The EconomistSeptember 21st 2019 United States 51O
f all the meetings that will take place
between heads of state at the United
Nations in New York next week, the one be-
tween Presidents Donald Trump and Volo-
dymyr Zelensky (pictured), a comedian
turned president of Ukraine, may be the
strangest. Last month, as Ukraine’s govern-
ment was trying to negotiate the release of
its prisoners from Russia, it received news
from Washington. The White House had
frozen $250m of military assistance to Uk-
raine that had already been approved by
Congress until further review. The admin-
istration set no criteria or time frame for
the review. But a month earlier, in a tele-
phone conversation with Mr Zelensky,
then newly elected, Mr Trump said he was
“convinced the new Ukrainian government
would be able to quickly improve the image
of Ukraine and complete the investigations
of corruption cases, which inhibited the
interaction between Ukraine and the usa.”
There were two cases Mr Trump seemed
particularly interested in. The first in-
volved the affairs of Hunter Biden, son of
the candidate for the Democratic presiden-
tial nomination, who sat on the board of a
private Ukrainian gas firm while his father
was America’s vice-president. The second
involved the downfall of Paul Manafort, Mr
Trump’s former campaign chairman, who
took a $12.7m off-the-books payment for
his work for an ex-president of Ukraine,
Viktor Yanukovich, and is now in prison. It
was up to the new president to satisfy MrTrump that he was on the right side.
If Mr Zelensky was still in any doubt
about what was expected of him, Rudy Giu-
liani, Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, was
there to help. A few days after the tele-
phone conversation between the two pres-
idents, Mr Giuliani flew to Madrid to meet
Mr Zelensky’s adviser, Andriy Yermak. He
urged Mr Yermak to investigate the matters
that were of interest to Mr Trump and held
out the prospect of a state visit to America
and a meeting with the president.
That meeting in Madrid was arranged
by Kurt Volker, America’s special envoy,
whose efforts to help Ukraine restore its
territorial integrity and sovereignty over
the Donbas region were undermined by the
suspension of military aid. Although the
State Department insisted Mr Giuliani was
merely acting in his private capacity rather
than on behalf of the state, in the eyes of
any reasonable person—particularly the
one from Ukraine where oligarchs wield
much informal power—Mr Giuliani was
more important than a state official; he was
Mr Trump’s consigliere.
Fittingly, Mr Giuliani’s main source of
disinformation on Ukraine was Yuriy Lut-
senko, a controversial former prosecutor-
general. Mr Lutsenko first tried to sabotage
anti-corruption efforts by Ukrainian activ-
ists and American-backed investigators,
then accused his critics of conspiring
against Mr Trump. Trying to ingratiate
himself with the White House, and settlehis own scores, Mr Lutsenko declared that
the stuff about Mr Manafort was all part of
an anti-Trump conspiracy.
Mr Lutsenko also dragged Marie Yova-
novitch, an experienced American career
diplomat and ambassador to Ukraine,
through the mud, alleging she was acting
in the interests of the Democrats. Ms Yova-
novitch, who supported the anti-corrup-
tion fight in Ukraine (a fight which also tar-
geted Mr Lutsenko) was recalled before the
end of her term, despite the State Depart-
ment’s statement that the claims against
her were an “outright fabrication”.
Mr Giuliani liked Mr Lutsenko’s im-
probable version of events, though. In May
he told Fox News that he had cancelled his
planned trip to Kiev, because he thought he
was about to walk “into a group of people
that are enemies of the president, and in
some cases enemies of the United States.”
One of the enemies named was Serhiy
Leshchenko, a journalist, anti-corruption
campaigner and member of parliament
who investigated Mr Manafort.
Mr Leshchenko had been working for
Mr Zelensky’s team, advising the neophyte
president on foreign affairs. But Mr Giu-
liani’s statement made the new president
uneasy. A few days later Mr Leshchenko
was told that he could not be offered a for-
mal position in Mr Zelensky’s new admin-
istration, since this would jeopardise Uk-
raine’s relations with a strategic partner.
As a result of all this, Mr Giuliani and his
boss have become the subject of an investi-
gation by the House committees on For-
eign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight. He
denies wrongdoing (“I wouldn’t do an un-
ethical thing in my life,” he told cnn). On
September 9th the Democratic chairmen of
the three committees sent a formal request
to the White House and the State Depart-
ment, instructing them to turn over the
documents related to what look like at-
tempts to coerce the Ukrainian govern-
ment into conducting politically motivat-
ed investigations. If Mr Trump really had
pressured Ukraine to serve the ends of his
re-election campaign, “this would repre-
sent a staggering abuse of power, a boon to
Moscow, and a betrayal of the public trust”,
the letter says.
Less than a week after the launch of the
investigation, the White House unfroze the
funds for military assistance without ex-
plaining the hold-up. “There were a lot of
senior Republicans who were asking wtf,”
one former official says. But the damage
has been done. Mr Giuliani’s adventures in
Ukrainian politics undermined the Ameri-
can government’s efforts to bolster its ally
militarily and subverted its anti-corrup-
tion message. Vladimir Putin has long
maintained that he is no worse than his
American “partners”—they just hide
things better. Mr Giuliani and Mr Trump
are in danger of proving him right. 7KIEV
The president’s personal lawyer appears to have crossed a lineRudy Giuliani’s adventuresUkrainian vaudeville