If a former Ukrainian prosecutor's claims are true, the meeting was arranged via a DC lobbyist whose name has popped up in the impeachment inquiry.

Sergei Supinsky / Getty Images Yulia Tymoshenko during the 2019 Ukrainian presidential campaign.

KYIV — Over the course of a tumultuous political career that has spanned decades, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has found herself on the front lines of a revolution, leading presidential races, losing presidential races, sitting behind bars, and — as any politician who’s been in the game as long as she has in Ukraine — at the center of scandal after scandal after scandal. Now she may have played a role in yet another. But this time there’s a Trumpian twist. Like several of her compatriots, Tymoshenko, who served as prime minister of Ukraine from January to September 2005 and again from December 2007 to March 2010, met Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer working for President Donald Trump, just as the former New York mayor’s back-channel diplomatic campaign in Kyiv was heating up. And that December 2018 meeting — brokered by the Washington, DC–based Livingston Group, a lobbying firm whose founding partner was named last week as part of testimony given to the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry — may prove to be a key episode for investigators looking into Giuliani’s campaign, following new claims from Ukraine’s former top prosecutor and a one-time political ally of Tymoshenko’s. The meeting in Washington on Dec. 7 between Giuliani and Tymoshenko, who was leading the Ukrainian presidential race at the time, was set up by Livingston Group, the firm founded by former Republican representative Bob Livingston, who State Department official Catherine Croft testified last week had called her multiple times in 2018 to urge the dismissal of the then–United States ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. Officially, the meeting concerned “the escalation of Russia's war against Ukraine and the US’s assistance to our country, including weapons to counter Russian aggression,” Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party said in a published statement at the time.

Gleb Garanich / Reuters Fatherland party leader Yulia Tymoshenko speaks with journalists at a polling station during a parliamentary election in Kiev, July 21.

But former Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko, who US prosecutors allege directed a plot to oust Yovanovitch, said in an interview with BuzzFeed News, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and NBC News that the meeting ended up producing another result. Lutsenko said the meeting between Giuliani and Tymoshenko ended with the former mayor extending an invitation to meet and discuss former vice president Joe Biden’s son Hunter and his work for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings. Lutsenko has made and retracted several claims since 2017 that were allegedly meant to curry favor with the Trump administration. But, if substantiated, this latest assertion would add yet another person to the list of Ukrainian officials who played a role in helping Giuliani's off-the-books investigation. That campaign saw him meet with current and former Ukrainian prosecutors who furnished him with unverified allegations involving the Bidens, Yovanovitch, and allegations of “Ukrainian interference” in the 2016 US election. Lutsenko's new claim also deepens questions about the lobbyist Livingston’s involvement in the scandal. On Friday, a source with knowledge of the matter confirmed that federal prosecutors in New York who are investigating the actions of Giuliani’s associates are also looking into whether Livingston was in touch with Giuliani himself about ousting Yovanovitch. The source said Livingston is not a target of the investigation. Livingston said he didn’t know about the meeting with Tymoshenko until it was over. Asked what the meeting was about, he said, “I wasn’t there. I hear [Giuliani] hustled for business, but that was thirdhand.” A spokesperson for Tymoshenko denied that she had discussed anything related to the Bidens with Giuliani in the meeting, or that he had asked her to put him in touch with Lutsenko. Asked by a reporter at Ukraine’s Parliament if she had connected Giuliani and Lutsenko, Tymoshenko said: “That is categorically not true.” Giuliani didn’t respond to requests to comment on his meeting with Tymoshenko. Tymoshenko’s roller coaster of a political career has earned her many friends, enemies, and frenemies. Among the latter group is Lutsenko, who served as her interior minister from February 2005 until the prime minister left the post that September. He continued to serve in that role until December 2006. Famous for her peasant-style blonde braid crown, Tymoshenko, 58, is a populist whose base is largely composed of older, more conservative provincial Ukrainians who like her political promises to cut utility prices and raise pensions. She earlier made a fortune as an executive in an energy company — a role that earned her the nickname “gas queen” — before jumping into politics. A central leader of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, which began in 2004, Tymoshenko has failed to win the presidency in three national elections. Her first loss came in 2004. The second was a close presidential race in 2010 to pro-Russian politician Viktor Yanukovych. While Tymoshenko led early in the 2019 presidential polls, she ultimately finished third in the first round of elections in March. Television comedian Volodymyr Zelensky then beat the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko, in an April runoff and was inaugurated in May. In 2011, under Yanukovych, Tymoshenko was convicted of abuse of office for brokering a deal between the state energy company, Naftogaz, and Russia in 2009. The charges were widely seen in the West as politically motivated, and she had her conviction overturned after 2014 protests ousted Yanukovych. Tymoshenko served part of that sentence at the same time that her former ally and one-time interior minister, Lutsenko, served his. Lutsenko was sentenced in February 2012 to four years’ imprisonment for embezzlement and abuse of office — charges that were also widely viewed as politically motivated. Lutsenko was released in April 2013 after Yanukovych pardoned him for health reasons. Lutsenko and Tymoshenko have a volatile history. The relationship began to fray after the former allied himself with Poroshenko, who rose to become president in 2014. Poroshenko, an opponent of Tymoshenko’s, later appointed Lutsenko as his prosecutor general. Lutsenko used the power he wielded from the position to go after Tymoshenko and her Fatherland party.

Sergei Supinsky / Getty Images A man holds a placard depicting Yulia Tymoshenko and her ally, former interior minister Yuriy Lutsenko in 2013.