In the Oval Office meeting with the then President of Ukraine petro poroshenko In 2017, Donald Trump asked his national security adviser whether US troops were in the Donbass, an area claimed by Russian-backed separatists, which Vladimir Putin used as the pretext of a full and bloody attack last month.
Describing the meeting in a new book, the then US ambassador UkraineMarie Yovanovitch, writes: “An affirmative answer to that question would imply that the United States was at war with Russia.”
Yovanovitch says: “I wondered whether it was better to interpret Trump’s question as the commander-in-chief thought it was possible that American troops were fighting a Russian-led force, or rather as an indicator In this the president was not clear which country was on the other side of the war against Ukraine.
“Either way, it was disappointing that he didn’t know where our soldiers – his soldiers – were stationed. I could only imagine what the Ukrainians were thinking.”
trump fired Yovanovitch In 2019, amid efforts to withdraw military aid to Ukraine in exchange for political dirt on Joe Biden and other rivals, a case that fueled Trump’s first impeachment.
Yovanovich described the Trump-Poroshenko meeting Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir, which will be published on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.
The book comes three weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, after which proxy war in the east of the country.
Yovanovitch also writes that Trump told Poroshenko that Ukraine was “a corrupt country, which he knew because a Ukrainian friend at Mar-a-Lago told him”.
Trump, she says, also said: “Crimea was Russian, because the local people spoke Russian”.
Russia Crimea annexed in 2014a trick that was never recognized International communityYovanovitch writes that Trump’s words were “quite surprising to hear from one head of state to another” but Trump rose to the top by asking his national security adviser, HR McMaster, if US troops were in the Donbass.
“Everyone puts on a poker face,” she writes.
echo description Regarding Trump’s preferred work techniques by many close aides, Yovanovitch says that Poroshenko deployed “visual aids, which Trump really liked” because he “deservedly pushed back” and made his case for support. Make. Construction.
Poroshenko requested the inclusion of Javelin anti-tank missiles in the security aide’s package. Trump was open to the idea, writes Yovanovitch. However, in 2019 there were reports of military ally on Biden and his attempt to stop the safe mess.
Yovanovich’s book follows Poroshenko’s successor, Volodymyr Zelensky, leading his country’s fight against the Russian invaders, his army. Using spears supplied by America and other weapons sent by the Allies.
Poroshenko’s meeting was brief and forms a small part of a book that tells the story of Yovanovitch involving Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, which led to his firing and Trump’s impeachment.
But his details of the meeting echoed from other sources, including John Bolton, McMaster’s successor as national security adviser, who showed Trump embarrassment and risked crashing into a face-to-face confrontation with world leaders.
David Friedman, Trump’s Ambassador to Israel recently revealed Trump risked disaster in an early meeting with his counterpart Reuven Rivlin, when he praised Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and criticized then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for unwilling to seek peace.
Trump’s remarks “dropped everyone off their chairs”, Friedman wrote.
It seems that the participants in the meeting with Poroshenko remained sitting.
Yovanovitch writes that he felt that “Trump was seeing Ukraine at the meeting as a ‘loser’ country, smaller and weaker than Russia”, only to be “slightly surprised by Poroshenko”, who was “in a physical similarity to Trump”. ” Was. Who was also “a billionaire businessman”.
Later At the meeting, Trump said that Ukraine is “a place that everyone is reading about”. Poroshenko told reporters that he was “satisfied with the outcome of the talks”, adding that the two leaders discussed military and technical cooperation.
Yovanovitch “hoped that Poroshenko had made the kind of favorable impression that would force Trump to reconsider his views of Ukraine and its importance to our strategic interests”.
However, she adds, “Trump’s obedience to Putin has been a cause of constant and persistent concern.”
In 2018, Trump staged An infamous summit with Putin in Helsink On which both the people talked in private for about two hours. Trump tells Putin to ‘move on’ after the press conferenceYovanovitch writes, which reduced his appetite.
“When Ukrainian media called,” she writes, “…we took this opportunity to reinforce that US policy was to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression”.
Five years after Trump met with Poroshenko, in his fight for survival with Ukraine, Trump hasn’t completely let go of his suspicions that US military might be in the country – a move that the Biden administration has clarified , will not be given. The potentially huge cost of a confrontation with Russia.
Last month, Trump misunderstood a Fox News host Faith American troops landed in Ukraine.
“You shouldn’t say that, because you and everyone else shouldn’t know about it,” said the former president. “They must do that in secret, not through the great Laura Ingraham.”
“No, they’re Russians,” Ingraham corrected him.
“Oh, I thought you said we were sending people in,” Trump said. “He’ll be next.”