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On August 28, 2019, Politico first reported that President Trump had implemented a hold on nearly $400 million of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine that had been appropriated by Congress.

Almost immediately after the news became public, Ukrainian officials expressed alarm to their American counterparts. Mr. Yermak sent Ambassador Volker a link to the Politico story and then texted: “Need to talk with you.”861 Other Ukrainian officials also expressed concerns to Ambassador Volker that the Ukrainian government was being “singled out and penalized for some reason.”862

On August 29, Mr. Yermak also contacted Ambassador Taylor to express that he was “very concerned” about the hold on military assistance.863 Mr. Yermak and other Ukrainian officials told Ambassador Taylor that they were “just desperate” and would be willing to travel to Washington to raise with U.S. officials the importance of the assistance. Ambassador Taylor described confusion among Ukrainian officials over the hold on military aid:


 * I mean, the obvious question was, “Why?” So Mr. Yermak and others were trying to figure out why this was … They thought that there must be some rational reason for this being held up, and they just didn’tand maybe in Washington they didn’t understand how important this assistance was to their fight and to their armed forces. And so maybe they could figureso they were just desperate.864

Without any official explanation for the hold, American officials could provide little reassurance to their Ukrainian counterparts. Ambassador Taylor continued, “And I couldn’t tell them. I didn’t know and I didn’t tell them, because we hadn’twe hadn’tthere’d been no guidance that I could give them.”865

The same day that Ambassador Taylor heard from Mr. Yermak about his concerns about the hold on military aid, Ambassador Taylor transmitted his classified, first-person cable to Washington. It was the first and only time in Ambassador Taylor’s career that he sent such a cable to the Secretary of State.866 The cable described “the folly I saw in withholding military aid to Ukraine at a time when hostilities were still active in the east and when Russia was watching closely to gauge the level of American support for the Ukrainian Government.”867

Ambassador Taylor worried about the public message that such a hold on vital military assistance would send in the midst of Ukraine’s hot war with Russia: “The Russians, as I said at my deposition, would love to see the humiliation of President Zelensky at the hands of the Americans. I told the Secretary that I could not and would not defend such a policy.”868

The cable also sought to explain clearly “the importance of Ukraine and the security assistance to U.S. national security,” according to Mr. Holmes.869 However, Mr. Holmes worried that the national security argument might not achieve its purpose given the reasons he