KYIV, Ukraine — As deputy foreign minister, it was Olena Zerkal’s job to read incoming diplomatic cables from embassies around the world.
One from Washington caught her eye back in July, she recalled: It said the Trump administration had frozen military aid for Ukraine.
“We had this information,” Ms. Zerkal said in an interview. “It was definitely mentioned there were some issues.”
The timing of when Ukraine knew of the hold on the military aid is a critical question in the impeachment hearings in Congress. Democrats are trying to build a case that President Trump pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky by withholding the aid and a White House meeting — at the same time he was pressing for a public announcement that Ukraine would investigate his political rivals.
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Ukraine raised concerns about a hold on military aid on the same day as Donald Trump’s infamous phone call with its president, a Pentagon official told the impeachment inquiry on Wednesday.
The evidence from Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defence, knocks down a key pillar of the White House’s defence: that Ukraine was unaware of the suspension of nearly $400m in security assistance until a much later date.
Cooper told
the House intelligence committee that her staff received an email on 25 July from the state department saying that Ukraine’s embassy and the House foreign affairs committee were asking about military aid.
“On July 25, a member of my staff got a question from a Ukraine embassy contact asking what was going on with Ukraine security assistance,” Cooper testified. “Because at that time we did not know what the guidance was … I was informed that the staff member told the Ukrainian official that we were moving forward but recommended that the Ukraine embassy check in with state [department]”.
Asked later if the question referred specifically to the suspended aid, Cooper confirmed: “There was an awareness of that and there was an expression of concern.”