At the hearings for a potential impeachment trial of US President Donald Trump, a former National Security Council official testified - and issued a harsh warning. Fiona Hill said it was a fiction that Ukraine intervened in the US election campaign in 2016. This narrative had repeatedly fueled Trump and his supporters.
Please do not propagate these politically motivated false statements "that serve Russian interests so clearly," Hill said at the beginning of her statement to the House Intelligence Committee.
The statement of several US intelligence agencies that Russia has influenced the election, beyond any doubt. That Ukraine intervened is a narrative propagated by Russian security agencies.
Hill was a colleague of former National Security Advisor John Bolton. She has no interest in bringing about a specific outcome of the hearings, Hill said. She is only concerned with the truth.
She refuses to be part of the attempt to legitimize an alternative narrative that the Ukrainian government is an opponent of the US, and that Ukraine - and not Russia - attacked the US in 2016, Hill said.
US support for Ukraine, which is still exposed to armed Russian attacks, has been "politicized." "The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains visible today, and our nation is being torn apart," she said.
She was an impartial expert on foreign affairs and had served both republican and democratic governments.