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What did the Giuliani raid mean for Kyiv?
Summary
A look back at the US investigation touching Ukrainian officials, reported in the days before 3 May 2021, and a ceasefire in Central Asia.
What was the political picture around Ukraine on 3 May 2021? One thread ran through Washington: on 28 April 2021, federal investigators raided the home of Rudy Giuliani, the former personal lawyer of former President Donald Trump. The reported suspicion was illegal lobbying of the federal government on behalf of Ukrainian officials.
The Ukrainian link
The raid belonged to the wider 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal. That affair arose from attempts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden, Trump's political rival. Giuliani was one of the surrogates enlisted for that effort, alongside Attorney General William Barr. The background also records that a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package was blocked, and that contacts between the White House and the Ukrainian government led to a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019.
The April 2021 raid concerned lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian officials rather than the aid package itself. It showed that the consequences of the 2019 affair were still unfolding in US legal channels, more than a year and a half after the call.
A regional note
Elsewhere in the region, on 1 May 2021, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan agreed a new ceasefire after border clashes. The agreement includes withdrawing troops from the border. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged both countries to honour it.
The two stories are unrelated, but together they marked the period: a legal inquiry in the United States that touched Ukraine, and a diplomatic effort, with Moscow's voice prominent, to hold a fragile truce on another post-Soviet frontier.
