Don’t drag us into Biden election row, Ukraine’s president pleads
The president of Ukraine has asked that his country be left out of the US presidential election after an MP published tapes apparently intended to embarrass Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Volodymyr Zelenskiy denied involvement in last month’s leak of conversations between Mr Biden and Petro Poroshenko, his predecessor as president, and told The Daily Telegraph that he did not want the scandal to undermine Ukraine’s strategic alliance with the US.
“Why is it necessary to drag Ukraine into this, again?” he said in an interview conducted over Skype. “Now we are enjoying bipartisan support in the United States … we have the support of the president. These tapes are not a priority.
“Ukraine doesn’t want to influence the internal … or external political situation in any country.”
Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian MP with close ties to Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s lawyer, last month published edited segments of phone conversations in 2015 between Mr Biden, who was then Barack Obama’s vice president, and Mr Poroshenko.
In the tapes Mr Biden is heard linking the release of $1billion (£810 million) in aid to the dismissal of Viktor Shokin, the then chief prosecutor who was widely alleged to be corrupt, although he denies such claims. Mr Biden has publicly discussed such talks in the past.
Mr Derkach claimed the tapes breathed life into an unsubstantiated theory that Mr Biden pressured Mr Poroshenko to block an investigation into a Ukrainian company where his son Hunter sat on the board. Mr Derkach used his privilege as an MP to request prosecutors open a criminal investigation into possible treason.
Mr Trump survived impeachment last year after it emerged he had asked Mr Zelenskiy to “look into” the theory, and strongly hinted that millions of dollars worth of military aid and an invitation to the White House would be withheld unless he obliged.
Mr Zelenskiy, 42, initially said when investigators opened their case last week that recordings could be “perceived, qualified as treason”. But he appeared to back-pedal on those remarks in an interview with The Telegraph, saying he had no view on the alleged conversation between Mr Poroshenko and Mr Biden and would not prejudge the investigation. “Look, I don’t know anything about the details of that agreement. And whether that agreement was reached or struck or even … existed,” he said. “The only thing I am interested in is how it was possible to eavesdrop, to tape the office of the president.”
Mr Poroshenko has denied wrongdoing and suggested Mr Zelenskiy himself may have leaked the tapes, which Mr Zelenskiy has denied.
Mr Biden has called the allegations a “nothing burger”.
Oleksandr Onishchenko, an exiled former MP facing allegations of political corruption, told Russian news agencies last week that he was the source of the tapes.
Mr Zelenskiy, a former comedian, defeated Mr Poroshenko by a landslide in April last year. His central promise, of ending the war with Russia and its proxies in the east of the country, has run up against an unresponsive Kremlin and resistance at home to any move that could be seen as surrender.
Critics have also accused him of giving top jobs to friends. He defends his record, but admits that the job has taken its toll. “I should admit that it is very tough, it is very responsible. You cannot even imagine what resistance there is. My family is living under a microscope,” he said. “And,” he added almost defiantly, “it is funny.”
Delicate talks with Russia have stalled “for maybe three months” due to the coronavirus pandemic, he said, adding: “None of the countries in the world now are handling political or geopolitical matters.”
He is proud of having brought home sailors and ships captured by Russia last year, and of persuading Vladimir Putin to put new impetus into longstalled talks on implementing the 2015 Minsk peace agreement.
“I talked to Putin on the phone … yes it brought a result, maybe not the one we would like to have, but still that was a rebuilding of the Minsk process because before they didn’t even want to meet,” he added.