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What the Giuliani raid meant for Ukraine ties
Summary
A retrospective on the late-April 2021 search of Rudy Giuliani's home and the regional news that surrounded it.
What did the search of Rudy Giuliani's home mean for Ukraine's place in US politics as of 3 May 2021? The raid itself came on 28 April 2021, when federal investigators searched the home of Giuliani, the former personal lawyer of former President Donald Trump. They were investigating suspected illegal lobbying of the federal government on behalf of Ukrainian officials.
The link to the 2019 scandal
The episode was tied to the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal. That affair arose from Trump's attempts to press Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden. Giuliani was among the surrogates Trump enlisted to apply that pressure, alongside Attorney General William Barr. The scandal also involved the blocking of a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package, and it culminated in a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019.
The 2021 raid concerned suspected lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian officials rather than the aid freeze or the call. Even so, it showed that the legal consequences of the Ukraine affair were still unfolding almost two years later.
A busy regional picture
Elsewhere in the region, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan agreed on 1 May 2021 to a new ceasefire after border clashes. The deal includes withdrawing troops from the border. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged both countries to honour it.
The two stories were unrelated, but together they marked the start of May 2021: a US investigation reaching into the Ukraine affair, and a ceasefire on a Central Asian frontier that Moscow was publicly keen to see upheld.
