Home › Opinion › Why Volker's resignation mattered to Kyiv
Why Volker's resignation mattered to Kyiv
Summary
A retrospective on the departure of the US special envoy to Ukraine, days after Washington opened an impeachment inquiry.
What did it mean when the United States special envoy to Ukraine stepped down? On 27 September 2019, Kurt Volker resigned, one day after the release of a whistleblower report concerning a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The timing placed the envoy's departure inside a fast-moving political crisis. On 24 September 2019, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had announced that a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump was under way. Within three days, the whistleblower report had been released and the person holding the Ukraine portfolio had left his post.
What it meant for Kyiv
The call between the two presidents had become the centre of a dispute in Washington, and Ukraine was drawn into it. The resignation of the special envoy removed the official responsible for the US relationship with Kyiv at a moment when that relationship was under scrutiny.
The implications went beyond one post. Ukraine's name was attached to a US domestic inquiry, and the envoy's exit showed how quickly the affair was reaching officials involved in policy towards the country.
A separate story the same week
Elsewhere in the region, on 23 September 2019, the World Anti-Doping Agency launched a probe into inconsistencies in laboratory results from Russia. It promised the most stringent sanctions if violations were found, and noted that Russia had earlier been banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics after a similar probe.
