US Special Representative for Ukraine Volker Resigns

28 September 2019 09:20

According to CNN, U.S. State Department Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker has resigned.

Volker resigned a day after the release of the whistleblower's report that revealed the White House had covered up the content of a conversation between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The channel reports that the State Department's Special Representative helped arrange a meeting between Trump's lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, and Zelenskyy's aide, Andriy Yermak.

House of Representatives has to interrogate Volker next week as part of the investigation of President Donald Trump's impeachment by House of Representatives, The New York Times reports.

In 2017, former U.S. Representative to NATO Kurt Volker was appointed U.S. State Department ambassador for conflict resolution in the Donbas. The practice of having special representatives in different countries is common for the United States, but in the case of Ukraine, this position was created for the first time.

Volker began his career as an analyst with the CIA in 1986 and soon joined the State Department.

In 1997, he worked with Senator John McCain, and a year later joined the U.S. Mission to NATO, where he spent three years.

Volker was the executive director of the U.S. National Security Council. In this role, he prepared two NATO summits – in 2002 in Prague, dedicated to the negotiation of NATO accession to Eastern European countries, and in Istanbul in 2004, which was marked by a complicated relationship with Russia and ignored by Vladimir Putin.

In 2008, under the presidency of George W. Bush, Volker became U.S. ambassador to NATO, after receiving praise for his work.