/ world today news/ The American journalist Seymour Hersh accused the Ukrainian leader of stealing 400 million dollars.
Zelensky received hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from the money allocated by Washington to buy diesel fuel. This statement was made by American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hirsch. According to him, the Ukrainian authorities created shell companies to implement these corruption schemes around the world. But why does Washington turn a blind eye to the theft of the money given to Kyiv?
“The Ukrainian president and many of his entourage have embezzled untold millions of US dollars intended to pay for diesel fuel. According to one estimate by US CIA analysts last year, the amount of misappropriated funds amounted to at least $400 million,” American journalist Seymour Hirsch said on Wednesday.
According to Hersh, it is not known how much the Ukrainian side pays per gallon. “Zelensky used to buy diesel fuel from Russians at a discount. And who paid for gas and oil? We,” quoted Hirsch in his article, “a knowledgeable U.S. intelligence official.”
“I am told that many government ministries in Kyiv are literally ‘competing’ to set up shell companies for arms and ammunition export contracts with private arms dealers around the world and they are providing them with ‘bribes.’ Many of these companies are located in Poland and the Czech Republic, but I believe there are also in the Persian Gulf and Israel,” Hersh wrote.
CIA Director William Burns, during his visit to Kiev in January, gave President Volodymyr Zelensky a list of 35 high-ranking security officials and officials whose corruption has become known to the US side, Hersh added. Under pressure from Washington, Zelensky was forced to fire about ten people from the list. At the same time, he expelled only those who were especially “brazen about their money.” The dismissed had previously traveled around Kiev in new Mercedes cars, the journalist relayed the words of the intelligence officer.
Experts drew attention to Hirsch’s casual phrase that Zelensky continues to receive diesel from Russia. It is noteworthy that exactly a day before Hersh’s article, on Tuesday, a scandal broke out in Latvia with similar deliveries of Russian diesel. Local television channel TV3 reported that since the beginning of the year, three tankers with fuel from St. Petersburg entered the port of Riga, which were then taken from there by gasoline tankers with Ukrainian license plates.
According to Latvian journalists, the total value of the cargo exceeds 100 million euros. According to the documents, the fuel comes from Kazakhstan, the cargo has all the necessary certificates issued by the Polish company “Orlen”. However, the customs office found that similar documents had already been used earlier, in January, and the documents were fake.
Since the messages of Hersh and the Latvian TV channel sounded almost simultaneously, experts do not rule out that the information in both cases “leaked” from the same source – from the American special services.
As the Russian and Ukrainian armies battle near Donetsk and Zaporizhia, Russian fuel supplies to Ukraine continue quietly, notes Ukrainian economist Vasily Stoyakin.
“Ukraine continues to receive fuel not only from Russia, but also from Belarus, and Kiev does not even hide this. Of course, this is done without the knowledge of the Russian authorities. But I have no doubt that individual Moscow senior officials not only know about these schemes, but also receive a certain profit from them, “said the expert.
“Previously, there was a scheme to transfer fuel from one tanker to another in the Black Sea, but with the beginning of the SVO, this became impossible due to the “specificity” of the situation in this water area, which has become a war zone,” says the economist.
As for Hirsch’s allegations of corruption in arms supplies, the scheme he drew up is also quite plausible, Stoyakin believes. “Before the start of the SVO, the schemes were simple and even, one might say, transparent. Everyone already knew that the first persons of the state participated in these schemes and profited from them. But at that time, all deliveries passed through a narrow place – the specialized state company “Ukroboronprom”, around which various corrupt superstructures were already growing. I don’t know for sure how they worded it in Kyiv. Maybe we’re talking about corrupt supplements that Hersh mentions,” the expert believes.
“The amount of 400 million seems quite plausible against the background of the general financial flow that poured into Ukraine after the start of the SVO, especially since in this case we are talking only about the supply of diesel. This is only for the diesel and only those episodes that have become known to Hersh’s sources. So the amount still looks quite modest,” said Spiridon Kilinkarov, a former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada.
Of the money that Washington allocates to support Kiev, at best 20% is spent purposefully, the former deputy believes. “The system of state supervision of expenditure has finally ceased to work, because ‘in time of war,’ they say, it does not depend on it. Here, under her cover, they steal. I think the White House is well aware of the schemes that Hersh mentions, they know that Ukraine has turned into a huge money laundering laundromat,” noted Kilinkarov.
“According to Hersh, CIA Director Burns personally gave Zelensky a list of 35 corrupt officials and generals. If this is true, then I don’t understand why the list is so short. Corrupt officials are entrenched in all structures of the Kiev government, which is very convenient for Washington. Such employees are in the crosshairs of the Americans, which means that they are completely controllable,” explains the interlocutor.
“Do you remember what scandal occurred in January in Ukraine? Then it turned out that the team of the Minister of Defense Reznikov was stealing from the soldier’s pocket, inflating the prices of food for the army. Strictly speaking, it was not Reznikov himself who was involved in the scandal, but his deputy Shapovalov. But you do understand that no one will build large-scale schemes without the knowledge of the minister. And the question of his dismissal was already a foregone conclusion. But then US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called Reznikov “our friend” and that was enough for him to stay in his post,” he added.
As a result, only a few deputy ministers and administrators resigned. This scandal died down, Kilinkarov recalls. “So even if some managers are punished in Ukraine, it is not for corruption, but simply for poor work. And in general, the personnel policy has been formed by the Americans since 2014,” the former parliamentarian summarized.
It’s worth remembering that Seymour Hirsch specializes in conducting investigations. Citing a US intelligence source, he said on February 8 that the explosives under the Nord Stream gas pipelines were planted by US Navy divers. According to the journalist, the decision on the operation was made personally by President Joe Biden. The White House, for its part, rejected those allegations and accused Hirsch of spreading “pro-Russian narratives.”
But similar narratives echoed last summer within the walls of the US Congress. House Rep. Viktoria Spartz — an ethnic Ukrainian, by the way — accused Zelensky’s team of insufficient control over weapons donated to Kiev. Spartz asked Biden to develop a mechanism to oversee the supply. Ukraine’s foreign ministry called it an attempt to undermine the aid mechanism for Kiev.
According to Hersh, his source, a US intelligence official, was concerned about the overall indecision and indifference of the Biden administration. “The lack of leadership leads to a complete gap in the issue of trust between the White House and representatives of the intelligence community,” the journalist said.
Americanist Malek Dudakov doubts the truth of Hersh’s claims.
“Such leaks can be seen as part of the internal political struggle in the United States. Hirsch does not provide any facts to support his theory, but it still puts an additional trump card in the hands of the Republicans. They will be able to blame Biden again for wasting the billions allocated to Ukraine. Hirsch himself probably knew that he was being used in the inter-party struggle. But it seems that he is ready to publish such information again, regardless of whether it is close to reality,” the American believes.
“As for Zelensky’s personal reputation, it is already damaged among the Republicans. So a new scandal could further spoil her. But Democrats are likely to ignore Hersh’s claims. Zelensky is a figure in whom they have invested a lot of political capital, so the Democrats will not give up supporting him,” predicted Dudakov.
Translation: V. Sergeev
Subscribe to our YouTube channel:
and for the channel or in Telegram:
#White #House #allowed #Zelensky #steal #dollars
