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Why the financial theft of the Ukraine war may finally be coming to an end

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19 minute read

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • For years, Ukraine was recognized as one of the most, if not “the” most, corrupt nation in Europe. The country is now struggling to rein in corruption as that is becoming a key hurdle to obtain more financial support.
  • According to official aid trackers, the U.S. had sent $76.8 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as of the end of July 2023. The European Union contributed another $85.1 billion in that same timeframe. In mid-October 2023, Biden proposed yet another $105 billion foreign aid package, $61 billion of which will go to Ukraine.
  • According to U.S. officials, at least 70,000 of Ukraine’s 500,000 troops had been killed by mid-August 2023, and another 100,000 to 120,000 wounded. Another 9,614 Ukrainian civilians had also been killed as of September 10, 2023.
  • The supply of cannon fodder is running so low that Ukraine recently updated its conscription law to include women. Women between the ages of 18 and 60 with medical backgrounds must register for military service as of October 1, 2023.
  • Corruption may be a primary driver of this war. The American public being robbed and Ukraine drained of its youths while a relatively small number of corrupt individuals stuff their pockets with cash. American and European taxpayers are paying for the destruction of Ukraine and the elimination of huge numbers of its inhabitants, so that technocrat globalists and central bankers can then profit from the privatization and rebuilding of Ukraine into a “smart country” model for the rest of the world.

(Mercola) — For years, Ukraine was recognized as one of the most, if not “the” most, corrupt nation in Europe. It held on to that reputation all the way up to the day Russia invaded in late February 2022, at which point media worldwide suddenly started rewriting history.

Statements from U.S. and other Western officials, as well as pervasive accounts in the news media, have created a stunningly misleading image of Ukraine. There has been a concerted effort to portray the country… as a plucky and noble bulwark of freedom and democracy…

The notion that Ukraine was such an appealing democratic model in Eastern Europe that the country’s mere existence terrified Putin… is a myth… Even before the war erupted, there were ugly examples of authoritarianism in Ukraine’s political governance …

The neo-Nazi Azov Battalion was an integral part of President Petro Poroshenko’s military and security apparatus, and it has retained that role during Zelensky’s presidency…

The country is not a symbol of freedom and liberal democracy, and the war is not an existential struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. At best, Ukraine is a corrupt, quasi‐democratic entity with troubling repressive policies.

Given that sobering reality, calls for Americans to ‘stand with Ukraine’ are misplaced. Preserving Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity most certainly are not worth the United States risking war with a nuclear-armed Russia.

Indeed, while President Joe Biden kept sending tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars to Ukraine in the name of “defending democracy,” Zelensky banned all opposition parties in the country and blacklisted American politicians and journalists who questioned the U.S. involvement in the conflict. So much for democracy and democratic values.

Is Ukraine aid part of a money laundering scheme?

According to the Panama Papers released in 2016, which have been described as “a giant leak of more than 11.5 million financial and legal records [which] exposes a system that enables crime, corruption and wrongdoing,” Zelensky is likely just as corrupt as his predecessors, as he, his wife and several associates all own “hidden offshore assets.”

With that in mind, why is the U.S. sending billions of dollars to Ukraine without requiring any kind of accounting for where all this money is going? According to official aid trackers, the U.S. had sent $76.8 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as of the end of July 2023.

The European Union contributed another $85.1 billion in that same timeframe. And, in mid-October 2023, Biden proposed yet another $105 billion foreign aid package, $61 billion of which will go to Ukraine.

The lack of oversight combined with the lack of Ukrainian progress in the conflict and the refusal to enter into peace negotiations raises suspicions that these aid packages may simply be another money laundering scheme like we saw with FTX. At least $178 million sent to Ukraine through the now-defunct FTX crypto exchange may have been laundered back to the Democratic Party in the U.S.

Ukraine still rife with corruption

Lately, mainstream media have started to revisit the issue of corruption in Ukraine, probably because public perception of corruption may undermine the entire operation.

For example, October 2, 2023, Politico reported receiving a “sensitive but unclassified” strategy paper in which Biden administration officials warn that “Perceptions of high-level corruption” could “undermine the Ukrainian public’s and foreign leaders’ confidence in the war-time government.” According to Politico:

The administration wants to press Ukraine to cut graft… But being too loud about the issue could embolden opponents of U.S. aid to Ukraine, many of them Republican lawmakers who are trying to block such assistance. Any perception of weakened American support for Kyiv also could cause more European countries to think twice about their role.

Ukrainian graft has long been a concern of U.S. officials… But the topic was deemphasized in the wake of Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion…

More than a year into the full-scale war, U.S. officials are pressing the matter more in public and private. National security adviser Jake Sullivan, for instance, met in early September with a delegation from Ukrainian anti-corruption institutions.

A second U.S. official familiar with the discussions confirmed to POLITICO reports that the Biden administration is talking to Ukrainian leaders about potentially conditioning future economic aid on ‘reforms to tackle corruption and make Ukraine a more attractive place for private investment.’

No such conditions have been proposed for military aid, however, which makes up the bulk of the money spent on Ukraine. Similarly, in mid-September 2023, Reuters reported that “billions of dollars of aid earmarked for Zelensky’s government as well as ambitions to join the European Union ride on Ukraine proving that it is serious about fighting corruption and embracing good governance.”

Zelensky, for his part, has increasingly tried to portray himself as a staunch corruption fighter, firing more than a dozen senior officials on corruption charges in January 2023.

In August he also fired all the heads of the draft offices across the country, after it became known that men were bribing their way out of military service by paying for medical exemptions. In September he also fired his minister of defense over allegations of corruption within the ministry. A Ukrainian Supreme Court justice was also arrested this past summer for taking bribes.

Yet, such mass firings and arrests of high-level individuals have done little to quell rumors and accusations that Zelensky still tolerates corruption within his inner circle, perhaps because it’s true. According to a top adviser to Zelensky, who spoke to a Time journalist off the record, “People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.”

An expensive, unwinnable war

In a September 2023 meeting with U.S. senators, Zelensky pleaded for more funds saying “You’re giving money. We’re giving our lives.” Indeed, according to U.S. officials, at least 70,000 of Ukraine’s 500,000 troops had been killed by mid-August 2023, and another 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.

Another 9,614 Ukrainian civilians had also been killed as of September 10, 2023. So many Ukrainian youths have been thrown into the meat grinder that the average age of Ukrainian soldiers is now 43. Men up to the age of 60 face the risk of being drafted at any time.

The supply of cannon fodder is running so low that Ukraine recently updated its conscription law to include women. Women between the ages of 18 and 60 with medical backgrounds, including doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists and pharmacists, must register for military service as of October 1, 2023.

However, unlike their male counterparts, women are not barred from leaving the country unless they’re called in for active duty. Ukraine is also trying to get as many Ukrainians back from other countries as well. To that end, Norway recently announced it will pay EUR 1,500 in cash to any Ukrainian willing to go home.

Yet despite the enormous sums of money being poured into Ukraine, the weapons sent, the conscription of women and aged civilians, Ukraine is making no headway and have no conceivable way of winning. Even some of Zelensky’s closest aides are now saying he’s “deluding himself” thinking he can still somehow win.

NATO countries are running out of ammunition and warn of shortages, while Russia has ramped up its military hardware production more than tenfold. And, even if we continue to supply the weapons, Ukraine is running out of able-bodied fighters to use them.

Preplanned post-war profiteering

In the final analysis, one wonders whether corruption might actually be a primary driver of this war. Is the American public being robbed and Ukraine drained of its youths while a relatively small number of corrupt individuals stuff their pockets with cash?

It looks that way, especially in light of the news that BlackRock, which already owns most of the private assets in the world, is positioning itself to profit from a post-war Ukraine. As reported by Business Today in early May 2023:

President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, recently met with the management team of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company, to discuss the creation of an investment fund aimed at restoring the country’s economy through public and private capital. Netzines have not taken well to the news with many criticizing Zelensky over the meeting.

A Twitter user said, ‘Taxpayers pay the war bills, private firms get the profits.’ ‘Ukraine being privatized and sold off to companies like Blackrock,’ another said.

According to the press service of the Office of the President, the parties discussed the details of the investment fund’s creation and implementation of large-scale business projects in Ukraine.

The U.S. is also keen on Ukraine privatizing its banks, which will open the door for central bankers to take over. And let’s not forget that the big picture plan for Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction is to turn the whole country into smart cities with “smart governments” run by artificial intelligence.

It’s also a testing ground for warfare-related AI technologies said to be “paving the way for AI warfare in the future,” although it doesn’t appear to provide them with much advantage at the moment.

In short, it appears American and European taxpayers are paying for the destruction of Ukraine and the elimination of huge numbers of its inhabitants, so that technocrat globalists and central bankers can then profit from the privatization and rebuilding of Ukraine into a “smart country” model for the rest of the world.

Reprinted with permission from Mercola.

Note from LifeSiteNews co-founder Steve Jalsevac: Cost, death, and injury estimates quoted from U.S. government sources in this article are not reliable since the Biden administration cannot fully admit the political disaster of their proxy war using Russia to bring about regime change in Russia, break up the world’s largest nation, and take control of its vast natural resources. Many alternative news sources have indicated Ukrainian deaths to be far higher, up to possibly 400-500,000, and U.S. and EU financial costs to also be far higher than admitted.

No one knows the real costs because audits of U.S. military expenses have proven to be impossible, Ukraine is the most corrupt, money-laundering European nation, and there are additional, multi-billion-dollar intelligence gathering/CIA costs related to the conflict never provided to the public. The conflict has also cost the West massive direct and indirect expenses, such as devastating economic fallout from the U.S.-directed blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines for which a current U.S. propaganda campaign is attempting to assign blame for that disaster on Ukraine operatives as the U.S. is engaging in a withdrawal of support for the failed war.

As well, the unprecedented level of failed Western sanctions against Russia have backfired on the West with the EU suffering the most to the tune of many billions of dollars and to an extent that is threatening the economic stability of the EU. Many other, especially poor developing nations, have also greatly suffered from the war and sanctions. Ukraine/NATO destruction of Russia’s main ammonia pipeline has deprived those nations of critically needed fertilizer and advanced the globalist ‘climate change’ campaign against fertilizer use.

The war, sanctions, and disastrous U.S./NATO killing of the very reasonable diplomatic peace settlement agreed to between Ukraine and Russia in March 2022, have resulted in far more harm to Ukraine and the West than to Russia. The formerly communist nation has astonishingly managed to benefit in many ways from having to resist NATO actions against it related to the conflict.

Russia has astonishingly maintained a healthy economy and gained numerous new nation-state allies representing a majority of the world’s population because of this terrible war conspiracy to increase Western economic hegemony and force the globalist UN/WEF/ Blackrock/Vanguard/State Street/Great Reset/New World Order agenda. LifeSiteNews, from the very beginning of the conflict, sensed this agenda and has been strongly encouraging peace negotiations in order to save Ukrainian lives.

We have never supported the Russian Special Military Operation. However, we have acknowledged that Russia has legitimate fears over broken U.S. promises related to the constant, unnecessary expansion of NATO along its borders. And there has been understandable, grave Russian concern over the horrific shelling and unprovoked killing of 14,000 Russian-speaking Ukrainian civilians by the Ukraine military since the U.S.-assisted violent, Ukraine regime change coup in 2014. We are simply uncompromisingly pro-life, pro-peace, and anti-globalist tyranny.

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Sec Def Austin Unveils $400 Million Arms Package For Ukraine — But One Thing Is Missing

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Jake Smith

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Ukraine but isn’t bringing the good news Kyiv wants to hear, as the country continues to struggle to hold the front line amid Russian advances.

Austin has been intimately involved over the last two years in overseeing U.S. military aid to Ukraine, of which there has been approximately $70 billion. The Defense Secretary touched down in Ukraine on Sunday in a show of continued support and announced a new $400 million arms package, but won’t be giving Kyiv what it really wants — the ability to use U.S.-provided long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory, according to multiple reports.

The request to use the missiles for such a purpose has been something Ukraine has asked for for months; as Ukraine can’t produce such weapons, it is looking to the U.S. and Europe for help.

Austin arrived in Ukraine without signaling that the request would be filled, and that’s likely to leave Kyiv unsatisfied. The administration has been hesitant to allow Ukraine to use U.S. or European-provided missiles to conduct long-range attacks against Russia, in part because it could escalate the war and drag the U.S. further into the conflict.

“We think it is wrong that there are such steps,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in early September, according to The Washington Post. “We need to have this long-range capability, not only on the occupied territory of Ukraine but also on the Russian territory, so that Russia is motivated to seek peace.”

The idea has been frequently discussed between U.S. and Ukrainian officials but nothing has come to fruition. Austin has also previously said that he doesn’t think it would significantly improve Ukraine’s odds of victory, noting in an early September press conference that “there’s no one capability that will in and of itself be decisive in this campaign.”

Ukraine is also pressing the administration for NATO membership, but Austin had no new updates to give on that request either, according to reports. The Biden-Harris administration has said that Ukraine’s fate is eventually to join NATO but hasn’t provided a timeline for when.

However, the U.S. is providing Ukraine with $400 million worth of weapons systems, Austin announced on Monday, including munitions, armored vehicles and tanks, according to reports. The aid will certainly meet some of the needs of Ukraine’s military but is not as large as some of the prior multi-billion dollar packages.

“The United States understands the stakes here, Mr. President,” Austin told Ukrainian Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Monday, Reuters reported.

President Joe Biden’s options to help Ukraine are starting to run out as he prepares to leave office in January. Even with U.S. and European-provided military aid, it has done little more than help Ukraine maintain a defensive position against Russia, which has shown no signs of stopping its invasion campaign.

Russia launched sweeping missile and drone strikes against targets in Eastern Ukraine over the weekend ahead of Austin’s visit, according to Reuters. Ukrainian forces staged a successful incursion into regions in Western Russia at the end of the summer but Russian forces have started to retake some of the territory in recent weeks, The New York Times reported.

The odds that Biden can secure substantially more funding from Congress to aid Ukraine are slim; it was already difficult for the president to secure the last $60 billion aid package in April, as the sentiment among some lawmakers is that the administration doesn’t seem to have a plan to end the war and move Ukraine toward victory.

It will be either presidential candidates Donald Trump or Kamala Harris who will have to pick up where Biden left off. Harris would likely mirror Biden’s approach to the war and continue strong U.S. support for Ukraine’s military campaign, but some critics fear that she lacks the needed foreign policy wisdom to properly maneuver the conflict.

Trump has vowed to end the war before January if he’s elected in November, touting his ability to negotiate with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has also signaled he may end military aid to Ukraine in favor of seeking a peaceful settlement between Kyiv and Moscow.

Austin on Monday dismissed ideas that U.S. support for Ukraine would end if Trump were elected in November.

“I’ve seen bipartisan support for Ukraine over the last 2-1/2 years, and I fully expect that we’ll continue to see the bipartisan support from Congress,” Austin said, according to Reuters.

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Middle East War Shows No Signs Of Stopping One Year After Oct. 7 — And No Clear Path To Exit

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Jake Smith

The chaos of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel is still being felt one year later as the broader region grapples with a conflict that has shown no signs of stopping.

Hamas Oct. 7 terrorist attacks caught Israel by surprise and resulted in the murder of approximately 1,200 people and the kidnapping of hundreds of others, including American citizens. Israel retaliated and launched a war against Hamas in Gaza, which a year later has not ended but instead spilled into the broader Middle East and drawn in other bad actors such as Hezbollah and Iran.

“We’re still stuck in Oct. 7, 2023, in one unending day of terror, of fear, of anger, of despair,” Yuval Baron, an Israeli citizen whose father-in-law is still being held by Hamas in Gaza, told Reuters.

Israeli forces have largely occupied Gaza and killed thousands of Hamas operatives, largely crippling the terrorist group’s capabilities, although it has come at great humanitarian cost to the enclave, according to Reuters. The conflict has displaced millions of Palestinians and wreaked havoc across Gaza, leaving many areas uninhabitable, Bloomberg reported.

The effort to build Gaza after the fighting ends — whenever that may be — will likely be an incredibly costly venture that could take years and require joint cooperation between several Arab states, according to Bloomberg. Millions of tons of debris will have to be cleared from the enclave while buildings are repaired or replaced.

“We thought it would be two months [of fighting] — at most,”  Mohammed Shakib Hassan, a Palestinian civil servant who fled his home after Israeli forces entered Gaza last year, told The New York Times. “Twelve months have passed in front of our eyes.”

Israel, with the help of the U.S., has on several occasions made offers for a ceasefire in Gaza conditioned on the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas and the surrender of the terrorist group, but these proposals have been rejectedmultiple times. Yayha Sinwar, the leader of Hamas who has been hiding underground in Gaza, reportedly believes that he is not going to survive the war and has zero intention of reaching a ceasefire deal with Israel at this point in the conflict, according to U.S. intelligence assessments reviewed by The New York Times.

The Biden-Harris administration has spent months brokering negotiations between Israel and Hamas and working with regional mediators to try to reach a deal, but these efforts have largely been fruitless. Though President Biden has on several occasions predicted that a ceasefire could be reached in short order, his own officials now privately believe it will be near impossible to get a deal done between now and January, the end of Biden’s term.

“They’re probably not going to get one before the election, or before January either. But that’s not on them, per se. It speaks to the difficulty of how far apart [Israel and Hamas] are,” former State Department official Gabriel Noronha told the Daily Caller News Foundation in September.

There have been various roadblocks to getting a deal done. Specifically, Israel wants to leave troops along the Gaza-Egyptian border, arguing that it would stonewall Hamas from trafficking in weapons, but Hamas has rejected this term.

Though the prospects of a deal are unlikely at this point, Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza has largely come to a close as the terrorist group’s capabilities have been vastly diminished.

“Hamas is a shadow of its former self. Israel is going to continue to try to eradicate them, but it’s sort of a guerilla campaign. Hamas is being starved and smoked out. I suspect that you’re going to see Hamas go underground somewhat — more figuratively than literally at this point,” Noronha told the DCNF last month.

Instead, Israel has shifted much of its forces and focus away from Gaza and toward Lebanon, which houses the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. Hezbollah is Iran’s largest terrorist group in the Middle East and has engaged in cross-fire skirmishes with Israel since last October out of support for Hamas, displacing thousands of civilians near the Israel-Lebanon border, according to NPR.

Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah have reached a boiling point in recent weeks, as Israel has launched sweeping airstrikes against the terrorist group in southern Lebanon and killed the group’s leader in an airstrike in late September, according to The Washington Post. Israeli forces have begun ground raids against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, in what could be the prelude to a much larger ground invasion.

The Biden-Harris Administration, along with other allies, also put forward on Sep. 26 a separate ceasefire proposal for Israel and Hezbollah, although it was seemingly ignored by both parties.

“It’s clear that Israel is determined to rid Lebanon of Hezbollah,” senior fellow at the Strauss Center and former Pentagon official Simone Ledeen told the DCNF. “They need Hezbollah to lay down their arms and surrender… the Israelis [are] really focused on getting to that objective.”

The multi-front Middle East conflict extends also to Iran, which — though it has helped orchestrate and fund the various terror attacks against Israel — made an unprecedented move in April and launched a sweeping missile strike against Israel from directly within Iran’s borders, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Iran launched a similar attack against Israel last week in the form of roughly 180 missiles, most of which were intercepted by U.S. and Israeli forces.

Israel is expected to respond with an attack directly against Iran, although the timing and nature of the move is publicly unknown. The Biden-Harris administration is helping coordinate the attack with Israel, though it wants Israel to avoidgoing after the country’s nuclear facilities.

“The launch of over 180 ballistic missiles by Tehran requires a decisive reaction to prevent future attacks,” Israeli intelligence agent Avi Melamed said in a statement on Monday. “Currently, it seems that Israel is finalizing its operational plans while the U.S. prepares munitions to defensively counter any potential Iranian counterstrike.”

The conflict extends even further into Iraq, Syria and Yemen, all hotspots for other various Iranian-backed terrorist groups that have attacked U.S. and Israeli forces in the region since last October, according to Axios. Israeli forces have launched a series in those regions, too, in recent months.

Until the current Middle East conflict comes to an end, the possibility of regional peace may be too far out of reach, even as that remains a goal for other key Arab states and Western nations. Iran’s “axis of resistance” has taken severe blows since last October, according to Axios.

But Israeli forces are stretched across multiple fronts in a conflict with no clear end game, and the Israeli people seem to be growing more and more weary of the conflict; 23% of Israelis considered leaving the country in the last year, according to a recent poll cited by Axios.

“This war won’t end because nobody is willing to blink,” Thomas Nides, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the Times. “In the meantime, everyone is losing — hostages and their families, innocent Palestinians, Israelis displaced from northern Israel, Lebanese civilians. And it’s truly tragic.”

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