Former US ambassador describes the awkward moment Donald Trump thought US troops were in Ukraine during a meeting with its president in 2017

• Donald Trump asked if US troops were in Ukraine in 2017 at a meeting with then-President Poroshenko.
• The revelation was made in a new book by former US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

President Donald Trump asked whether US troops were in Ukraine during an Oval Office meeting with then Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko in 2017, according to a new book by former US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, seen by The Guardian.

At the meeting, Trump asked his national security adviser HR McMaster if US troops were in Donbas, a territory in Ukraine claimed by Russian-backed separatists.

"An affirmative answer to that question would have meant that the United States was in a shooting war with Russia," Yovanovitch wrote in the book, according to The Guardian.

"It was disconcerting that he did not seem to know where we had our troops – his troops – deployed. I could only imagine what the Ukrainians were thinking."

In the same meeting, Trump also told Poroshenko that Ukraine "was a corrupt country, which he knew because a Ukrainian friend at Mar-a-Lago had told him," Yovanovitch wrote in the book, according to The Guardian.

She also claims Trump said, "Crimea was Russian, as the locals spoke Russian."

Russia invaded and annexed the Ukrainian peninsula Crimea in 2014 in a move widely condemned by the international community.

Yovanovitch said that others in the meeting "kept a poker face on" as then-President Trump made the cringe-worthy comments.

The former ambassador describes the meeting in her upcoming book, "Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir."

She served as US ambassador to Ukraine until she was removed from her post by Trump in 2019, amid his attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden by withholding military aid. The scandal ultimately led to Trump's first impeachment.

Yovanovitch writes in the book that she had the impression that "Trump had come into the meeting viewing Ukraine as a 'loser' country, smaller and weaker than Russia."

She added that "Trump's obsequiousness toward [Russian President Vladimir] Putin was a frequent and continuing cause for concern."

However, she wrote that Trump was surprised by Poroshenko, who was "as physically imposing as Trump" and "a billionaire businessman."

The revelations from Yovanovitch's book come weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a military invasion of Ukraine.

In recent weeks, Trump has continued to praise Putin for being "smart" and described his justification for invading Ukraine as "savvy" and "genius."