Biden administration officials are far more worried about corruption in Ukraine than they publicly admit, a confidential U.S. strategy document obtained by POLITICO suggests.
The “sensitive but unclassified” version of the long-term U.S. plan lays out numerous steps Washington is taking to help Kyiv root out malfeasance and otherwise reform an array of Ukrainian sectors. It stresses that corruption could cause Western allies to abandon Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, and that Kyiv cannot put off the anti-graft effort.
“Perceptions of high-level corruption” the confidential version of the document warns, could “undermine the Ukrainian public’s and foreign leaders’ confidence in the war-time government.”
“There is also obviously a problem in that the Ukrainian army sometimes attempts to repair the tanks, which then leads to further damage,” Schäfer said, adding that there is a shortage of the required spare parts from Germany.
In a rare bright spot of positive news out of Ukraine, the Russian and Ukrainian governments announced a major prisoner exchange late Wednesdsay, described as the biggest single swap of captives thus far after nearly two years of war.
The two sided exchanged over two hundred captives soldiers each, following talks mediated by the United Arab Emirates. “More than 200 of our soldiers and civilians have been returned from Russian captivity,” Ukraine’s President Zelensky said on Telegram.
CIA Built “12 Secret Spy Bases” In Ukraine & Waged Shadow War For Last Decade, Bombshell NYT Report Confirms
Clearly, Kiev and Washington now want the world to know of the deep intelligence relationship they tried to conceal for over the past decade. It is perhaps a kind of warning to Moscow at a moment Ukraine’s forces are in retreat: the US is fighting hand in glove with the Ukrainians.
The revelations contained in the NY Times report also confirm what President Putin has precisely accused Washington of all along.
Ukrainian officials had claimed that defenses were being built at huge cost, but in his view, those defenses simply weren’t there. “Either it was an act of negligence, or corruption. It wasn’t a failure. It was a betrayal”.
The Biden administration’s State Department said on Tuesday it will be lifting a ban on providing U.S. weapons and training to the neo-Nazi Azov battalion of the Ukrainian military.
“The U.S. had banned the regiment from using American weapons, citing the neo-Nazi ideology of some of its founders,” reports ABC News.
Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, Russian authorities have decried the “Nazification” of their neighboring nation.
Western media has cried Ukraine cannot have a Nazi problem because its NATO-controlled puppet President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish.
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I will say what we are all thinking:
This is the Trump effect.
Zelensky is seeing the writing on the wall.
