What Ukraine faced in the days before 26 October 2019

What was being said about Ukraine in the days leading up to 26 October 2019? Three reports from 22 and 23 October gave the picture, two tied to a U.S. political scandal and one to a final air-crash report.

On 22 October 2019, William B. Taylor Jr., the acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, testified before Congress in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. He said he had been told that President Trump would, to help his reelection chances, withhold military aid to Ukraine until the country publicly declared that investigations would be launched. The investigations concerned Burisma Holdings, a company that had hired Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, and Ukraine's alleged involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The next day, 23 October 2019, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman pleaded not guilty at a hearing in New York City. Both were associates of Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, and had aided his search in Ukraine for detrimental information on the president's political opponents. They were charged with funnelling $350,000 in illegal donations to a pro-Trump political committee and a further $20,000 to former Republican Congressman Pete Sessions, while acting on behalf of at least one Ukrainian government official.

The wider scandal, as later described, arose from attempts to press Ukraine into investigating Biden. It involved a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package that was blocked, and a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019.

A separate report on an air disaster

Also on 23 October 2019, Ukraine released the final report into the Yirol crash of a Let L-410 Turbolet. The report was prepared by South Sudan. It concluded that mistakes by both the crew and maintenance, together with poor weather, combined to cause the crash.