[Salon] Ukraine Gets Their Billions Despite CIA Director Reportedly Warning Zelenksy To Stop Stealing So Much Money



https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraine-gets-their-billions-despite-cia-director-reportedly-warnings-zelenksy-stop

Ukraine Gets Their Billions Despite CIA Director Reportedly Warning Zelenksy To Stop Stealing So Much Money

by Tyler Durden
Monday, Apr 22, 2024

Democrats cheered and waved Ukrainian flags, chanting "Ukraine, Ukraine!" in some pavlovian response to Congress passing a bill that will send (another) $61 billion to Ukraine with no questions asked

Rand Paul, among many others, was incensed:

Ukrainian president Zelenskyy was very pleased, personally thinking Speaker Johnson

I am grateful to the United States House of Representatives, both parties, and personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track.

Democracy and freedom will always have global significance and will never fail as long as America helps to protect it.

The vital U.S. aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations to become stronger. Just peace and security can only be attained through strength.

We hope that bills will be supported in the Senate and sent to President Biden’s desk. Thank you, America!

'War is Peace', America!

Of course he's pleased... why wouldn't he be, as who knows where that money will end up?

As Seymour Hersh recently reported, CIA Director Burns had to warn Zelensky to stop stealing so much money.

The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting last January in Kiev with CIA Director William Burns.

His message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob movie.

The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because “he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.”

Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of thirty-five generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government.

Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious officials on the list and doing little else.

“The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,” the intelligence official told me.

Zelensky’s half-hearted response and the White House’s lack of concern was seen, the intelligence official added, as another sign of a lack of leadership that is leading to a “total breakdown” of trust between the White House and some elements of the intelligence community.

Hersh went on to note that one estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.”

But, remember, the first rule of sending money to corrupt Ukraine is... you don't talk about how corrupt Ukraine is (or you get impeached).




This archive was generated by a fusion of Pipermail (Mailman edition) and MHonArc.