Trump defenders say couldn't have been extorting because the Ukrainians didn't even know about the aid being withheld.
Although some US diplomats have testified that they did know, the Trump cabal has insisted they didn't. Actually, we have a Ukrainian official weighing in.
As deputy foreign minister, it was Olena Zerkal’s job to read incoming diplomatic cables from embassies around the world. One from Washington caught her eye back in July, she recalled: It said the Trump administration had frozen military aid for Ukraine.
“We had this information,” Ms. Zerkal said in an interview. “It was definitely mentioned there were some issues.”
[...]
The Ukrainian presidential administration was copied as a recipient of the cable from the embassy in Washington, she said, adding: “We received it simultaneously.”
[...]
The timing of when Ukraine knew of the hold on the military aid is a critical question in the impeachment hearings in Congress.
Mr. Trump and his allies have also made the timing issue part of his defense. How could Ukrainian officials feel the pressure of the aid freeze, they ask, if they did not know about it when the White House was pushing them to investigate Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., one of Mr. Trump’s biggest challengers in the 2020 American presidential election?
“They didn’t even know the money wasn’t paid,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter last month.
Ms. Zerkal’s account is the first public acknowledgment by a Ukrainian official that senior figures in Kyiv knew about the aid freeze during the Trump administration’s pressure campaign — and that the Zelensky administration sought to keep that fact from surfacing to avoid getting drawn into the American impeachment debate.
She said her own government blocked a trip she had planned to Washington to meet members of Congress in October, worried she would discuss matters related to impeachment and drag its president into an inquiry he has been eager to avoid.
[...]
Mr. Zelensky, whose government is still dependent on the Trump administration for aid and diplomatic backing, has said he did not learn of the aid freeze until before a meeting with Vice President Mike Pence on Sept. 1, though he has been vague about exactly when.
with the aid as early as July 25, the day Mr. Trump spoke with the Ukrainian president by phone and asked him to investigate his rivals.
[...]
Ms. Zerkal, who said she resigned from her post last week to protest her government’s back channel diplomacy with both the Trump administration last summer and Russia this fall, provided an insider’s account of when senior officials in Kyiv learned of the freeze, and how they tried to keep the information from becoming public.
WaPo
How the hell did I miss this story?
Her account is backed by Laura K. Cooper, the American deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, who said in Congressional testimony during the impeachment inquiry that Ukrainian diplomats knew about the aid freeze at least by July 25, when they began to question United States officials about it. Did anyone bring it up in the House Manager's presentation?
That was the same day Mr. Trump spoke by phone with Mr. Zelensky and asked the Ukrainian leader to do him the “favor” of investigating the activities of Mr. Biden and his son.
[...]
Later, as the impeachment inquiry ramped up in the United States, Mr. Zelensky’s administration tried to squelch information that could embarrass or undercut Mr. Trump, Ms. Zerkal said.
At a meeting in September, Ms. Zerkal said, a senior aide to Mr. Zelensky told her to “keep silent” and avoid news media inquires on any topic.
[...]
“His main message to me was to keep silent, to not comment without permission,” Ms. Zerkal said of the aide to Mr. Zelensky, Andriy Yermak, who asked that she keep a low profile on all matters, not just those related to the United States. “They are in a very tricky situation and they understand this.”
[...]
The Zelensky administration, Ms. Zerkal said, is most concerned about placating Mr. Trump, having decided that the impeachment inquiry will fail in the Senate and that Mr. Trump could be re-elected.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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