UCL SSEES Press Briefing Will Ukraine bring down Trump? Expert briefing 9 October 2019 BACKGROUND Viktor Shokin. However, “Shokin was not a wonderful, marvellous prosecutor.” He was Donald Trump faces impeachment charges obstructing rather than advancing corruption as he is once more embroiled in Eastern investigations into Ukrainian businesses, Europe. including Burisma. Joe Biden was only one of many calling for Shokin’s removal in 2016, Three UCL academics assess what happens and there was no obvious linkage to the next, looking at Ukraine's neglected point of Burisma case. So, the true germ in Trump’s view, the prospects for the impeachment accusations is “not more than 5%”, and many process in Washington, and the need for a claims of his team, such as the alleged new conceptual vocabulary in international interference of the Crowdstrike company in politics. the 2016 US presidential election, are completely made up. This briefing document provides a summary 2. Nevertheless, Trump’s claims pose serious of comments made by the three academics risks for Ukraine. Firstly, there is the danger during an event on 8 October 2019 at UCL that, for the foreseeable future, Ukraine will SSEES. Direct quotations are included within only be seen through the prism of the scandal speech marks. and become “too toxic to touch” for any US politician. Secondly, several competent US diplomats working on Ukraine (and Russia) UKRAINIAN DIMENSION have resigned or been forced out, namely Andrew Wilson, Professor of Ukrainian Kurt Volker, Fiona Hill, and the former US Studies, UCL SSEES (
[email protected]) ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.