Sitting down in front of cameras at the UN, Zelenskiy looked miserable and Trump rambled about his achievements

In this new screwball comedy, an American reality show host and a Ukrainian TV comedian somehow find themselves elected president and almost get away with it – until a seemingly routine phone call ends up determining the fate of both their nations.

It is a script that has bypassed the big screen to go straight to reality in 2019, and it was playing on Wednesday in both Washington and New York.

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When Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskiy sat down in front of the cameras at the UN general assembly, the scene had already been set. A phone call the two men held in July had triggered a political crisis in Washington, and the fourth impeachment proceedings ever against a US president.

According to the version released by the White House, when Zelenskiy asked Trump about US military support for his embattled country, Trump said: “I would like you to do us a favour, though” and went on to suggest, repeatedly, that Zelenskiy’s government launch an investigation into Trump’s possible opponent in next year’s presidential elections, Joe Biden.

Shortly before the call, Trump is reported to have ordered US military aid to Ukraine to be suspended.

The incident sounded sufficiently like a shakedown to push even a reluctant Democratic leadership into embarking on impeachment. As far as Trump was concerned, however, there was nothing wrong with the conversation which, he said again and again, was “perfect”.

Sitting alongside the US president, Zelenskiy looked very much like the high school teacher-turned-president he used to play on his longrunning political sitcom, The Servant of the People, bewildered at the absurdities unfolding before him.

“Better to be on TV than on the phone,” he joked, though nothing about his demeanour suggested that was true. He looked unhappy from the beginning, and when Trump turned to him and declared: “I really hope you and President Putin get together and can solve your problem”, Zelenskiy looked like he was going to be sick.

His “problem” was that part of his country had been annexed by Putin, and Russian military intervention had turned another part into a battleground. Hours before meeting Trump, the Ukrainian leader had stood in front of the UN general assembly and held up a bullet in an effort to remind the international community of the largely forgotten conflict.

“There is no such thing as someone else’s war,” Zelenskiy had said. “None of you will be able to feel safe as long as there is a war in Ukraine, a war in Europe.”

In his afternoon encounter with Trump, the war was quickly forgotten once more and the Ukrainian president found that, on his debut on the global stage, he had wandered into a whodunnit in which he was prime witness.

So had his arm been twisted by Trump to investigate Joe Biden? the press wanted to know. Zelenskiy’s discomfort was overwhelming. On one hand, his government’s relationship with the US, its most important military backer, was at stake. On the other, his side of the July conversation made him sound like a sycophant, constantly flattering Trump and offering to take guidance from the US president in domestic Ukrainian investigations. It was unlikely to play well back home.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a meeting with Donald Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations general assembly. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

“I don’t want to be involved in democratic elections of the USA,” Zelenskiy said. “We had a good phone call … It was normal. You read it. Nobody pushed me.”

That was all Trump needed. A couple of hours later, he flourished the phrase like a get-out-of-jail card.

“No push, no pressure, no nothing. It’s all a big hoax,” Trump said. But at his first press conference as a president formally facing impeachment, he appeared deflated and consumed with self-pity.

One by one, he listed all the countries whose leaders he had met over three days at the UN.

“I came early in the morning to late in the evening, meeting with different countries, all for the good of our country and the press didn’t cover any of this,” Trump said, reprising a favourite theme when under pressure: that none of his predecessors – presumably not even Lincoln who was shot in the head – had suffered as much.

“So many leaders came up to me today and they said, sir, what you go through, no president has ever gone through,” the president said.

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For more than 20 minutes, he read through a rambling litany of his achievements, from domestic to foreign but ending up at the wall on the southern border, and allowed only a couple of questions.

When asked whether it was appropriate for a US president to use his office to persuade a foreign leader to dig up dirt on his opponents, Trump accused his opponents of doing the same thing. It looked likely to be his strategy through the long months of impeachment that lie ahead for his presidency. His enemies had simply projected their own wrongdoing on to him, and he was the hero betrayed in the final act.

“It was all planned,” he concluded darkly. “Like everything else it was all planned and the witch-hunt continues.”