NY Times Wakes Up to Corruption in Ukraine as Officials Admit Military Contract Money ‘Vanished’
In a potential signal of shifting attitudes on how the war in Ukraine is covered in the legacy media, the New York Times is starting to slowly acknowledge the endemic corruption that has been a defining feature of the former Soviet state as officials have admitted that money for military contracts has “vanished”.
Following the dismissal of Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov amid a slew of corruption scandals surrounding the war effort against Russia, the New York Times acknowledged that the “enduring challenge of corruption in Ukraine” has “emerged as a rare area of criticism of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s leadership.”
Although Reznikov has yet to be tied with any of the corruption scandals personally, the Times went on to admit that the resignation has “elevated the issue to the highest level of Ukrainian politics”. Unnamed Ukrainian officials even told the paper that some funds intended for military contracts “failed to produce weaponry or ammunition and that some money has vanished,” while claiming that the issue was merely confined to the early days of the war.
The neo-liberal outlet has previously been keen to highlight claims from the Biden administration on how the Zelensky government has been “committed to fighting corruption,” citing as evidence statements from officials such as veteran Washington insider and Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who played a pivotal role in the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine that saw the overthrow of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.
Despite nine senior government officials being sacked over allegations of corruption, including purchasing military food supplies at vastly inflated prices and taking luxury vacations, the paper went on to write in January that “corruption has otherwise not been a significant factor in the war, despite Russian propaganda claims to the contrary that are aimed at undermining his [Zelensky’s] government.”
The proclamation from the NY Times aged rather poorly. Just days later, as Breitbart News reported at the time, Transparency International gave Ukraine a score of 33 out of 100 in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), ranking 116th in the world and the second-lowest in all of Europe, only behind Russia.
Expressing concerns over the fate of the $113 billion in American taxpayer dollars sent to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee went on to note in February that “Ukrainian government officials allegedly engaged in bribery, used government vehicles for personal use, and purchased inflated food supplies for Ukrainian forces.”
Since then, corruption scandals surrounding the war effort have continued to emerge. Last month, for example, every single head of regional recruitment offices throughout Ukraine was fired amid allegations of widespread bribery of officials from those seeking to avoid conscription into the war. Two weeks later, First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Taras Vysotskyi and another unnamed economic minister were sacked on suspicion of misappropriating $1.68 million in government funds.
Following the ousting of Defence Minister Reznikov on Monday, the New York Times acknowledged that although there have yet to be specific allegations of corruption involving American funding, the nature of graft in the country has shifted from its traditional avenues, of exploiting state-run enterprises to a focus on war profiteering as billions pour into the country from abroad.
Speaking to the paper, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Ukraine, Daria Kaleniuk said: “The question here is, ‘Where is the money?’”
“Corruption can kill,” she added. “Depending on how effective we are in guarding the public funds, the soldier will either have a weapon or not have a weapon.”
The Times went on to claim that there is a shifting mood within Ukraine on the issue, which the paper said was “mostly taboo throughout the first year of the war, as Ukrainians rallied around their government in a fight for national survival.”
The corruption scandals “are nonetheless piercing the sense of unquestioning support for the government that Ukrainians had exhibited throughout the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion,” the NY Times continued.
The critical reporting of the issues of corruption in Ukraine from the hitherto vociferously supportive paper may signal a shift in attitude overall towards the war and perhaps the Biden administration’s strategy of dumping weapons, hardware, and money into the conflict.
The White House is currently trying to convince Congress to green-light an additional $24 billion in aid to the country, however, elections loom and more voters are now questioning the extent of the state’s largess while so many problems are unresolved at home.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter: or e-mail to: kzindulka@breitbart.com
OH, AND WHO'D A THOUGHT THIS WOULD HAPPEN. NOT WITH UNCLE JOE, I MEAN.
Cutting Through Biden’s ‘Illusions’
Shokin is talkin,’ and that could spell even more bad news for Joe Biden’s stubborn insistence, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that he had nothing to do with his son’s slimy “business” activities.
Though the former Ukrainian Chief Prosecutor cannot independently confirm what the FBI’s trusted confidential source alleges --- that Viktor Shokin’s Biden-arranged departure was the result of Burisma bribes --- the stench surrounding the whole affair is becoming too oppressive for even some liberals to ignore. Expect to see more damaging details filter out very shortly.
So under the circumstances the only logical thing for Democrats to do is pile on another batch of indictments to the already lengthy list of criminal charges facing Donald Trump, as viciously partisan Fulton County Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis has just seen fit to do.
But try as they might to divert attention away from the Bidens by going more forcefully after Trump, a giant boulder of trouble is gaining speed on its downhill roll despite the best Democrat efforts to halt its progress.
So why not try to first flatten Trump before the big rock overtakes Joe?
The explanations Biden’s apologists offer for the breathtaking corruption he and his family have clearly engaged in seem a lot like desperate pitches on behalf of an unsellable movie script; changing fiction offered in an attempt to address each freshly sprouting revelation of their surprisingly brazen bribery and political protection operation. But despite laboring to appear unruffled, even contemptuous of investigators’ discoveries, each newly-filled piece of the payoff puzzle puts in sharper focus Joe’s betrayal of the multiple oaths of office he’s taken over the course of his long public career.
Now his loyalists have seized upon something former Biden partner Devon Archer regurgitated to a House committee in his recent closed-door appearance. Archer quite damagingly admitted that Joe had indeed spoken to Hunter’s associates numerous times, and further revealed that Shokin’s activities were seen as a threat to Burisma. His mentioning of the Biden “brand” did no great help to their cause either. But likely in an attempt to balance the scales and soften the effect of his testimony, he volunteered a carefully worded construct designed to camouflage the immense wrongdoing the public’s lying eyes plainly have before them: The Illusion of Access.
In this narrative, the drug-dependent Hunter conveniently serves as the sole central character. Always in need of money to fuel his various habits, and craving familial approbation despite his degenerate ways, he is the prime mover in this last ditch attempt to keep Joe out of the soup.
As the story goes, to serve his ends, Hunter placed his blissfully unknowing dad on the phone with, or made casual restaurant introductions to, the unsavory characters who were his business partners. This deceptive tactic allowed him to pretend to be plugged-in, influential, a guy who could get things done; at the same time appeasing the foreign benefactors who considered buying politicians as just another routine business expense, but impatiently demanded tangible results for the money they forked over.
The cornered Archer, walking a tightrope, subtly implied it was all a contrivance from which Hunter’s serving V.P. father was kept safely ignorant and carefully insulated. And so you have it: The Illusion of Access --- even sounds like a film title --- nevertheless to its advocates a user friendly concept even the rubes and simpletons the Democrats take us to be can easily understand.
But once again, as with other, more homegrown products of the Biden brain trust such as transitory inflation or the more current, undefinable Bidenomics, any informed observer can spot it as unadulterated baloney. Or to employ the term our more sophisticated betters prefer: disinformation.
Future students of psychology or even amateur sleuths examining the puzzling human penchant for self-demolition will study the actions of the Bidens closely, for they are textbook examples of people who secretly desire to be exposed. Whether we’re talking about abandoned laptops containing pornographic, drug-fueled images and incriminating e-mails, or overlooked diaries bearing salacious family secrets, or perhaps the ultimate manifestation of this variant of exhibitionism: a video-taped boast before a prestigious gathering about successfully demanding a foreign official’s firing --- the wish to be ultimately found screams out.
Biden’s compulsive bragging provides the specific quid while Congress works through the complicated financial quo. When they unravel that LLC knot, it will show that the current “leader of the free world” was the receiver of bribes --- very large ones to be sure --- but still acts of corruption as abject as any small town building or health inspector’s pocketed envelope of cash.
And that’s really how one sums up “Scranton” Joe Biden: an illusory product created by artifice and the exigencies of Democrat politics; elevated to a position far beyond his abilities or strength of character. Instead of the return to integrity and, above all, decency we were promised if we chose him over the reviled Trump, he has brought degradation, even gangsterism, to nearly everything he’s touched.
It will soon be recognized as a great misfortune that at a time when China and Ukraine are at the center of world affairs, requiring people of good will everywhere to grapple with how best to parry Chinese threats of aggression against a free Taiwan while at the same time rejecting Russia’s brutal, unwanted violation of Ukraine, honest debate is skewed, indeed polluted by the corrupt takings of this First Family for Sale.
Despite all the “Russian Collusion” Democrat-driven sewage we were forced to wade through during the Trump years, the real pros with regard to interference in American political processes were the Ukrainians; the Russians were bumbling amateurs. Ukrainians didn’t bother with stupid Twitter “bots” or phony Facebook identities in clumsy, obvious attempts to sway public opinion. They went straight to the top and their method was cash on the barrelhead.
But people familiar with European history, even those of us skeptical of President Zelensky’s international canonization, genuinely offended by Ukrainian political interference, know it to be immutably true that a stable Ukraine --- and more importantly a secure, unthreatened Poland to its west--- will be the key to future peace on the continent. That will not be possible if Putin’s aggression is allowed to stand. Poland, in Putin’s eyes, is just another runaway province of the 21st century tsar’s reassembling empire.
Let’s hope this searing ordeal the Ukrainians are suffering through will somehow work to purge them of some of the more underhanded habits they’ve acquired through decades under the Soviet thumb. By now it may have occurred to the factions that purchased the Bidens’ assistance that the presidential ascension of the man they hired as a champion of their interests probably served as the green light for Putin to commence re-absorbing Ukraine back into the Motherland.
China too has lavished generous sums upon the Bidens, but their infiltration of his incompetent White House is probably one of their lower yielding inroads into American leadership and decision-making. Their tentacles are firmly wrapped around many key facets of the “free market” system they hold in barely disguised contempt. Areas such as banking, the academy, agriculture and medical technology are serving up to them almost everything they need in their push to replace the U.S. as the dominant world power.
The Bidens are a very minor holding in their vast American portfolio.
Can anyone blame the Bidens and their supporters for believing they can continue to put over this “illusion” of Joe’s good faith? In 2020, with the help of a corrupt DoJ, FBI, and even a member of Trump’s own cabinet, they hoodwinked millions into believing the fiction of quiet competence and transparent government that never quite appeared. While many still argue over whether Joe Biden received 81 million legitimate votes, it’s now indisputable that the electorate went to the polls severely misinformed about the nature of the eventual “winner.”
How many Americans have the moral courage to confront the fact that in their distaste for Donald Trump, they allowed themselves to be fooled, lied to, and horribly misled?
Casting aside that particular illusion may very well determine if the damage the Bidens have wrought is reversible.
Image: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0
Joe Biden didn’t do anything wrong? A time-honored method of taking bribes is having them paid to a family member, usually in exchange for nominal or nonexistent services. It is comical to watch “reporters” pretend not to understand this. MONICA SHOWALTER
WHERE DID ALL OF GAMER LAWYER JOE BIDEN’S BIG BUCKS COME FROM?
video
Where did Biden's millions come from?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlS88MKI-DA
I’d be inclined to disagree with Don except for one thing: Biden has proven to be a very adept criminal mastermind. For decades, he has funneled millions of dollars to his children and siblings and, especially, to his debauched, deviant son, Hunter. ANDREA WIDBURG
There it is. That's the issue. To begin, you have the corrupt family Biden. They've been scamming us and our system well for almost fifty years. The man is supposedly worth over 250 million dollars. How is this possible on his salary? It's not. So where did his wealth come from? Not from being a brilliant businessman. DAVID PRENTICE
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