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What Bolton's manuscript said about Ukraine aid
Summary
A look back at the report that surfaced on 26 January 2020 and the questions it raised for Kyiv and Washington.
What did the unpublished manuscript of John Bolton's book reveal about US military aid to Ukraine? By 27 January 2020, the day after the report emerged, that question was at the centre of the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal.
According to the account reported on 26 January 2020, the 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.
Why it mattered
The scandal arose from attempts to press Ukraine to investigate Biden, Trump's political rival in the 2020 election season. As later described, Trump had blocked payment of a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package, seeking 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 reported content linked the frozen aid directly to the investigations. For Kyiv, that placed security assistance at the heart of a dispute in American domestic politics.
