Washington
Kurt Volker, the US special envoy for Ukraine, has resigned, according to a US official, becoming the first casualty in the rapidly growing impeachment crisis surrounding Donald Trump.
Volker is due to appear before Congress next week and was mentioned in the whistleblower complaint as helping Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy “navigate” Trump’s demands.
The news, first reported in an Arizona student newspaper, the State Press, emerged late on Friday, hours after Congress issued a subpoena to the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to hand over documents related to contacts the president and his lawyer had with the Ukrainian government.
It emerged this week that Volker had helped organise a meeting between Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and a Ukraine presidential aide. Giuliani was trying to convince Zelenskiy’s government to investigate the son of Joe Biden, Trump’s possible opponent in next year’s elections.— The Guardian
