Since the 2016 campaign, the president has had an intense fixation on the country, which he believes is tied up in the origins of the special counsel’s investigation.
WASHINGTON — It was not a country that would naturally have seemed high on the priority list of a president who came to office relishing a trade clash with China, promising to reorder the Middle East and haranguing European allies to spend more on NATO.
But for President Trump, Ukraine has been an obsession since the 2016 campaign.
Long before the July 25 call with the new Ukrainian president that helped spur the formal start of impeachment proceedings against him in the House, Mr. Trump fretted and fulminated about the former Soviet state, angry over what he sees as Ukraine’s role in the origins of the investigations into Russian influence on his 2016 campaign.