User:JzG/Ukraine timeline

Dramatis personæ

 * Viktor Yanukovych was the massively corrupt President of Ukraine from 25 February 2010 to 22 February 2014. His "Party of Regions" was backed by Russia. Yanukovych, usually regarded as a Russian asset, hired Paul Manafort as a political consultant in 2004, and Manafort held this role until after Yanukovych's election. According to the FBI, Manafort continued to be paid by Ukrainian oligarchs between 2010 and 2014.
 * Viktor Pshonka was Prosecutor General of Ukraine November 3, 2010 – February 22, 2014.
 * Mykola Zlochevsky was energy minister of Ukraine July 2, 2010 – April 20, 2012; he owns or controls Burisma Holdings (an offshore holding company); it owns substantial natural gas rights in Ukraine.
 * Petro Poroshenko was President of Ukraine 7 June 2014 – 20 May 2019. He took measures to reduce oligarchy and corruption.
 * Viktor Shokin was the corrupt Prosecutor General of Ukraine 10 February 2015 – 29 March 2016 who was ousted after street protests.
 * Dmytro Firtash is a Ukrainian oligarch and alleged Russian mob associate currently under house arrest in Austria and fighting extradition to the US.
 * John Solomon is a journalist formerly of the Washington Post, subsequently the right wing Washington Times, now working for The Hill, who played a critical role in promoting the Republican narrative over Ukraine (New Yorker, WaPo, PolitiFact, Media Matters). Mainstream and partisan-left sources align on the facts here. Much of the digging is by Jane Mayer, a respected investigative journalist.
 * Lev Parnas is a Russian-born US citizen currently under indictment for campaign finance fraud, who Trump insists he does not know despite dozens of pictures and videos of the two together, including a 1 hour 24 minute recording by Igor Fruman of a select dinner with Trump which Parnas attended (this is the one where Trump demanded that Yovanovich be "taken out").

It's complicated
Any discussion of the people and connections involved sounds like the introduction to an episode of Soap. Parnas and Fruman are variously clients and employers of Rudy Giuliani, they are connected to Shokin and Poroshenko and probably Zlochevsky, and certainly Firtash. Lev and Igor were fleeing to Austria on one-way tickets when arrested, and Rudy has also spent significant time there. Firtash appears to be right in the middle of it all. The "Ukraine hacked 2016" narrative comes straight from the Kremlin and has been fed back into the right-wing media bubble in the US by Solomon and Giuliani among others. It's hard to trust anything Republicans say about Ukraine because it requires you to believe that objectively shady people are right and career diplomats including decorated veterans are all wrong - much like the conservative spin on the Mueller report, in fact, which relies on a sinister conspiracy involving multiple top level leaders of the FBI and CIA to discredit people like Paul Manafort, who, to any impartial observer, would appear to be self-discrediting. Even the conservative National Review has written about the conservative Ukraine narrative and why it's bogus.

It's simple
Donald Trump welcomed Russian interference on his behalf in 2015/16. Mueller documented this. The documented fact of his campaign's collusion with Russia is a thorn in his side: he sees it as undermining the legitimacy of his victory. He is correct in this assessment: he lost the popualr vote by the largest margin of any victorious candidate since the two-party system became settled, and won the electoral college due to 77,000 votes spread across three states which were all extensively targeted by Russian troll farms and by his own social media operatives using data stolen from Facebook by Cambridge Analytica. Russia hacked and then distributed emails from Podesta and the DNC, which reinforced the narrative of "but her emails" - a narrative of malfeasance which, we now know, was baseless.

In Trump world, it's always 2016. He's never stopped fighting Hillary Clinton and he's never really stopped campaigning. It's reasonable to conclude that he is deeply insecure about the narrowness of his victory, his dependence on factors which may well not be present in 2020, and his consistent unpopularity. Under the circumstances it's entirely obvious why he would turn a blind eye to Russian interference on his behalf, seek dirt on his most-feared opponent by whatever means he can get it, and attack anyone who points this out. As Adam Schiff noted, no one is really making the argument Donald Trump would never do such a thing, because of course we know that he would. Schiff argues, based on the available evidence, that Trump not only would do these things, but that he did do them. To date, no credible alternative theory has been advanced. It's the classic Trump cycle of I didn't do it / I did it but it was perfect / So what, who's going to stop me?

Timeline

 * From 2012, Shokin siezed control of, and slow-walked or shut down, investigations into a number of prominent Ukrainian oligarchs and companies, notably Zlochevsky and Burisma. The Obama administration considered running their own criminal investigation into potential money laundering by Burisma.
 * In April 2014, Burisma hired Devon Archer, a former aide to John Kerry, and Hunter Biden, as directors, most likely to curry favour with the US, then a Democratic (Obama) administration.
 * At the end of 2014 Zlochevsky fled Ukraine amid allegations of unlawful self enrichment and legalization of funds.
 * In December 2015 Joe Biden visited Ukraine in to convey the US policy decision that $1bn in loan guarantees would be withheld if Poroshenko did not fire Shokin.
 * Shokin was fired by the Ukrainian parliament in April 2016.
 * On 12 May 2016, Yuriy Lutsenko was appointed Prosecutor General of Ukraine. Lutsenko had been imprisoned while Yanukovich was President, but was pardoned by Yanukovich after evidence emerged of corruption in his prosecution by Pshonka.
 * On August 29, 2016 Marie Yovanovich was appointed US Ambassador to Ukraine, replacing Geoffrey R. Pyatt.
 * At the end of 2016 a court in London unfroze Zlochevsky assets due to lack of evidence.
 * In 2017, Robert Livingston,a Republican lobbyist and former congressman, began lobbying the US State Department to remove Yovanovich, whom he characterised as an "Obama holdover"
 * In December 2017 the Ukrainian investigation of Zlochevsky was closed without charges.
 * In February 2018 Zlochevsky returned to Ukraine
 * In April 2018, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman told Donald Trump that Yovanovich was "unfriendly" to him (Trump is known to value loyalty more than perhaps anything else) and should be fired.
 * On April 18 2018, recordings emerged of Zlochevsky and Poroshenko which implied graft.
 * On 21 April 2019, Poroshenko was defeated by Volodymyr Zelensky in the Ukrainian elections. Zelensky was sworn in on 20 May 2019.
 * In May 2018, Parnas told Pete Sessions, a Republican congressman and chair of the House Rules Committee, that Yovanovich should be fired. Sessions wrote a letter in his official capacity recommending this. Parnas and Fruman have been indicted for making substantial illegal contributions to both Sessions' campaign and Donald Trump's PAC.
 * On June 15, 2018 the closure of the investigation against Zlochevsky was annulled. He is currently in Monaco.
 * On July 19, 2019, Gordon Sondland, a hotelier who had donated $1m to Trump's inaugural, was installed as United States Ambassador to the European Union. This position is usually but not always held by a career diplomat.
 * Some time in 2018, Parnas and Fruman hired Rudy Giuliani.
 * In November / December 2018 Parnas and Fruman introduced Giuliani to Shokin and Lutsenko and proposed the creation of a narrative implicating the Bidens.
 * In November 2018, Lutsenko tried to resign but his resignation was refused on 9 November.
 * In January 2019 Giuliani met again with Lutsenko, again questioning Yovanovitch’s loyalty and pressing him for investigations
 * In February 2019, Yovanovich was warned about Giuliani's activities.
 * In February 2019, impeachment proceedings were launched against Poroshenko.
 * On February 15 the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2019 (H.J.Res. 31) was passed, incorporating the remaining appropriations bills and thus funding aid to Ukraine.
 * On February 28, the administration told Congress that the aid would be released.
 * In early March 2019, Yovanovich's tour of duty in Ukraine was extended for an additional year.
 * In March 2019, conservative columnist John Solomon published an interview with Lutsenko in which he claimed that Yovanovich was an obstacle to anti-corruption efforts.
 * By the end of March 2019 the smear campaign against Yovanovich had been picked up by Sean Hannity and others.
 * In late March 2019 Giuliani gave Mike Pompeo a file on Yovanovich claiming she was "close" to the Bidens and had tried to obstruct investigations. These false claims did not survive the Republican cross-examination of Yovanovich in the impeachment hearings.
 * In late April 2019 Yovanovich was recalled to the US.
 * On May 1, Giuliani's Biden narrative was picked up by the New York Times.
 * At some point presumably in late April or early May, aid to Ukraine was held by the White House.
 * On May 23 the White House again told Congress that aid would be released. No explanation was offered for the delay.
 * On June 18, William B. Taylor, Jr. was appointed acting US Ambassador to Ukraine.
 * In Mid-July, Mick Mulvaney (acting White House chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget) told the State Department and Pentagon that Trump wanted the money withheld because he had "concerns" about its necessity. Those departments were instructed to inform members of Congress with questions about the delay that disbursement had been held up by "interagency process."
 * On July 10, Ukrainian officials visited the White House. In one of the meetings surrounding this, John Bolton became aware that aid was being withheld contingent on a public announcement of an investigation into the Bidens, and terminated the meeting.
 * On July 25 2019, Trump spoke with Zelensky by phone and asked for a "favour" - he mentioned Biden by name, referenced the Crowdstrike conspiracy theory, and did not use the word corruption.
 * On July 26, Kurt Volker and Sondland met with Zelensky in Kiiv. According to Whistleblower 2 they advised Zelensky what was required of him by Trump. On the same day, Pentagon officials began attempts to legally justify holding the aid.
 * On August 1, Giuliani met with an aide to Zelensky
 * On August 12, the first whistleblower complaint was filed.
 * On August 29, Ukraine raised concerns about aid.
 * On September 1 Sondland told Yermak that there would be no aid without investigations; Taylor raised concerns about Ukraine aid.
 * On September 9, Taylor raised concerns about aid again; Intelligence Commuity IG Michael Atkinson informed HPSCI chair Adam Schiff and ranking member Devin Nunes of an "urgent concern" - i.e. the WB1 complaint.
 * On September 11, the White House lifted the freeze on aid.