(CNN) CNN host Fareed Zakaria said on Thursday that he had been set to interview Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before news about the Ukrainian's call with President Donald Trump broke.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that Zelensky had planned to announce an investigation into Trump's political rivals during a September interview on CNN, but those plans had been scrapped once Trump released promised security aid. Zakaria told CNN's Brooke Baldwin on Thursday that the interview had been months in the making, but it fell apart when the Ukraine scandal began to unfold -- though CNN did not cancel it.

"We had been negotiating with President Zelensky and his office for a while, for months, to try to get an interview with him anyway, ever since he was elected President," Zakaria, host of "Fareed Zakaria GPS," told Baldwin.

Once news of the whistleblower's complaint surfaced, "it became clear to us that the interview was off," he continued.

The Times reported that the decision to unfreeze the aid to Ukraine erased the need for Zelensky's televised appearance.

Read More