As Biden inflicts high inflation, interest, taxes, and regulation on average Americans, he dishes 100 billion hard-earned dollars to Ukraine. Suspicions rise – and for good reason – pockets are being lined, perhaps even Zelensky’s. While we stand watch for more Biden kickbacks, Ukraine’s corruption nears intolerable.
Objectively, Americans struggle to their pay bills, especially seniors on fixed incomes, losing life savings to inflation and high credit, with no end in sight. Meantime, Ukraine sucks down more money than NATO.
Where is that money going? Theoretically, to weapons. Some must be. But no one dares ask the hard questions. Talk is cheap, and Inspector General (IG), Government Accounting Office (GAO), and even Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports on recent Ukrainian corruption are few – why?
Answer: Because the truth is profoundly embarrassing, especially in an election year, when Biden wants to keep funding Ukraine to posture support for freedom – while prosecuting free speech and free markets.
On numbers, doubts about Zelensky are mounting, and not just in America. Based on interviews with 2000 Ukrainians, fully 77 percent say Zelensky allows corruption in his government and the military.
More, we should have suspected Zelensky – and others – from the start. Think about it. This is the nation that underwrote Hunter Biden’s mystery wealth, as Joe Biden threatened to withhold $100 billion in aid (on record, Council on Foreign Relations) if they did not fire the prosecutor pursuing Hunter’s company. Note: They did, Joe Biden then released the aide, and that company paid Hunter Biden.
Now, far from backrooms, Ukraine just sucks down massive amounts of US aid, roughly five billion a month from US taxpayers, little for the money month after month, except more US debt and talk.
What was known in 2021? Enough. Ukraine was one of the most corrupt countries in the world, as endemically corrupt as El Salvador, Algeria, Angola, or Zambia – more than 115 other countries, including Qatar, Dominica, Rwanda, Saudi, Namibia, Vietnam, Surinam, India, Colombia, Sierra Leone, and dozens of others. Even Cuba and China rank less corrupt than Ukraine.
Other facts now sting. Old documents confirm, that even before Ukraine started draining the US Treasury and weapons inventories, Zelensky and his circle, including chief aide, owned “offshore companies… in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus and Belize,” some “used … to buy pricey London real estate,” and even after the 2019 election, Zelensky’s family got offshore money. Maybe that’s where Joe and Hunter got the idea?
Wind the clock forward. Throughout 2022 and 2023, “large scale embezzlement schemes” and “strategic corruption” continue to dog money sent to Ukraine, dribs and drabs getting out, always followed by an act of contrition, new resolution, or a firing – but the money all gone.
Ironically, as the Biden White House and congressional Democrats remain mum on endemic, unchecked corruption in Ukraine, under Zelensky’s watch if not guidance, some in the media are uneasy. They are asking how Ukraine can be absorbing all that money, and where it is going? They are right. Answers are few. While some stories have popped up, the reality is hard to ignore.
Some media, especially in 2023, are finally asking, what is happening with all the money? They suggest Zelensky may be directly involved, yet where are congressional inquiries, reality checks, hearings, spending limits, IG, and GAO investigations? Not to be found. Meantime, Biden and Yellen argue the world will end if Ukraine is not endlessly funded. But will it?
Slowly, there is a realization that this unpleasant truth cannot be kept under a basket. It is the kind of ignominious practice that eventually finds light. A few in Congress know the open faucet must be turned off, but Biden and virtually all Democrats are all in, ready to keep spending, not cap or stop.
Real question: How much more denial, deception, covering up, ignoring, forgiving, and permitting of Ukrainian corruption will be allowed? More dollars lost? Ukraine is not even a NATO ally, yet they are soaking average Americans. What can you say? This cannot go on forever. Then again, the Bidens are not NATO allies either, and they … well, that is another story for another day. How much, then, is too much?
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
