The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

The Zelensky meeting began at twelve thirty p.m. and lasted until about two. On the Ukrainian side were basically all those who had participated in the earlier meetings. Bill Taylor, NSC officials, and several embassy officers comprised the US side. Zelensky was impressive throughout, very much in command of the issues. He started by thanking us for keeping our Crimea sanctions in place and our continued nonrecognition of Russia’s purported annexation. I thought: If only he knew how close we were to giving all that away! We discussed Crimea, the Donbas, the failing Normandy Format peace process, and his desire to get the US and the UK more active in resolving the Russia-Ukraine dispute. Domestically, Zelensky said the fight against corruption, the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, was his highest priority. His “Servant of the People Party,” named after his TV show, had 254 Rada members, and he said that when the new session opened, they would introduce 254 reform bills, one for each party member to shepherd through. Zelensky emphasized that the time for promises alone was over, and it was now time to implement the promises he had campaigned on.