"Inappropriate"

Alarm bells went off at the National Security Council when the White House's top Europe official was told that Giuliani was pushing the incoming Ukrainian administration to shake up the leadership of state-owned energy giant Naftogaz, the sources said. The official, Fiona Hill, learned then about the involvement of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Giuliani associates who were helping with the Naftogaz pressure and also with trying to find dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

Hill quickly briefed then-national security adviser John Bolton about what she'd been told, the individuals with knowledge of the meeting said.

The revelation significantly moves up the timeline of when the White House learned that Trump's allies had engaged with the incoming Ukrainian administration and were acting in ways that unnerved the Ukrainians — even before President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had been sworn in. Biden had entered the presidential race barely three weeks earlier.

In a White House meeting the week of May 20, Hill was also told that the ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, a major Republican donor tapped by Trump for the coveted post in Brussels, was giving Zelenskiy unsolicited advice on who should be elevated to influential posts in his new administration, the individuals said. One of them said it struck the Ukrainians as "inappropriate."

  NBC

A bit of a sticky wicket for Mr. Sondland.  He'll be called back in.

Hill learned of Zelenskiy's concerns from former U.S. diplomat Amos Hochstein, now a member of Naftogaz's supervisory board. Hochstein had just returned from a pre-inauguration meeting with Zelenskiy and his advisers in Kyiv in which they discussed Giuliani's and Sondland's overtures and how to inoculate Ukraine from getting dragged into domestic U.S. politics.

Add another name to the list of witnesses.

The White House meeting also offers some of the first indications of what led Hill to conclude that Giuliani and Sondland were part of a squad running a "shadow Ukraine policy," as she later would testify to Congress.

Sondland and Energy Secretary Rick Perry also backed an effort to change the membership of Naftogaz's supervisory board, NBC News previously reported. The board includes four international members and three Ukrainian nationals. A person close to Sondland said he and Perry merely wanted changes to the governance and structure of Naftogaz's board needed to secure Western investment in Ukraine's energy industry.

"Merely".

Zelenskiy's May 7 Kyiv meeting with Hochstein and top aides in which he voiced dismay about Giuliani and Sondland included Andriy Kobolev, Naftogaz's CEO. It took place the day after the State Department announced then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was returning home ahead of schedule.

[...]

Yovanovitch's abrupt recall months ahead of schedule left no doubt for Zelenskiy and his aides that Giuliani's agenda had Trump's full backing and that his government would have to somehow address the demands for investigations and changes at Naftogaz, individuals familiar with the matter said.

[...]

"The message was clear: 'You better listen to us. If we tell you to investigate Biden, you better do it. Look at what happened to (Yovanovitch),'" said one individual familiar with the outlook of Zelenskiy's office at the time. "They saw that Giuliani went after her — and he won."

[...]

Zelenskiy, thrust into a precarious position by the impeachment proceedings against a president who still controls U.S. policy toward Ukraine, has publicly insisted his administration did not feel pressured.

But Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who visited Zelenskiy last month aiming to persuade him not to get dragged into the U.S. political fracas, said the young Ukrainian president simply can't afford to acknowledge publicly what was evident during his trip to Kyiv.

Not until 2021 at least.