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Giuliani raid and Central Asian ceasefire in focus
Summary
A look back at two separate developments reported around 3 May 2021, one touching Ukraine's place in US politics and one on a Central Asian border.
What links a raid on a lawyer's home in the United States to a border ceasefire in Central Asia? Little beyond the timing: both were in the news around 3 May 2021, and only one concerned Ukraine.
On 28 April 2021, federal investigators raided the home of Rudy Giuliani, the former personal lawyer of former President Donald Trump. The suspicion was illegal lobbying of the federal government on behalf of Ukrainian officials. The raid fell within the wider story of the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal.
That scandal arose from Trump's attempts to press Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden. Giuliani was among the surrogates Trump enlisted for that effort. A congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package was blocked, and contacts between the White House and Kyiv culminated in a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019. The raid in April 2021 showed that the legal scrutiny of Giuliani's Ukraine-related activity was continuing, on the suspicion of lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian officials.
A separate border crisis
On 1 May 2021, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan agreed a new ceasefire after border clashes. The deal included withdrawing troops from the border. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged both countries to honour the agreement.
The two stories were unconnected, but together they marked the period: one a US legal action with a Ukrainian dimension, the other a regional effort, with Moscow's public backing, to hold a fragile truce.
