with the 101st
Airborne Division in Vietnam; then at the Department of Energy; then as a
member of a Senate staff; then at NATO; then with the State Department
here and abroad — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jerusalem, and Ukraine; and more
recently, as Executive Vice President of the nonpartisan United States
Institute of Peace.
While I have served in many places and in
different capacities, I have a particular interest in and respect for
the importance of our country’s relationship with Ukraine. Our national
security demands that this relationship remain strong, However, in
August and September of this year, I became increasingly concerned that
our relationship with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined by an
irregular, informal channel of U.S. policy-making and by the withholding
of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons. I hope my
remarks today will help the Committees understand why I believed that to
be the case.
At the outset, I would like to convey several key
points. First, Ukraine is a strategic partner of the United States,
important for the security of our country as well as Europe. Second,
Ukraine is, right at this moment — while we sit in this room — and for
the last five years, under armed attack from Russia. Third, the security
assistance we provide is crucial to Ukraine’s defense against Russian
aggression, and, more importantly, sends a signal to Ukrainians — and
Russians — that we are Ukraine’s reliable strategic partner. And
finally, as the Committees are now aware, I said on September 9 in a
message to Ambassador Gordon Sondland that withholding security
assistance in exchange for help with a domestic political campaign in
the United States would be “crazy.” I believed that then, and I still
believe that.
1
Let me now provide the Committees a chronology of the events that led to my concern.
On
May 28 of this year, I met with Secretary Mike Pompeo who asked me to
return to Kyiv to lead our embassy in Ukraine. It was — and is — a
critical time in U.S.-Ukraine relations: Volodymyr Zelenskyy had just
been elected president and Ukraine remained at war with Russia. As the
summer approached, a new Ukrainian government would be seated,
parliamentary elections were imminent, and the Ukrainian political
trajectory would be set for the next several years.
I had served
as Ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009, having been nominated by
George W. Bush, and, in the intervening 10 years, I have stayed engaged
with Ukraine, visiting frequently since 2013 as a board member of a
small Ukrainian non-governmental organization supporting good governance
and reform. Across the responsibilities I have had in public service,
Ukraine is special for me, and Secretary Pompeo’s offer to return as
Chief of Mission was compelling. I am convinced of the profound
importance of Ukraine to the security of the United States and Europe
for two related reasons:
First, if Ukraine succeeds in breaking
free of Russian influence, it is possible for Europe to be whole, free,
democratic, and at peace. In contrast, if Russia dominates Ukraine,
Russia will again become an empire, oppressing its people, and
threatening its neighbors and the rest of the world.
Second, with
the annexation of the Crimea in 2014 and the continued aggression in
Donbas, Russia violated countless treaties, ignored all commitments, and
dismissed all the principles that have kept the peace and contributed
to prosperity in Europe since World War II. To restore Ukraine’s
independence, Russia must leave Ukraine. This has been and should
continue to be a bipartisan U.S. foreign policy goal.
When I was
serving outside of government during the Obama adıninistration and after
the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, I joined two other former
ambassadors to Ukraine in urging Obama administration officials at the
State Department, Defense Department, and other agencies to provide
lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine in order to deter further Russian
aggression. I also supported much stronger sanctions against Russia.
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All
to say, I cared about Ukraine’s future and the important U.S. interests
there. So, when Secretary Pompeo asked me to go back to Kyiv, I wanted
to say “yes.”
But it was not an easy decision. The former
Ambassador, Masha Yovanovitch, had been treated poorly, caught in a web
of political machinations both in Kyiv and in Washington. I feared that
those problems were still present. When I talked to her about accepting
the offer, however, she urged me to go, both for policy reasons and for
the morale of the embassy.
Before answering the Secretary, I
consulted both my wife and a respected former senior Republican official
who has been a mentor to me. I will tell you that my wife, in no
uncertain terms, strongly opposed the idea. The mentor counseled: if
your country asks you to do something, you do it — if you can be
effective.
I could be effective only if the U.S. policy of strong
support for Ukraine — strong diplomatic support along with robust
security, economic, and technical assistance — were to continue and if I
had the backing of the Secretary of State to implement that policy. I
worried about what I had heard concerning the role of Rudolph Giuliani,
who had made several high-profile statements about Ukraine and U.S.
policy toward the country. So during my meeting with Secretary Pompeo on
May 28, I made clear to him and the others present that if U.S. policy
toward Ukraine changed, he would not want me posted there and I could
not stay. He assured me that the policy of strong support for Ukraine
would continue and that he would support me in defending that policy.
With
that understanding, I agreed to go back to Kyiv. Because I was
appointed by the Secretary but not reconfirmed by the Senate, my
official position was Chargé d’Affaires ad interim.
* * * * *
I
returned to Kyiv on June 17, carrying the original copy of a letter
President Trump signed the day after I met with the Secretary. In that
letter, President Trump congratulated President Zelenskyy on his
election victory and invited him to a meeting in the Oval Office. I also
brought with me a framed copy of the Secretary’s declaration that the
United States would never recognize the illegal Russian annexation of
Crimea.
But once I arrived in Kyiv, I discovered a weird combination of encouraging, confusing, and ultimately alarming circumstances.
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First,
the encouraging: President Zelenskyy was taking over Ukraine in a
hurry. He had appointed reformist ministers and supported long-stalled
anti-corruption legislation. He took quick executive action, including
opening Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court, which was established
under the previous presidential administration but never allowed to
operate. He called snap parliamentary elections — his party was so new
it had no representation in the Rada — and later won an overwhelming
mandate, controlling 60 percent of the seats. With his new parliamentary
majority, President Zelenskyy changed the Ukrainian constitution to
remove absolute immunity from Rada deputies, which had been the source
of raw corruption for two decades. There was much excitement in Kyiv
that this time things could be different — a new Ukraine might finally
be breaking from its corrupt, post-Soviet past.
And yet, I found a
confusing and unusual arrangement for making U.S. policy towards
Ukraine. There appeared to be two channels of U.S. policy-making and
implementation, one regular and one highly irregular. As the Chief of
Mission, I had authority over the regular, formal diplomatic processes,
including the bulk of the U.S. effort to support Ukraine against the
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 which included then-Special Envoy Kurt Volker, Ambassador
Sondland, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, and as I subsequently learned,
Mr. Giuliani. I was clearly in the regular channel, but I was also in
the irregular one to the extent that Ambassadors Volker and Sondland
included me in certain conversations. Although this irregular channel
was well-connected in Washington, it operated mostly outside of official
State Department channels. This irregular channel began when Ambassador
Volker, Ambassador Sondland, Secretary Perry, and Senator Ron Johnson
briefed President Trump on May 23 upon their return from President
Zelenskyy’s inauguration. The delegation returned to Washington
enthusiastic about the new Ukrainian president and urged President Trump
to meet with him early on to cement the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. But
from what I understood, President Trump did not share their enthusiasın
for a meeting with Mr. Zelenskyy.
When I first arrived in Kyiv, in
June and July, the actions of both the regular and the irregular
channels of foreign policy served the same goal — a strong U.S.-
4
Ukraine
partnership — but it became clear to me by August that the channels had
diverged in their objectives. As this occurred, I became increasingly
concerned.
In late June, one the goals of both channels was to
facilitate a visit by President Zelenskyy to the White House for a
meeting with President Trump, which President Trump had promised in his
congratulatory letter of May 29. The Ukrainians were clearly eager for
the meeting to happen. During a conference call with Ambassador Volker,
Acting Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs
Phil Reeker, Secretary Perry, Ambassador Sondland, and Counselor of the
U.S. Department of State Ulrich Brechbuhl on June 18, it was clear that a
meeting between the two presidents was an agreed-upon goal.
But
during my subsequent communications with Ambassadors Volker and
Sondland, they relayed to me that the President “wanted to hear from
Zelenskyy” before scheduling the meeting in the Oval Office. It was not
clear to me what this meant.
On June 27, Ambassador Sondland told
me during a phone conversation that President Zelenskyy needed to make
clear to President Trump that he, President Zelenskyy, was not standing
in the way of “investigations.”
I sensed something odd when
Ambassador Sondland told me on June 28 that he did not wish to include
most of the regular interagency participants in a call planned with
President Zelenskyy later that day. Ambassador Sondland, Ambassador
Volker, Secretary Perry, and I were on this call, dialing in from
different locations. However, Ambassador Sondland said that he wanted to
make sure no one was transcribing or monitoring as they added President
Zelenskyy to the call. Also, before President Zelenskyy joined the
call, Ambassador Volker separately told the U.S. participants that he,
Ambassador Volker, planned to be explicit with President Zelenskyy in a
one-on-one meeting in Toronto on July 2 about what President Zelenskyy
should do to get the White House meeting. Again, it was not clear to me
on that call what this meant, but Ambassador Volker noted that he would
relay that President Trump wanted to see rule of law, transparency, but
also, specifically, cooperation on investigations to “get to the bottom
of things.” Once President Zelenskyy joined the call, the conversation
was focused on energy policy and the Stanytsia-Luhanska bridge.
President Zelenskyy also said he looked forward to the White House visit
President Trump had offered in his May 29 letter.
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I
reported on this call to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George
Kent, who had responsibility for Ukraine, and I wrote a memo for the
record dated June 30 that summarized our conversation with President
Zelenskyy.
By mid-July it was becoming clear to me that the
meeting President Zelenskyy wanted was conditioned on the investigations
of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S.
elections. It was also clear that this condition was driven by the
irregular policy channel I had come to understand was guided by Mr.
Giuliani.
On July 10, Ukrainian officials Alexander Danyliuk, the
Ukrainian national security advisor, and Andriy Yermak, an assistant to
President Zelenskyy, and Secretary Perry, then-National Security Advisor
John Bolton, Ambassador Volker, and Ambassador Sondland met at the
White House. I did not participate in the meeting and did not receive a
readout of it until speaking with the National Security Council’s
(NSC’s) then-Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs, Fiona
Hill, and the NSC’s Director of European Affairs, Alex Vindman, on July
19.
On July 10 in Kyiv, I met with President Zelenskyy’s chief of
staff, Andrei Bohdan, and then-foreign policy advisor to the president
and now Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko, who told me that they had
heard from Mr. Giuliani that the phone call between the two presidents
was unlikely to happen and that they were alarmed and disappointed. I
relayed their concerns to Counselor Brechbuhl.
In a regular NSC
secure video-conference call on July 18, I heard a staff person from the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) say that there was a hold on
security assistance to Ukraine but could not say why. Toward the end of
an otherwise normal meeting, a voice on the call — the person was
off-screen — said that she was from OMB and that her boss had instructed
her not to approve any additional spending of security assistance for
Ukraine until further notice. I and others sat in astonishment — the
Ukrainians were fighting the Russians and counted on not only the
training and weapons, but also the assurance of U.S. support. All that
the OMB staff person said was that the directive had come from the
President to the Chief of Staff to OMB. In an instant, I realized that
one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened.
The irregular policy channel was running contrary to the goals of
longstanding U.S. policy.
There followed a series of NSC-led
interagency meetings, starting at the staff level and quickly reaching
the level of Cabinet secretaries. At every meeting, the
6
unanimous
conclusion was that the security assistance should be resumed, the hold
lifted. At one point, the Defense Department was asked to perform an
analysis of the effectiveness of the assistance. Within a day, the
Defense Department came back with the determination that the assistance
was effective and should be resumed. My understanding was that the
Secretaries of Defense and State, the CIA Director, and the National
Security Advisor sought a joint meeting with the President to convince
him to release the hold, but such a meeting was hard to schedule and the
hold lasted well into September.
The next day on the phone, Dr.
Hill and Mr. Vindman tried to reassure me that they were not aware of
any official change in U.S. policy toward Ukraine, OMB’s announcement
notwithstanding. They did confirm that the hold on security assistance
for Ukraine came from Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and that the Chief of
Staff maintained a skeptical view of Ukraine.
In the same July 19
phone call, they gave me an account of the July 10 meeting with the
Ukrainian officials at the White House. Specifically, they told me that
Ambassador Sondland had connected “investigations” with an Oval Office
meeting for President Zelenskyy, which so irritated Ambassador Bolton
that he abruptly ended the meeting, telling Dr. Hill and Mr. Vindman
that they should have nothing to do with domestic politics. He also
directed Dr. Hill to “brief the lawyers.” Dr. Hill said that Ambassador
Bolton referred to this as a “drug deal” after the July 10 meeting.
Ambassador Bolton opposed a call between President Zelenskyy and
President Trump out of concern that it “would be a disaster.”
Needless
to say, the Ukrainians in the meetings were confused. Ambassador
Bolton, in the regular Ukraine policy decision-making channel, wanted to
talk about security, energy, and reform; Ambassador Sondland, a
participant in the irregular channel, wanted to talk about the
connection between a White House meeting and Ukrainian investigations.
Also
during our July 19 call, Dr. Hill informed me that Ambassador Volker
had met with Mr. Giuliani to discuss Ukraine. This caught me by
surprise. The next day I asked Ambassador Volker about that meeting, but
received no response. I began to sense that the two decision making
channels — the regular and irregular — were separate and at odds.
Later
on July 19 and in the early morning of July 20 (Kyiv time), I received
text messages on a three-way WhatsApp text conversation with Ambassadors
Volker and Sondland, a record of which I understand has already been
provided to the
7
Committees
by Ambassador Volker. Ambassador Sondland said that a call between
President Trump and President Zelenskyy would take place soon.
Ambassador Volker said that what was “[m]ost impt is for Zelensky to say
that he will help investigation — and address any specific personnel
issues — if there are any.”
Later on July 20, I had a phone
conversation with Ambassador Sondland while he was on a train from Paris
to London, Ambassador Sondland told me that he had recommended to
President Zelenskyy that he use the phrase, “I will leave no stone
unturned” with regard to “investigations” when President Zelenskyy spoke
with President Trump.
Also on July 20, I had a phone conversation
with Mr. Danyliuk, during which he conveyed to me that President
Zelenskyy did not want to be used as a pawn in a U.S. re-election
campaign. The next day I texted both Ambassadors Volker and Sondland
about President Zelenskyy’s concern.
On July 25, President Trump
and President Zelenskyy had the long-awaited phone conversation.
Strangely, even though I was Chief of Mission and was scheduled to meet
with President Zelenskyy along with Ambassador Volker the following day,
I received no readout of the call from the White House. The Ukrainian
government issued a short, cryptic summary.
During a previously
planned July 26 meeting, President Zelenskyy told Ambassador Volker and
me that he was happy with the call but did not elaborate. President
Zelenskyy then asked about the face-to-face meeting in the Oval Office
as promised in the May 29 letter from President Trump.
After our
meeting with President Zelenskyy, Ambassador Volker and I traveled to
the front line in northern Donbas to receive a briefing from the
commander of the forces on the line of contact. Arriving for the
briefing in the military headquarters, the commander thanked us for
security assistance, but I was aware that this assistance was on hold,
which made me uncomfortable.
Ambassador Volker and I could see the
armed and hostile Russian-led forces on the other side of the damaged
bridge across the line of contact. Over 13,000 Ukrainians had been
killed in the war, one or two a week. More Ukrainians would undoubtedly
die without the U.S. assistance.
8
Although
I spent the morning of July 26 with President Zelenskyy and other
Ukrainian officials, the first summary of the Trump-Zelenskyy call that I
heard from anybody inside the U.S. government was during a phone call I
had with Tim Morrison, Dr. Hill’s recent replacement at the NSC, on
July 28. Mr. Morrison told me that the call “could have been better” and
that President Trump had suggested that President Zelenskyy or his
staff meet with Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr. I did
not see any official readout of the call until it was publicly released
on September 25.
On August 16, I exchanged text messages with
Ambassador Volker in which I learned that Mr. Yeriak had asked that the
United States submit an official request for an investigation into
Burisma’s alleged violations of Ukrainian law, if that is what the
United States desired. A formal U.S. request to the Ukrainians to
conduct an investigation based on violations of their own law struck me
as improper, and I recommended to Ambassador Volker that we “stay
clear.” To find out the legal aspects of the question, however, I gave
him the name of a Deputy Assistant Attorney General whom I thought would
be the proper point of contact for seeking a U.S. referral for a
foreign investigation.
By mid-August, because the security
assistance had been held for over a month for no reason that I could
discern, I was beginning to fear that the longstanding U.S. policy of
strong support for Ukraine was shifting. I called Counselor Brechbuhl to
discuss this on August 21. He said that he was not aware of a change of
U.S. policy but would check on the status of the security assistance.
My concerns deepened the next day, on August 22, during a phone
conversation with Mr. Morrison. I asked him if there had been a change
in policy of strong support for Ukraine, to which he responded, “it
remains to be seen.” He also told me during this call that the
“President doesn’t want to provide any assistance at all.” That was
extremely troubling to me. As I had told Secretary Pompeo in May, if the
policy of strong support for Ukraine were to change, I would have to
resign. Based on my call with Mr. Morrison, I was preparing to do so.
Just
days later, on August 27, Ambassador Bolton arrived in Kyiv and met
with President Zelenskyy. During their meeting, security assistance was
not discussed — amazingly, news of the hold did not leak out until
August 29. I, on the other hand, was all too aware of and still troubled
by the hold. Near the end of Ambassador Bolton’s visit, I asked to meet
him privately, during which I expressed to him my serious concern about
the withholding of military assistance to Ukraine while the Ukrainians
were defending their country from Russian aggression. Ambassador Bolton
recommended that I send a first-person cable to
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Secretary
Pompeo directly, relaying my concerns. I wrote and transmitted such a
cable on August 29, describing the “folly” I saw in withholding military
aid to Ukraine at a time when hostilities were still active in the east
and when Russia was watching closely to gauge the level of American
support for the Ukrainian government. I told the Secretary that I could
not and would not defend such a policy. Although I received no specific
response, I heard that soon thereafter, the Secretary carried the cable
with him to a meeting at the White House focused on security assistance
for Ukraine.
The same day that I sent my cable to the Secretary,
August 29, Mr. Yermak contacted me and was very concerned, asking about
the withheld security assistance. The hold that the White House had
placed on the assistance had just been made public that day in a Politico story. At that point, I was embarrassed that I could give him no explanation for why it was withheld.
It
had still not occurred to me that the hold on security assistance could
be related to the “investigations.” That, however, would soon change.
On
September 1, just three days after my cable to Secretary Pompeo,
President Zelenskyy met Vice President Pence at a bilateral meeting in
Warsaw. President Trump had planned to travel to Warsaw but at the last
minute had cancelled because of Hurricane Dorian. Just hours before the
Pence-Zelenskyy meeting, I contacted Mr. Danyliuk to let him know that
the delay of U.S. security assistance was an “all or nothing”
proposition, in the sense that if the White House did not lift the hold
prior to the end of the fiscal year (September 30), the funds would
expire and Ukraine would receive nothing. I was hopeful that at the
bilateral meeting or shortly thereafter, the White House would lift the
hold, but this was not to be. Indeed, I received a readout of the
Pence-Zelenskyy meeting over the phone from Mr. Morrison, during which
he told me President Zelenskyy had opened the meeting by asking the Vice
President about security cooperation. The Vice President did not
respond substantively, but said that he would talk to President Trump
that night. The Vice President did say that President Trump wanted the
Europeans to do more to support Ukraine and that he wanted the
Ukrainians to do more to fight corruption.
During this same phone
call I had with Mr. Morrison, he went on to describe a conversation
Ambassador Sondland had with Mr. Yermak at Warsaw. Ambassador Sondland
told Mr. Yermak that the security assistance money would not come until
President Zelenskyy committed to pursue the Burisma investigation. I was
alarmed by what Mr. Morrison told me about the Sondland-Yermak
10
conversation.
This was the first time I had heard that the security assistance — not
just the White House meeting — was conditioned on the investigations.
Very
concerned, on that same day I sent Ambassador Sondland a text message
asking if “we [are] now saying that security assistance and [a] WH
meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Ambassador Sondland
responded asking me to call him, which I did. During that phone call,
Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he
wants President Zelenskyy to state publicly that Ukraine will
investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S.
election.
Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized
that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to
whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelenskyy was
dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact,
Ambassador Sondland said, “everything” was dependent on such an
announcement, including security assistance. He said that President
Trump wanted President Zelenskyy “in a public box” by making a public
statement about ordering such investigations.
In the same
September 1 call, I told Ambassador Sondland that President Trump should
have more respect for another head of state and that what he described
was not in the interest of either President Trump or President
Zelenskyy. At that point I asked Ambassador Sondland to push back on
President Trump’s demand. Ambassador Sondland pledged to try. We also
discussed the possibility that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, rather
than President Zelenskyy, would make a statement about investigations,
potentially in coordination with Attorney General Barr’s probe into the
investigation of interference in the 2016 elections.
The next day,
September 2, Mr. Morrison called to inform me that Mr. Danyliuk had
asked him to come to his hotel room in Warsaw, where Mr. Danyliuk
expressed concern about the possible loss of U.S. support for Ukraine.
In particular, Mr. Morrison relayed to me that the inability of any U.S.
officials to respond to the Ukrainians’ explicit questions about
security assistance was troubling them. I was experiencing the same
tension in my dealings with the Ukrainians, including during a meeting I
had had with Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagordnyuk that day.
During
my call with Mr. Morrison on September 2, I also briefed Mr. Morrison
on what Ambassador Sondland had told me during our call the day prior.
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On
September 5, I hosted Senators Johnson and Murphy for a visit to Kyiv.
During their visit, we met with President Zelenskyy. His first question
to the senators was about the withheld security assistance. My
recollection of the meeting is that both senators stressed that
bipartisan support for Ukraine in Washington was Ukraine’s most
important strategic asset and that President Zelenskyy should not
jeopardize that bipartisan support by getting drawn into U.S. domestic
politics.
I had been making (and continue to make) this point to
all of my Ukrainian official contacts. But the push to make President
Zelenskyy publicly commit to investigations of Burisma and alleged
interference in the 2016 election showed how the official foreign policy
of the United States was undercut by the irregular efforts led by Mr.
Giuliani.
Two days later, on September 7, I had a conversation
with Mr. Morrison in which he described a phone conversation earlier
that day between Ambassador Sondland and President Trump. Mr. Morrison
said that he had a “sinking feeling” after learning about this
conversation from Ambassador Sondland. According to Mr. Morrison,
President Trump told Ambassador Sondland that he was not asking for a
“quid pro quo.” But President Trump did insist that President Zelenskyy
go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and
2016 election interference, and that President Zelenskyy should want to
do this himself. Mr. Morrison said that he told Ambassador Bolton and
the NSC lawyers of this phone call between President Trump and
Ambassador Sondland.
The following day, on September 8, Ambassador
Sondland and I spoke on the phone. He said he had talked to President
Trump as I had suggested a week earlier, but that President Trump was
adamant that President Zelenskyy, himself, had to “clear things up and
do it in public.” President Trump said it was not a “quid pro quo.”
Ambassador Sondland said that he had talked to President Zelenskyy and
Mr. Yermak and told them that, although this was not a quid pro quo, if
President Zelenskyy did not “clear things up” in public, we would be at a
“stalemate.” I understood a “stalemate” to mean that Ukraine would not
receive the much-needed military assistance. Ambassador Sondland said
that this conversation concluded with President Zelenskyy agreeing to
make a public statement in an interview with CNN.
After the call
with Ambassador Sondland on September 8, I expressed my strong
reservations in a text message to Ambassador Sondland, stating that my
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“nightmare
is they [the Ukrainians] give the interview and don’t get the security
assistance. The Russians love it. (And I quit.).” I was serious.
The
next day, I said to Ambassadors Sondland and Volker that “[t]he message
to the Ukrainians (and Russians) we send with the decision on security
assistance is key. With the hold, we have already shaken their faith in
us.” I also said, “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance
for help with a political campaign.”
Ambassador Sondland responded
about five hours later that I was “incorrect about President Trump’s
intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of
any kind.”
Before these text messages, during our call on
September 8, Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that President
Trump is a businessman. When a businessman is about to sign a check to
someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that
person to pay up before signing the check. Ambassador Volker used the
same terms several days later while we were together at the Yalta
European Strategy Conference. I argued to both that the explanation made
no sense: the Ukrainians did not “owe” President Trump anything, and
holding up security assistance for domestic political gain was “crazy,”
as I had said in my text message to Ambassadors Sondland and Volker on
September 9.
Finally, I learned on September 11 that the hold had been lifted and that the security assistance would be provided.
After
I learned that the security assistance was released on September 11, I
personally conveyed the news to President Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister
Prystaiko. And I again reminded Mr. Yermak of the high strategic value
of bipartisan support for Ukraine and the importance of not getting
involved in other countries’ elections. My fear at the time was that
since Ambassador Sondland had told me President Zelenskyy already agreed
to do a CNN interview, President Zelenskyy would make a statement
regarding “investigations” that would have played into domestic U.S.
politics. I sought to confirm through Mr. Danyliuk that President
Zelenskyy was not planning to give such an interview to the media. While
Mr. Danyliuk initially confirmed that on September 12, I noticed during
a meeting on the morning of September 13 at President Zelenskyy’s
office that Mr. Yermak looked uncomfortable in response to the question.
Again, I asked Mr. Danyliuk to confirm that there would be no CNN
interview, which he did.
13
On
September 25 at the UN General Assembly session in New York City,
President Trump met President Zelenskyy face-to-face. He also released
the transcript of the July 25 call. The United States gave the
Ukrainians virtually no notice of the release, and they were livid.
Although this was the first time I had seen the details of President
Trump’s July 25 call with President Zelenskyy, in which he mentioned
Vice President Biden, I had come to understand well before then that
“investigations” was a term that Ambassadors Volker and Sondland used to
mean matters related to the 2016 elections, and to investigations of
Burisma and the Bidens.
* * * * *
I
recognize that this is a rather lengthy recitation of the events of the
past few months told from my vantage point in Kyiv. But I also
recognize the importance of the matters your Committees are
investigating, and I hope that this chronology will provide some
framework for your questions.
I wish to conclude by returning to
the points I made at the outset. Ukraine is important to the security of
the United States. It has been attacked by Russia, which continues its
aggression against Ukraine. If we believe in the principle of
sovereignty of nations on which our security and the security of our
friends and allies depends, we must support Ukraine in its fight against
its bullying neighbor. Russian aggression cannot stand.
There are
two Ukraine stories today. The first is the one we are discussing this
morning and that you have been hearing for the past two weeks. It is a
rancorous story about whistleblowers, Mr. Giuliani, side channels, quid
pro quos, corruption, and interference in elections. In this story
Ukraine is an object.
But there is another Ukraine story — a
positive, bipartisan one. In this second story, Ukraine is the subject.
This one is about young people in a young nation, struggling to break
free of its past, hopeful that their new government will finally usher
in a new Ukraine, proud of its independence from Russia, eager to join
Western institutions and enjoy a more secure and prosperous life. This
story describes a nation developing an inclusive, democratic
nationalism, not unlike what we in America, in our best moments, feel
about our diverse country — less concerned about what language we speak,
what religion if any we practice, where our parents and grandparents
came from; more concerned about building a new country.
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Because
of the strategic importance of Ukraine in our effort to create a whole,
free Europe, we, through Republican and Democratic administrations over
three decades, have supported Ukraine. Congress has been generous over
the years with assistance funding, both civilian and military, and
political support. With overwhelming bipartisan majorities, Congress has
supported Ukraine with harsh sanctions on Russia for invading and
occupying Ukraine. We can be proud of that support and that we have
stood up to a dictator’s aggression against a democratic neighbor.
It is this second story that I would like to leave you with today.
And I am glad to answer your questions.
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