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What the Bolton manuscript meant for Kyiv
Summary
A look back at the reported claim, dated 1 February 2020, that US military aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations of political rivals.
What did a leaked manuscript change for Ukraine on 1 February 2020? Days earlier, on 26 January 2020, it was reported that an unpublished manuscript of former National Security Advisor John Bolton's book, The Room Where It Happened, said President Donald Trump had told him that unfreezing military aid to Ukraine depended on Ukraine carrying out investigations into Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
The claim placed Kyiv at the centre of a dispute in Washington that was already known as the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal. That scandal arose from attempts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Biden, a rival of Trump for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
The aid at issue was a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package. Trump blocked payment of it, in what was described as an attempt to obtain cooperation from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Contacts between the White House and the Ukrainian government culminated in a phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019.
The manuscript's account, as reported on 26 January 2020, tied the frozen aid directly to the investigations. For Ukraine, the question was not only one of money: the reported conditions concerned US domestic politics, and Ukraine was the country being asked to act.
