KIEV, Ukraine -- Lawmakers in Ukraine are seeking to investigate some of the same corruption allegations made by Republicans, including inquiries into the Ukrainian natural gas firm with connections to former Vice President Joe Biden's son.
The push, however, could draw Ukraine deeper into Washington's whistleblower battles even as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy tries to tread a careful path with one of Ukraine's most important allies.
Lawmakers concede that a separate inquiry by Ukraine could fuel efforts to motivate President Donald Trump's base and lend legitimacy to his demands for Ukrainian prosecutors to look again at corruption allegations -- despite no evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden.
However, those advocating for the parliament investigations say they address any potential loose ends and could help defuse Ukraine's potentially explosive role in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
"I don't like it that Ukraine again and again is in such tight, uncomfortable situations," said Valentin Nalyvaichenko, the Ukrainian lawmaker who is leading the push for the parliamentary inquiry.
Nalyvaichenko -- who was head of Ukraine's top security agency, the State Security Organization, at the height of a conflict with pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 -- said Ukraine might as well try to seize control of the narrative.
"Ukraine is already in the epicenter," he said, "to put it mildly."
The whistleblower complaint made public Thursday alleges a wide-ranging effort by Trump and his personal lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to pressure Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden and others. The whistleblower alleged that both Trump and Giuliani were worried that Zelenskiy, a former comedian elected in April, might be unwilling to take part in any investigation.
On Thursday, Ukraine's former prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko, said that Hunter Biden "did not violate" any Ukraine laws during Lutsenko's tenure from May 2016 until this August.
But under Ukraine's political rules, Trump and Giuliani may not need to go to the top.
Ukrainian law allows parliament to start a formal inquiry if one-third of the 450-member legislature agrees. Nalyvaichenko, a newly-elected member of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko's Fatherland party, is now trying to gather enough signatures.
Even if he falls short, he said he would still press for regular parliamentary hearings. They could include alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and inquests into claims of money-laundering and abuse by the gas company Burisma Holdings, the board of which once included Joe Biden's son.
The younger Biden has not been charged with wrongdoing.
Nalyvaichenko said he would invite "Ukraine and international media" to cover any inquiry.
In 2014, during the eastern Ukraine conflict, Nalyvaichenko was in frequent contact with top U.S. policymakers, including Biden; then-Secretary of State John Kerry; and Victoria Nuland, the State Department official then in charge of Russia and Ukraine.
"Those years when Russian aggression started, they supported us," Nalyvaichenko said of the U.S. officials.
He said that he had not consulted with anyone from Zelenskiy's team or political party about the effort, although he said he hoped they joined in. Zelenskiy's party controls a majority of the seats in parliament.
Investigations into Burisma were left dormant or dropped by previous Ukrainian prosecutors. Giuliani has accused Joe Biden of pushing for the 2016 dismissal of Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to halt an ongoing inquiry into Burisma.
Joe Biden, however, said he was actually pushing for Shokin's ouster because he was too soft on corruption, a view shared by many Western officials in Kiev. Biden threatened to withhold a $1 billion loan if Shokin was not fired. Both Joe and Hunter Biden have denied any improper action.
Nalyvaichenko said that in both inquiries, lawmakers would focus on Ukrainian citizens potentially breaking Ukrainian laws. That would mean that the investigation would be unlikely to focus on the actions of either Biden.
Still, he said, in the case of Burisma, the inquiry would start at the top.
The inquiry will look at "Ukraine high-level officials, starting with ex-President Mr. [Petro] Poroshenko, his role and other officials in his administration or in the government, in this, in other corruption, all deals within the activity of this gas company," Nalyvaichenko said.
Nalyvaichenko also said that he wanted to get to the bottom of a "black ledger" that appeared in August 2016, three months before the U.S. election, and appeared to detail illicit Ukrainian government payments made to Paul Manafort, who had then served as Trump's campaign chairman for about two months.
Manafort was forced to step down shortly after the ledger surfaced.
Nalyvaichenko said he had always been puzzled that he never learned of the ledger while he was head of Ukraine's security service. The ledger was supposedly recovered from the burned-out remains of former president Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions headquarters.
He also said he wanted to study the actions of Ukrainian diplomats in Washington, whom he said may have favored Clinton.
Meddling in foreign elections is also not against the law in Ukraine, although handling investigative evidence improperly could be.
"I would not like to see this as against anyone," Nalyvaichenko said. "It's potentially against political corruption in Ukraine."
A Section on 09/28/2019