Ukrainian officials are eager to have Mr. Zelensky visit Mr. Trump in the Oval Office and to have the American president publicly and strongly affirm support for Ukraine. Ukrainian officials are angry that the Americans have granted the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, two visits with Mr. Trump in White House, most recently in December.
In response to a question on Friday, Mr. Pompeo said a White House visit by Mr. Zelensky was not dependent on the kind of investigation Mr. Trump had sought.
The Ukraine trip is a fraught one for Mr. Pompeo, who arrived here on Thursday night after a stop in London, and plans to travel to three more nations that became independent from Moscow afterwards.
Mr. Pompeo has been dogged by sharp questions over his role in the Ukraine affair and, more recently, an acid comment he reportedly made about Ukraine in a Jan. 24 conversation with a National Public Radio reporter. The reporter, Mary Louise Kelly, a veteran national security correspondent, said that after she asked about Ukraine, Mr. Pompeo shouted at her in a rant full of obscenities and asked her to locate Ukraine on an unmarked map that his aides pulled out. She added that, using the “f-word,” he asked, “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?”
Mr. Pompeo put out an extraordinary statement the next day that denounced the news media as “unhinged” and banned NPR from joining the pool of reporters on his current trip. His actions have been widely criticized by press freedom advocates and foreign policy experts.
Mr. Pompeo enabled Mr. Trump’s actions on Ukraine by ordering the recall of Marie L. Yovanovitch, the respected ambassador to Ukraine, last April. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and associates with Ukraine business ties had been pressing the president hard for the ouster of the ambassador, who had been an anti-corruption advocate.
In May, after Ms. Yovanovitch moved back to Washington, Mr. Pompeo asked a former ambassador to Ukraine and veteran diplomat, William B. Taylor Jr., to be chief of mission until a new ambassador was appointed. Mr. Taylor, along with Ms. Yovanovitch and other diplomats, defied administration orders not to testify in the impeachment inquiry; Mr. Taylor spoke of how he gradually discovered Mr. Trump’s Ukraine plans over the summer, which administration critics say undermined American support of Ukraine by withholding aid.