WASHINGTON • The Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump on Tuesday was the second for Russia’s foreign minister. The president of Ukraine is still waiting for his first.

Trump sat down with Sergey Lavrov at a moment of high drama in Washington — just hours after House Democrats announced articles of impeachment against Trump for his dealings with Ukraine, a U.S. ally that is battling against Russian aggression.

Central to the impeachment inquiry is whether Trump withheld military aid and a White House meeting for Ukraine’s president as leverage to get Kyiv to investigate Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden.

The Trump-Lavrov meeting also came just a day after the Justice Department’s watchdog said the FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia. Trump has long slammed the investigation as a witch hunt and says the FBI never should have started it.

The White House said after the Trump-Lavrov meeting that Trump warned against Russian attempts to interfere in United States elections and urged Russia to resolve the conflict with Ukraine.

Earlier, he lashed out at the head of the FBI for not denouncing the watchdog’s report.

“I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me … a failure of the FBI up and down the chain of command,” Trump said in a tweet.

President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable on school choice in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Monday, Dec. 9, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

Evan Vucci