What 23 October 2019 meant for Kyiv

What did Ukraine have to do with a courtroom in New York and a congressional hearing room in Washington? On 23 October 2019, the answer ran through a scandal in which Kyiv was a subject, not a participant.

On that date, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two associates of Rudy Giuliani, the personal lawyer of U.S. President Donald Trump, pleaded not guilty at a hearing in New York City. They were charged with funnelling $350,000 in illegal donations to a pro-Trump political committee and another $20,000 to former Republican Congressman Pete Sessions. The charges said they had acted on behalf of at least one Ukrainian government official. The two had aided Giuliani in a search in Ukraine for detrimental information on Trump's political opponents.

Testimony from the day before

The hearing followed testimony given on 22 October 2019 by William B. Taylor Jr., then acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, in the impeachment inquiry into Trump. Taylor told Congress that he had been informed Trump would withhold military aid to Ukraine, to help his reelection chances, until the country publicly declared that investigations would be launched. These concerned Burisma Holdings, which had hired Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, and Ukraine's alleged involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The wider scandal

As later described, the affair arose from Trump's attempts to press Ukraine into investigating his rival Joe Biden. It involved a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package that Trump blocked, and a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019.

A separate Ukrainian report

The same date brought unrelated news from Ukraine. Kyiv released the final report into the Yirol crash of a Let L-410 Turbolet, prepared by South Sudan. It concluded that mistakes by the crew and in maintenance, together with poor weather, combined to cause the crash.