Kurt Volker's resignation as US envoy to Ukraine
A retrospective on the departure of Washington's special envoy, days after a formal impeachment inquiry was announced.
What did it mean when the United States special envoy to Ukraine stepped down amid a gathering political storm? On 27 September 2019, Kurt Volker resigned from the post, one day after the release of a whistleblower report concerning a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The resignation followed quickly on events in Washington. On 24 September 2019, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that a formal impeachment inquiry had been launched into Trump. Within three days, the envoy responsible for Ukraine policy had left his position.
For Kyiv, the episode meant that a phone call between two presidents had become the subject of an American impeachment inquiry, and that the US special envoy to Ukraine was no longer in his post. Volker's departure was one more development in a sequence that moved from the call, to the whistleblower report, to the inquiry, in the space of a few days.
