In his first major interview since President Donald Trump was acquitted of two impeachment articles earlier this month, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back on Trump’s claims that Ukraine was corrupt and said he was willing to talk with the president again.
During an interview at the Munich Security Conference, Zelensky told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that Trump’s claims of widespread corruption in Ukraine were “not true.”
“That’s not true,” Zelensky said, when Amanpour read him comments from an interview Trump gave last November with “Fox and Friends” where he called Ukraine the “third-most corrupt country” in the world.
“When I had a meeting with President Trump, and he said that in previous years [Ukraine] was such a corrupt country, I told him and was very open with him, I told him that we fight with corruption, we fight each day,” Zelensky said.
Zelensky added he wanted to “change this image” of Ukraine as a “corrupt country” because “it’s not true.”
Democrats allege Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to open politically motivated investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden by withholding military aid and a White House meeting from Ukraine. The second impeachment charge, obstruction of Congress, stemmed from allegations Trump obstructed Congress by stonewalling congressional investigations.
Trump has repeatedly called Ukraine “corrupt” despite Zelensky’s previous, forceful denials.
During the impeachment inquiry, special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker told lawmakers that behind closed doors Trump said “Ukraine was a corrupt country, full of ‘terrible people.'”
During the impeachment trial, Trump’s attorneys and Senate Republicans had defended his conduct by citing what Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow called the president’s concerns about the “issue of corruption in Ukraine.”
Zelensky, on the other hand, has said a focus on impeachment and corruption draws attention to problems in Ukraine.
In a December 2019 interview with TIME, Zelensky said Trump’s insistence Ukraine was corrupt was not a helpful “signal” from America to the world.
“The United States of America is a signal, for the world, for everyone. When America says, for instance, that Ukraine is a corrupt country, that is the hardest of signals,” he told the magazine.
“It’s not that those things don’t exist. They do. All branches of government were corrupted over many years, and we are working to clean that up. But that signal from them is very important,” Zelensky said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gloated over the focus on problems in Ukraine.
“Thank God no one is accusing us of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore,” Putin said at a November 2019 economic forum in Moscow, according to the Associated Press. “Now they’re accusing Ukraine,” he said, referring to a debunked conspiracy theory some Republicans floated to defend Trump during the impeachment trial.
Despite the controversy surrounding a White House meeting between Trump and Zelensky, the Ukraine president told CNN he still wanted to talk with Trump.
Ukraine has a “very good relationship with the US,” Zelensky said, later adding, “If this way will help Ukraine, I am ready for the next call with Mr. Trump.”
In his remarks at the Munich Security Conference, Zelensky also extended an invitation to Trump to visit Kiev, the Associated Press reported.
Contributing: Deidre Shesgreen
(c) USA Today
“Zelensky added he wanted to “change this image” of Ukraine as a “corrupt country” because “it’s not true.”
I didn’t know there were two countries in the world called Ukraine, guess you must be living in the other one. The one I live in is rotten to the core. Coming out with BS like this will do your credibilty no good whatsoever.
I believe you grabbed the wrong picture F1, that is the disgraced CNN hero Avanatti.
It was the image on the article.
Understood. Just more lazy journalism on their part.
Great. Denying corruption instead of fighting corruption…
Be easier to say who isn’t corrupt in Ukraine.
All people entrusted with fighting corruption should be former FBI and Interpol employees, not ukrainians.
Well, it is the post-truth era.
Facts do not matter anymore, especially to Trump.
The reality doesn’t matter anymore, people just believe want they want to believe.
Let him who is without sin….
Trump will not reveal his tax affairs and has done more corrupt deals over the years than you can shake a stick at. He and his father before him did loads of business with the Mob, Hoffa and corrupt foreign regimes. Trump junior even boasted of the level of Russian investment in the family business. The Trumps would of course have known for years that the Mob, oligarchs, spooks and govt are interchangeable in putlerstan.
Then we come to the EU, possibly one of the most corrupt organisations in the world. So corrupt that it is completely unable to produce an audited set of accounts.
With tackle corruption, Trump means a specific person he accuses of corruption. It is mob language he is using. I don’t believe Trump is concerned with corruption in Ukraine, if he did, he would have at least Googled the international corruption ranking.
Ukraine isn’t among the most corrupt states in the world, but that says more about the world than about Ukraine, which indeed is rotten to the core.
I do believe Zelensky wants to do something about it, but I think he needs to fire some people. Sytnyk in NABU is corrupt as hell and incompetent, and Avakov is also anything but trustworthy.
The only way to sort corruption out in Ukraine, is by setting an example, and there are plenty to choose from. Problem is they are all in the pig trough together.
Zelensky would be well-advised to look at the corruption index list before saying such rubbish.