Zelensky has no intention of meeting Giuliani
President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, whose work in Ukraine is at the heart of US impeachment proceedings, is back in the country
and officials in Kiev appear to be keeping their distance.
People with knowledge of his trip say Giuliani flew into Kiev from Budapest last Wednesday, the same day that US hearings stemming from his shadow diplomacy in Ukraine started in the House of Representatives judiciary committee.
Social media postings show him meeting current and previous Ukrainian political figures as part of a cable news documentary series that is critical of the US impeachment inquiry.
But Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky will not be meeting Giuliani, according to the president’s spokesperson.
Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian billionaire who had ties to Zelensky, also said he was not planning to meet Giuliani.
Zelensky’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, met Giuliani twice in Kiev in 2017. He, too, said through a spokesperson that he had no plans to see Giuliani during his trip.
Andry Yermak, an aide to Zelensky who featured in the House’s impeachment report, was in London for a conference on Ukraine. He too said he too was not meeting Giuliani.
Giuliani has been accompanied in Kiev by Andry Telizhenko, a Ukrainian who worked at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington in 2016 and is the source of unsubstantiated allegations that his country interfered in the 2016 US election.
Telizhenko, who featured in the first episode of the documentary series on the One America News Network, declined to comment on the meetings, citing security issues.
PROSECUTOR-GENERAL
Others who have figured in Giuliani’s Ukraine overtures in the past year former prosecutors Viktor Shokin and Kostyantyn Kulyk did not respond to requests for comment on whether they would be meeting Trump’s lawyer.
In a Facebook post, Telizhenko said Giuliani would meet Shokin and former Ukraine prosecutor-general Yuri Lutsenko.
Giuliani’s decision to travel to Kiev to meet some key people in the impeachment saga comes after months of public testimony in Washington about his backchannelling in Ukraine.
Reporters in Kiev rushed to the Fairmont Grand Hotel, which declined to comment on whether he was staying there.
With his visit, Giuliani appears to be doubling down on his efforts to dig up dirt in Ukraine on political opponents of Trump.
He met, among others, Andry Derkach, a Ukrainian parliamentarian who wrote to Giuliani beseeching him to support criminal justice reform in the country an effort that could help Giuliani take on the mantle of corruption fighter rather than dirt digger.
Meanwhile, Zelensky’s government is pursuing its own anticorruption efforts.
Giuliani’s visit to Kiev coincided with a visit by Philip
Reeker, the acting US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.
On the same day Giuliani met former Ukraine prosecutorgeneral Yuri Lutsenko who is accused of corruption in the House impeachment report Reeker met Ruslan Ryaboshapka, Zelensky’s new prosecutor-general, to discuss changes to the country’s law enforcement structures.
“The new prosecutor office will be orientated at society’s trust,” Ryaboshhapka’s office said in a written statement.
“It must be effective and fair,” it said.