I'm presenting the quotes exactly as they are in the leaked call and reported and commented by the BBC article. The US did scheme behind the curtains to get their favourites elected. This is meddling. It also suggests that meddling was indeed necessary, or at least helpful, to get what the US wanted- i.e. it's not simply "what the people wanted".

The article even suggests that the EU simply doesn't have enough cash at hand to attract the Ukrainians, and would rather play it more on the long term- but that the US was too impatient for that. Yet more evidence of active meddling of US in Ukraine' political choices, with the purpose of attracting a country in their sphere of influence, surely not motivated by the will of the people.

Now, this is not to say that in abstract Ukrainians wouldn't have preferred the West to Russia. But they have been at least in part the victim of a power play between the USA and Russia.

Russian trolls have blown that single call out of proportion. We, too, can have a phone call and discuss who we'd prefer the next Chinese leader to be; it doesn't mean we actually have much influence over that. We can even discuss right here on HN who we'd like to see as the next American president, and it would not be factually wrong to characterize the discussion as "people on the most popular Silicon Valley forum frequented by tech billionaires picking the next president." But it wouldn't be entirely truthful either, would it?