Hersh: Zelensky and His Team Embezzled at Least $400 million of US Aid
“Amid rampant corruption in Kiev and as US troops gather at the Ukrainian border, does the Biden administration have an endgame to the conflict?”
This is just the tip of a much larger iceberg of corruption…
According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Seymour Hersh, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his senior officials in Kiev have been embezzling hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars meant for Ukrainian military diesel fuel procurement in 2022. The scheme included shady deals allegedly being done with middlemen getting supplies from Russia itself.
In total, Zelensky and his entourage managed to steal at least $400 million from the generous US aid package.
Biden administration officials fear that this revelation could hamper public support for NATO’s increasingly unpopular proxy war against Russia.
Earlier reports had already surfaced regarding how oil products originating in Russia had managed to make their way to Ukraine through other third party NATO countries like Bulgaria and Latvia. The scheme was confirmed in detail by the Latvian mainstream TV program, Neka Personiga, and may appears to be a violation of the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions. Hersh explains:
Many government ministries in Kiev have been literally “competing,” I was told, to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks. Many of those companies are in Poland and Czechia, but others are thought to exist in the Persian Gulf and Israel. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are others in places like the Cayman Islands and Panama, and there are lots of Americans involved,” an American expert on international trade told me.
Hersh’s sources blamed Biden’s beleagured Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, for having “strident ideology and lack of political skill” in their mismanagement of US-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, with the White House seemingly at odds with intelligence community and possible the Pentagon too. The two top foreign policy officials have shownover the Ukraine conflict, according to the sources.
Hersh cites an expert witness who has compared this level of corruption in the Zelensky regime using Ukrainian aid procurement – as comparable to similar grift seen in Afghanistan, when a US-backed government in Kabul managed to divert and pilfer untold billions over the course of NATO’s 20 year occupation of that country. According to Hersh’s sources, corrupt ministers in Kiev were competing to set up fake shell companies in order to export weapons and ammunition, with government officials recioeving luctrative kickbacks for the illicit trade.
Meanwhile, Biden officials are denying any corruption, and have stated that there is “no evidence” of any NATO-supplied weapons in Ukraine being sold to any third party countries.
Hersh also went on to cite an intelligence source referring to the January 2023 meeting between President Zelensky and CIA Director William Burns, where the CIA bss presented a list of 35 generals and ministers known to the CIA to be corrupt. It is yet unknown if any action was taken against any of those listed by Burns.
To add insult to injury, it’s also reported how senior Ukrainian officials were complaining that Zelensky was truiaging large funds for his person nest egg, and “was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.” Apparently, Zelensky’s response was to fire staff for his Cabinet of Ministers, as well as regional administrations, and other persons within the Ukrainian government structure – claiming this was part of his ‘anti-corruption strategy’, when in reality he was only cleaning out any potential opposition or informants.
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