Ukraine announced Thursday that it is launching an investigation into whether Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador, was being monitored by associates of President Trump before she was recalled by the administration in May.

“Ukraine’s position is not to interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States of America,” Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said in a statement. “Ukraine cannot ignore such illegal activities on the territory of its own state.”

The probe was prompted by the release of a trove of documents by the House Intelligence Committee that contains communications between Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his associate Lev Parnas.

Among the documents is a string of messages from March 2019 between Parnas and Robert Hyde, who is a Republican candidate for Congress in Connecticut, about Yovanovitch.

The WhatsApp communications suggest Hyde and others may have been following the diplomat in Kiev. “They are moving her tomorrow,” Hyde wrote to Parnas. “The guys over there asked me what I would like to do and what is in it for them.”

He then noted that Yovanovitch turned off her phone and computer.

“They are willing to help if we/you would like a price,” Hyde said. “Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money … what I was told.”

“Lol,” Parnas responded, indicating “laugh out loud.”.

Several days later, Hyde wrote: “It’s confirmed we have a person inside.”

Parnas, who has been indicted in Manhattan federal court on charges of campaign finance violations, said in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Wednesday that he never took Hyde seriously.

The Soviet-born Parnas said he met Hyde at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC., where Hyde hung out at the bar.

“I think he was either drunk or he was trying to make himself bigger than he was, so I didn’t take it seriously … I didn’t respond most of the time. If I did, it was something look, LOL, OK or great, or, you know, something like that, just to – because I wouldn’t respond for a long time, and I didn’t want him to get rowdy if I saw him the next time, why didn’t you text?” Parnas said.

The interior ministry said it will investigate to determine whether the possible surveillance was a violation of Ukrainian law or “whether it is just a bravado and a fake information.”

Hyde, in a twitter posting, called Parnas a “dweeb.”

“I was never in Kiev. For them to take some texts my buddy’s and I wrote back to some dweeb we were playing with that we met a few times while we had a few drinks is definitely laughable. Schiff is a desperate turd playing with this Lev guy,” he said, referring to Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The House impeached Trump on Dec. 18 on two articles, one for abuse of power and the other for obstruction of Congress.

His accusers charge that Trump abused his power by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July 2019 to investigate Democratic primary candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who held a high-paying job as consultant to Burisma, the nation’s largest energy provider, despite having no relevant experience, while Trump was withholding a promised White House meeting and critical military aid for the US ally.

Trump has denied the charges and said there was no linkage to the withholding of aid, which he attributed to concern over corruption in Ukraine. The congressionally approved aid was ultimately released.