Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had planned to bow to Donald Trump's demands and investigate Joe Biden before the promised release of aid and the whistleblower scandal hit, according to reports.

The former comedian, who won office on promises to clean up corruption, was lined up to make the public announcement in return for the much needed $400million in military aid, The New York Times said Thursday.

Petro Burkovskiy, a senior fellow at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, told the newspaper Zelensky's aides were in support of 'bowing to what was demanded', despite the 'high cost'.

It is suggested Zelensky would have made the announcement in an interview with with Fareed Zakaria on CNN. Zakaria confirmed a interview was in the pipeline but said he had no knowledge of any such plans.

Burkovskiy added: 'The Zelensky team was ready to make this quid quo pro. They were ready to do this.'

But the public announcement detailing plans to investigate Biden did not go ahead after news of the military aid freeze became public knowledge and Trump released the funds.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had reportedly planned to bow to Donald Trump's demands and investigate Joe Biden before the promised release of aide and the whistleblower scandal hit. Zelensky and Trump are pictured in September

It is suggested Zelensky would have made the announcement in an interview with with Fareed Zakaria on CNN. Zakaria, pictured, confirmed a interview was in the pipeline

Journalist Zakaria said: '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.'

He said it became 'clear that the interview was off' once the details of Trump's call with Zelensky became the subject of a complaint.

Zakaria said he had no knowledge of the planned announcement.

He added: 'You win some, you lose some. I would have loved to have it. He's a fascinating guy. I still would love to have an interview with him one of these days.

'They acted, his office, acted very professionally throughout the process. But I have to say, I had no idea the pressure they were under - they were acting pretty cool considering all the pressure they were under.'

Ukraine's former foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin said: 'From the contacts that took place, it's difficult to say if they led, or did not lead, to concrete deals.' Zelensky has said he would not have agreed to a political prosecution.

U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, told the impeachment inquiry Tuesday: 'I said that resumption of the US aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.'

It was reported in October that Zelensky was worried about pressure from the president to investigate Biden more than two months before the infamous call.

Zelensky gathered a small group of advisers on May 7 in Kyiv for a meeting that was supposed to be about his nation's energy needs.

Instead, the group spent most of the three-hour discussion talking about how to navigate the insistence from Trump and Rudy Giuliani for a probe and how to avoid becoming entangled in the American elections, according to sources.

After news broke that a White House whistleblower had filed a complaint about his July 25 call with Zelenskiy, Trump said the conversation was 'perfect' and that he had asked his Ukrainian counterpart to do 'whatever he can in terms of corruption because the corruption is massive.'

US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland told lawmakers that the Trump administration pushed to make a Ukrainian investigation of the Bidens a condition for getting security aid and a White House meeting – and assessed that it 'doesn't sound good'

During the call, Trump asked Zelensky for 'a favor,' requesting an investigation into a conspiracy theory related to a Democratic computer server hacked during the 2016 election campaign.

Trump also pushed Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son. Trump then advised Zelensky that Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr would be contacting him about the request, according to a summary of the called released by the White House.

In a joint September 25 news conference with Trump at the United Nations in New York, Zelensky denied he felt pressured to investigate the Bidens.

'I'm sorry, but I don't want to be involved, to democratic, open elections of U.S.A.,' the Ukrainian leader said. 'We had, I think, good phone call. It was normal. We spoke about many things, and I think, and you read it, that nobody push it. Push me.'

Trump then chimed in: 'In other words, no pressure.'