Posted originally on the CTH on October 31, 2023 | Sundance 

The only people who deny financial corruption in Ukraine are those who benefit from it.  That group includes U.S. politicians who gleefully send billions of taxpayer funds into the country of Ukraine while capturing returns in the process.

U.S. advisors and consultants, along with private sector contractors and multinational corporations like Blackrock, are all beneficiaries of the vast sums of money being dumped into Ukraine. We all know this.  So, on one hand it is simple to see why the Ukraine government officials would use the same opportunity to enrich themselves

After all, U.S. taxpayers are not only buying bombs, missiles and bullets with the money sent to Ukraine, we are also paying the salaries and pensions of the same government officials who are skimming the proceeds.  The corruption is everywhere, and every entity is participating in the graft, in one form or another.

Zelenskyy’s wife goes shopping in Paris during the war.  Where exactly do politicians think she is getting the money to spend on glitzy holiday vacations?  Everybody knows exactly what is going on.  The glaringly obvious theft is a large part of the contention the American people have with this insufferable effort to fund Ukraine.

During a lengthy Time Magazine article, one of the close and key advisors to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted that the corrupt stealing of US funds is widespread.   In addition to the theft, the overall tone of the Time Magazine article paints the war effort in Ukraine, what we have always called ‘World War Reddit’ for its mostly theatrical value, as a lost cause.  This is not surprising; however, for Time Mag to make such an admission, that does indicate a narrative shift in the overall effort.

TIME – […] Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” says the close aide to Zelensky. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.”

[…] As conscription efforts have intensified around the country, stories are spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front. Those with means sometimes bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption. Such episodes of corruption within the recruitment system became so widespread by the end of the summer that on Aug. 11 Zelensky fired the heads of the draft offices in every region of the country.

The decision was intended to signal his commitment to fighting graft. But the move backfired, according to the senior military officer, as recruitment nearly ground to a halt without leadership. The fired officials also proved difficult to replace, in part because the reputation of the draft offices had been tainted. “Who wants that job?” the officer asks. “It’s like putting a sign on your back that says: corrupt.”

[…] Amid all the pressure to root out corruption, I assumed, perhaps naively, that officials in Ukraine would think twice before taking a bribe or pocketing state funds. But when I made this point to a top presidential adviser in early October, he asked me to turn off my audio recorder so he could speak more freely. “Simon, you’re mistaken,” he says. “People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.”

Even the firing of the Defense Minister did not make officials “feel any fear,” he adds, because the purge took too long to materialize. The President was warned in February that corruption had grown rife inside the ministry, but he dithered for more than six months, giving his allies multiple chances to deal with the problems quietly or explain them away. By the time he acted ahead of his U.S. visit, “it was too late,” says another senior presidential adviser. Ukraine’s Western allies were already aware of the scandal by then. Soldiers at the front had begun making off-color jokes about “Reznikov’s eggs,” a new metaphor for corruption. “The reputational damage was done,” says the adviser. (more)

Time Magazine, a far-left ideological ally of the Biden regime, is publishing this at the same time that Congress is debating another request for billions more dollars in Ukraine aid.   The timing here would indicate a substantive shift in position for the leftist media.   Perhaps they are starting to realize, the bloom is off the ruse.

World War Reddit, written, produced and directed by: Nuland, Blinken and Sullivan.