WASHINGTON -- The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (Republican-Louisiana), has called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to fire his ambassador to the United States after Zelenskiy took part in a tour of a manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania, which is seen as a battleground state in the upcoming U.S presidential election.
Johnson said in a letter to Zelenskiy on September 25 that Ambassador Oksana Markarova organized the tour of a Pennsylvania arms plant that produces munitions critical for Ukraine’s country's war effort.
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The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant is one of only two sites in the United States that produce 155-millimeter artillery shells, which are among the most important aspects of U.S. military aid to Ukraine with more than 3 million shipped to the country.
Zelenskiy visited the plant on September 22 ahead of his meetings this week at the United Nations in New York and with President Joe Biden in Washington.
Pennsylvania is one of the most important of seven swing states that will determine the U.S. election on November 5. U.S. aid to Ukraine has become an issue in the election after Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives held up the last aid package for six months in part because they said the money could be better spent at home.
Democrats argued that most of the aid is spent on military equipment manufactured in the United States and therefore protects and creates American jobs.
Johnson said the tour was led by a top political surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris and “purposely excluded Republicans.” He did not identify that person, but Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat and vocal supporter of Harris, took part in the tour.
Johnson added that Republicans have lost trust in the ambassador’s “ability to fairly and effectively serve as a diplomat in this country” and demanded that Zelenskiy immediately remove her from her position.
“As you have said, Ukrainians have tried to avoid being ‘captured by American domestic politics, and ‘influencing the choices of the American people’ ahead of the November election,” Johnson said in the letter. “Clearly that objective was abandoned this week when Ambassador Markarova organized an event in which you toured an American manufacturing site.”
He claimed the tour intentionally failed to include a single Republican, making it a “clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats.”
The Ukrainian Embassy to the United States did not return a call from RFE/RL requesting comment.
Johnson added that support for ending Russia’s war against Ukraine “continues to be bipartisan,” but he said U.S.-Ukrainian relations are “tested and needlessly tarnished when the candidates at the top of the Republican presidential ticket are targeted in the media by officials in your government.”