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Photographer: Alex Edelman/Bloomberg Photographer: Alex Edelman/Bloomberg

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy finally had his American counterpart on the phone after months of trying. A few minutes into their call, President Donald Trump brought up something that puzzled officials in Kyiv.



“I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike,” Trump said on the July 25 call. “The server, they say Ukraine has it.”

Volodymyr Zelenskiy Photographer: Evgeniy Maloletka/Bloomberg

Crowdstrike? Server? The new president and a handful of his aides wondered if they had misheard Trump, according to two people familiar with the Ukrainian side of the now-infamous conversation. One aide made a note to suss it out and report back to Zelenskiy.

The world learned of the puzzling request two months later when the White House released its rough transcript of the conversation. Trump had been asking Ukraine about a conspiracy theory -- thoroughly debunked -- suggesting that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the hack of a Democratic National Committee server during the 2016 election.

The Ukrainians’ befuddlement, not previously reported, played like a scene from a television satire. That would be fitting for Zelenskiy, a former comedian who portrayed an unlikely Ukrainian president on TV before his real-life rise to his country’s presidency. But it wasn’t for laughs. The conversation between Zelenskiy and Trump, a onetime reality-TV star, became a crucial scene in a tense summer drama.

This account of how the upper echelon of the Ukrainian government responded to the U.S. overtures is pieced together from interviews with people familiar with Zelenskiy’s circle of advisers, as well as public statements, testimony and documents. From his Stalin-era presidential headquarters in Kyiv, Zelenskiy and his closest aides were at times in the dark about the latest plot twists.

The confusion sprang, in part, from the multiple lines of communication among official envoys, ad hoc emissaries and back-channel operatives – a tangle of texts, talks and meetings that are now the focus of impeachment proceedings against Trump.

This much, at least, was clear to the Zelenskiy camp: People close to the American president wanted a signal from Kyiv that would help Trump politically at home -- a public commitment to look into allegations of corruption involving Democrat Joe Biden and his family, which Ukrainian officials had already dismissed as baseless. While loath to step into U.S. politics, the people around Zelenskiy continued to engage with the U.S., eager for its political support and military aid as Ukraine waged a proxy war against Russia in the country’s east. Zelenskiy pursued an Oval Office meeting with Trump, seeking a potent signal to the Kremlin that the new Ukrainian leader had Washington’s backing.

What Zelenskiy and his advisers didn’t know, according to the insiders’ accounts, was that the U.S. was already holding up that aid pending a public announcement of a probe by Kyiv. They found out from a news report at the end of August, these people said. Later still, the people around Zelenskiy learned from a U.S. whistleblower and news report that someone in the Ukrainian government may have known about the aid freeze in early August. They’re now trying to figure out who that is, and why Zelenskiy wasn’t told.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Vadym Prystaiko, said this week the country doesn’t want to be dragged into U.S. domestic politics. “I hope this scandal will end where it started, in the Congress and in the administration,” he said. “We need to do everything so this partner remains our biggest and most powerful. At the same time we are not going to cross any red lines.”

Could Be Trouble

Trump has argued that there could be no quid pro quo with Ukraine because Kyiv didn’t know about the aid freeze. Yet it was clear that Kyiv was under pressure from its vital patron well before Zelenskiy, a lawyer turned actor and producer, took office.

At the time of Zelenskiy’s surprise landslide victory in April, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, had already called for an investigation into the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine and allegations that Ukraine helped Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 presidential race.

When they found out Giuliani was planning to travel to Kyiv in May to press for the investigations, some aides of the president-elect advised against a meeting. It would only lead to trouble, they said.

Still, the Ukrainians began to wonder whether they had the White House’s backing. Giuliani ended up canceling his trip to Kyiv and later, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence declined an invitation to attend Zelenskiy’s hastily arranged May 20 inauguration, sending Energy Secretary Rick Perry instead.

Their uneasiness deepened in late May. That’s when Giuliani traveled to Paris to meet with Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytskyy, who had been accused of corruption months earlier by the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at the time, Marie Yovanovitch.

Although the two declined to disclose what they discussed in Paris, the president’s advisers quickly felt Giuliani’s scorn. In comments to a Ukrainian website, Giuliani addressed his abandoned Kyiv visit and accused the Ukrainian president of surrounding himself with agents of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has given billions to Democratic causes.

“I was told by people in my country that I shouldn’t go, because it was a trap that was being worked out with Democrats, people loyal to Soros,” he told Censor.net in an interview published on May 27. “The message that I would send to him was: ‘It’s not a good idea to surround yourself with enemies of President Trump.’”

Those around Zelenskiy were eager to clear the air between the two presidents and dispel the Soros branding, they said. But by early July, a call looked out of reach, much less an Oval Office meeting.

On July 10, Zelenskiy’s chief of staff and his foreign minister told the recently installed U.S. charge d’affairs, Bill Taylor, that the Ukrainians were “alarmed and disappointed” to learn from Giuliani that a presidential call was unlikely to happen, according to Taylor’s testimony. It’s not clear how such a message from Giuliani would have been conveyed.

That same day, gathering with several top Trump officials in Washington, Ukraine’s then-national security chief, Oleksandr Danylyuk, broached the idea of a meeting between the two presidents. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, countered that if Ukraine wanted the meeting, it should deliver “specific investigations,” according to testimony this week by a White House official, Alexander Vindman.

Ten days later, according to Taylor, Danylyuk delivered a message: Zelenskiy didn’t want to be used as a pawn in the U.S. re-election campaign.

Hearing Rudy

They still had Giuliani to contend with. Members of Zelenskiy’s team expressed unease about communicating via a back-channel, but some aides ultimately concluded that Giuliani’s bias against Ukraine would affect Trump’s views and that it was better to hear him out. So on July 22, Andriy Yermak -- a lawyer, film producer and adviser to Zelenskiy -- spoke with Giuliani and agreed to meet him in Madrid a few weeks later, according to text messages released as part of the U.S. inquiry.

Rudy Giuliani Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

Giuliani then began advocating for a call between the two leaders, according to the texts. Zelenskiy’s party had just won a majority during snap parliamentary elections, solidifying his power.

Within days, the two leaders were on the call at the heart of the impeachment inquiry. Toward the end, after Zelenskiy told Trump he’d once stayed at Trump Tower in New York, Trump uttered the words that the Ukrainian side was longing to hear.

“Whenever you would like to come to the White House, feel free to give us a call,” Trump said. The comment prompted thumbs in the air from some of Zelenskiy’s aides listening in on the conversation.

Afterward, many people in the room considered it a good call, according to the people familiar with the situation. They’d cut some of the tension. A White House visit seemed within sight.

Feeling Optimistic

Many on the Ukrainian side saw the relationship progressing, as Zelenskiy’s aide Yermak took off for his previously arranged meeting in Madrid. There, on Aug. 2, Yermak told Giuliani that if he had anything to say to Ukraine that he should tell them directly, not through the media or intermediaries, according to a person familiar with the exchange.

Yermak finished the meeting confident he had persuaded Giuliani that there were no enemies of Trump in Zelenskiy’s team, and he concluded that the unusual back-channel contact had succeeded, the person said.

At the State Department, Taylor was told about Yermak’s suggestion that the U.S. submit an “official request for an investigation into Burisma’s alleged violation of Ukrainian law, if that’s what the U.S. desired.” Such a request from the U.S. would be improper, Taylor testified. Yermak’s reasoning was that if Trump wanted Ukraine to start an investigation into Burisma, the U.S. should formally share any facts that would provide the basis rather than working from speculation, the person said.

Unbenownst to the Ukrainians as they pursued their meeting, several people on the U.S. side understood that the aid to Ukraine was also on hold. Both the aid and a White House visit were conditioned on the opening of the investigations in Kyiv, Taylor testified to Congress.

High-level Ukrainian officials were aware of the aid freeze by the first week of August, weeks earlier than they had previously acknowledged, the New York Times reported on Oct. 23.

But according to the people familiar with the matter, Zelenskiy and many of his top aides were unaware of the aid delay well into August. These people said that when U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton arrived in Kyiv on Aug. 27, he didn’t tell Zelenksiy or his aides about any withheld aid, and so the Zelenskiy entourage assumed it was still coming. The meetings focused mostly on China buying a Ukrainian aircraft-engine maker, a deal that Bolton said Washington disliked.

On Aug. 28, the day after Bolton left town, Politico reported that the U.S. military assistance was on pause. It was a matter of sensitive national security for a country fighting Russian aggression. Alarmed, members of Zelensky’s circle shared the story with one another.

Yermak sent the article to Kurt Volker, the U.S. special representative to Ukraine. “Need to talk to you,” he wrote, according to texts released to the House.

Had Zelenskiy’s camp known earlier about the frozen aid, they would have raised the issue with Bolton, the people familiar with the matter said. Their next chance came a few days later, on Sept. 1, when Zelenskiy and his team met in Warsaw with Pence. Trump was scheduled to attend but canceled as a hurricane approached the U.S.

Zelenskiy went off script, launching immediately into concerns about the aid freeze and emphasizing how much Ukraine depended on U.S. assistance, the people familiar with the situation said. Pence talked about the need for Ukraine to fight corruption and for Europe to contribute its share, the people said. Not mentioning the Bidens and making no promises, Pence said he would speak with Trump about releasing the aid, they said.

The Ukrainians continued to feel heat from those around Trump, with Sondland telling Zelenskiy in early September that he should make a public statement about opening investigations, or else they would be at a “stalemate,” according to Taylor’s testimony. Taylor assumed that meant the aid wouldn’t be released.

After lawmakers raised concerns about the aid, it was released on Sept. 11. Not long after, news began to emerge of the whistle-blower complaint about Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy. The White House put out its rough transcript on Sept. 25 – the same day Zelenskiy, in New York for United Nations meetings, got his first face-to-face meeting with Trump. The transcript’s release, and its timing with Zelenskiy’s visit, angered the Ukrainians.

The next day, lawmakers put out the report from a whistle-blower alarmed by the Trump-Zelenskiy call.

For Zelenskiy’s team, the report put in full view what they had been up against. One line stood out: “As of early August, I heard from U.S. officials that some Ukrainian officials were aware that U.S. aid might be in jeopardy, but I do not know how or when they learned of it,” the whistle-blower wrote.

Those in the president’s circle wondered which Ukrainian officials were informed and didn’t tell them, and they intend to find out, the people said.