I'll see this opinion column and raise it the following: Trump began colluding with Ukrainians connected directly or indirectly to the Kremlin in January 2017—when Cohen and Flynn and Trump fixer Felix Sater were all connected to Andrii Artemenko—and just never stopped colluding.
1/ The Trump-Zelensky call was essentially an attempt by Trump to have a new Ukrainian president, with whom he had no background whatsoever, agree to kowtow to his secret demands and machinations in the same way a long succession of Ukrainians had done going back to January 2017.
2/ But it'd be *equally* true to say oligarchs close to Putin have driven Trump's foreign policy, from the beginning, with respect to both Russia and Ukraine. The connection between Putin and Firtash; Firtash, Parnas, and Fruman; and Trump and all of the above is what to look at.
3/ One thing is absolutely certain: the Ukraine scandal is not "about" the July 25 phone call, any more than the Mueller Report was "about" the early June 2016 meeting at Trump's house between Kremlin agents and Trump's family. It's a single data point in a massive fact-pattern.
