committee may ask me about. on april 21 zelensky won the ukrainian presidential election. on april 23 the vice president called to congratulate president elect zelensky. during the call, which i participated in, the vice president accepted an invitation to attend president elect zelensky's upcoming inauguration providing the scheduling worked out. the vice president had only a narrow window of availability at the end of may and the ukrainian parliament would not meet to set a date for the inauguration until after may 14th. as a result, we did not expect to know whether the vice president would be -- could attend until may 14th at the earliest and we made only preliminary trip preparations in early may. on may 13th an assistant to the vice president's chief of staff called and informed me that president trump had decided that the vice president would not attend the inauguration in ukraine. she did not provide any further