Ukraine: All roads lead to Rudy Giuliani

From US President Donald Trump's personal attorney, a live-action gaffer on TV, to the centerpiece of the Ukrainian scandal. Rudy Giuliani is in the crosshairs of the elected Democrats in the House of Representatives. They summoned him as part of their investigation into an impeachment of the US president on Monday (September 30th).

The Democrats' interest in the president's lawyer can be understood: the name of Rudy Giuliani appears 31 times in the complaint filed by the whistleblower who is behind the parliamentary investigation against Donald Trump. The latter has also repeatedly urged his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenski to contact his lawyer, during the now famous phone call during which the US President urges his interlocutor to reopen an investigation that could harm his political rival Joe Biden.

Also read on France 24: Understanding the Ukrainian case behind the "impeachment" procedure against Trump

Ukrainian fiber since 2004

The list of documents that Democrats hope to get from Rudy Giuliani before October 15 illustrates the extent of ties between the former mayor of New York and Ukraine. The elected officials want to know everything about his talks with Donald Trump about the Ukrainian president, Rudy Giuliani's many trips to Ukraine, his Ukrainian business relations, meetings with relatives of Ukrainian authorities, and nature. of his relations with the mayor of Kiev Vitali Klitschko.

"If we're here, it's because of Rudy. This mess is the result of his involvement in this case, "said a senior US official at the Washington Post. The former mayor of New York has been interested in Ukraine since 2004 as part of his collaboration with Triglobal, a company that boasts of connecting the powerful of this world. This activity leads Rudy Giuliani to make at least one speech in Ukraine, then to advise, from 2008, former boxer Vitali Klitschko, who will manage to become mayor of Kiev a few years later.

"'Rudy - he did all of this,' one US official said. 'This shitshow that we're in - it's getting us into the process.' "Https://t.co/Yr3lT54MUF

It maintains this Ukrainian fiber for nearly 10 years, and in 2017 events accelerate. Rudy Giuliani, who becomes Donald Trump's personal lawyer that year, meets Pavel Fuks, a Russian-Ukrainian oligarch who hires him to have the former mayor of New York promote his hometown, Kharkiv, to American investors. It is this businessman, along with two other Russian-Ukrainian clients of Rudy Giuliani, who will put him on the trail of the deposed Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin and the activities of Joe Biden's son.

The track of the deposed prosecutor and Joe Biden

Rudy Giuliani will have a phone interview with Viktor Shokin in 2018, and will also meet his successor, Yuriy Lutsenko twice. Donald Trump's personal attorney then becomes convinced that his boss has any interest in putting back on the front of the media old allegations that Joe Biden has sent Viktor Shokin away to prevent him from investigating Burisma. gas who used his son. In fact, Viktor Shokin's calls for resignation did not come only from the Obama administration, but also from other governments who accused the prosecutor of being too lax about corruption.

Petro Poroshenko, then president of Ukraine, would have also favored a new investigation Burisma, tells the Washington Post. Again, it seems that Rudy Giuliani played a role in winning his favor. He notably removed a thorn by urging Donald Trump to recall the US ambassador to Ukraine in New York. She had irritated Petro Poroshenko by accusing him of running out of control in the fight against corruption.

Everything changed when, in April 2019, Volodymyr Zelenski replaced Petro Poroshenko as head of state. Rudy Giuliani must then start from scratch or almost to convince the new men in power to help Donald Trump to discredit his Democratic rival. Rudy Giuliani is suspected of having put in place what the US media has called a "Ukrainian diplomatic agenda of the shadows" that allowed him to bypass traditional diplomatic channels.

On whose order?

He first tried to meet Volodymyr Zelenski in May, shortly before his official entry into office to avoid protocol problems. The former mayor of New York has no official role in the American diplomatic apparatus. But under pressure from the media and congressional Democrats, he finally gave up his plans.

That did not prevent him, a few weeks later, from meeting in Spain one of the main advisers of the new Ukrainian president. He went there to urge Kiev "to investigate this damn case" concerning Joe Biden, acknowledged Rudy Giuliani on Fox News. Pressed by the media to justify how Donald Trump's personal attorney is taking steps that have all the appearance of diplomatic journeys, Rudy Giuliani claimed to have acted on the request of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's office. A version of the facts challenged by American diplomats unwilling to give the impression that Washington was putting its diplomatic power at the service of Donald Trump's personal ambitions.

In Ukraine, the role of Rudy Giuliani is not in doubt. "He is perceived as a little celebrity here, as if he was an extension of Donald Trump and the best possible link with the US administration," told the Wall Street Journal an advisor to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Ukrainian Parliament.

It is therefore impossible for American Democrats to ignore Rudy Giuliani if ​​they want to better understand the underpinnings of this Ukrainian affair, thanks to which they hope to bring down Donald Trump. The former mayor of New York still has to agree to appear before the House of Representatives. He seems more than reluctant, likening this summons to "McCarthyism", the time when the American administration was hunting Communists.