‘No blackmail’ in call, Ukraine leader insists
help Ukraine battle Russianbacked separatists. Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry in Congress believe Trump held up the aid to use it as leverage to pressure Ukraine and advance his domestic political interests.
Responding to questions, Zelenskiy said he only learned after their phone call that the U.S. had blocked hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine.
“There was no blackmail,” he said. “We are not servants. We are an independent country.”
Zelenskiy also accused his predecessor of fomenting protests to derail a peace process for the country’s separatist-held east and said talks with Russia were the only way to end the five-year war there.
Zelenskiy said Petro Poroshenko, the incumbent leader he defeated in April, was “pushing” people to oppose the withdrawal of heavy weaponry in eastern Ukraine, where fighting against Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014.
“He is against the pullback and he thinks that he can spearhead another Maidan,” Zelenskiy said, referring to the square in the capital of Kyiv where protests in 2013 and 2014 ousted a pro-Russian government and eventually propelled Poroshenko into power.
“We want to end this war. I don’t think the previous government had quite the same desire,” he said.
Zelenskiy said he hoped his country’s people would back his efforts to end the conflict with the separatists.
Last week, Ukraine, Russia and the separatists signed a tentative agreement on guidelines for a local election and a weapons withdrawal in the east to pave the way for a muchanticipated four-way summit with Russia, Germany and France.
Poroshenko and some nationalist groups have cast the move as a capitulation to Moscow, and several dozen far-right Ukrainian activists and veterans traveled to the east this week vowing to stop the disengagement. Zelenskiy accused both separatists and veterans of trying to spoil peace efforts.
“As long as different people from both sides who don’t want the disengagement keep coming there and do random shooting, there won’t be any pullback,” he said.
Zelenskiy emphasized that the weapons pullback was a key condition for holding the fourway summit, which has no date set yet.
Zelenskiy met with journalists in groups of 10 on the second floor of a food hall built in an old factory in Ukraine’s capital. While he fielded questions in Ukrainian, Russian and English from journalists sitting with him around a table, others sat below eating.
The July call embarrassed the 41-year-old president because it showed him as eager to please Trump and critical of European partners whose support he needs to strengthen Ukraine’s economy and to end the conflict with Russia.
Zelenskiy said it was “wrong” of the White House to publish a rough transcript of the call and he will not publish the Ukrainian transcript.
Trump tweeted Thursday that Zelenskiy’s comment that there was no blackmail during the July call “should immediately end the talk of impeachment!”