OREANDA-NEWS. Pentagon chief Mark Esper, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, and former US Presidential Assistant for National Security John Bolton opposed the decision of US administration head Donald Trump to block military assistance to Ukraine. This was reported on Sunday by The New York Times, whose journalists managed to communicate with several former and current administration officials and other officials.

According to the newspaper, in late August of this year, Esper, Pompeo and Bolton took part in a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, which was not previously known. Sources of the publication claim that during the meeting they tried in vain to convince the American leader to abandon the decision to freeze military aid to Kiev. According to the newspaper’s interlocutors, the administration believed that “providing assistance was in the interests of the United States”.

The newspaper emphasizes that the dispute over the provision of assistance to Ukraine has generated controversy among senior members of the US president’s administration. Thus, The New York Times points out, the acting head of the White House apparatus Mick Mulvaney, who spoke on the side of Trump and "became the main channel for transmitting Trump's demands for freezing aid", was pressured.