After the meeting, Poroshenko took me to another room for a one-on-one, where he asked the US to endorse his reelection campaign. He also asked for a number of things that I addressed, allowing me to slide past the endorsement request without being too rude when I said no. What Poroshenko really wanted was for America to sanction Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian oligarch backing Yulia Tymoshenko, who was, at least at this point, Poroshenko’s main competition in the 2019 elections. Although it didn’t come up in this conversation, Kolomoisky was also backing Volodymyr Zelensky, then leading the
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