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Dr. Volodymyr & Mr. Zelensky: the dark side of the Ukrainian president
[...] In terms of #corruption, the record is no better. In 2015, the Guardian estimated that #Ukraine was the most corrupt country in #Europe. In 2021, Transparency International, a Western NGO based in Berlin, ranked Ukraine 122nd in the world for corruption, close to hated Russia (136th). Not brilliant for a country that passes for a paragon of virtue against the Russian barbarians. Corruption is everywhere, in ministries, administrations, public companies, parliament, the police, and even in the High Court of Anti-Corruption Justice according to the Kyiv Post ! It is not uncommon to see judges driving a Porsche, observe the newspapers.
Zelensky's main sponsor, Ihor #Kolomoisky, residing in Geneva where he has luxurious offices overlooking the harbour, is not the least of these oligarchs who profit from the ambient corruption: on March 5, 2021, Anthony Blinken, who probably could not do otherwise, announced that the State Department had frozen his assets and banned him from the United States because of "an implication in a significant act of corruption ". It is true that Kolomoisky was accused of having embezzled 5.5 billion dollars from the public bank #Privatbank. Mere coincidence, the good Ihor was also the main shareholder of the #Burisma oil holding company which employed the son of Joe #Biden, Hunter, for a modest compensation of 50,000 dollars per month, and which is today the subject of an investigation by the Delaware attorney. Wise precaution: Kolomoisky, who has become persona non grata in Israel and a refugee in Georgia according to some witnesses, is therefore unlikely to come and testify at the bar.
It is this same Kolomoisky, decidedly unavoidable in this Ukraine on the road to progress, who made Zelensky's entire acting career and who we find involved in the Pandora Papers affair. revealed by the press in October 2021. These papers revealed that since 2012, the TV channel 1+1 belonging to the sulphurous oligarch had paid no less than 40 million dollars to its star Zelensky since 2012 and that the latter, shortly before d being elected president and with the help of his close guard from Kryvyi Rih – the two Shefir brothers, one of whom is the author of Zelenski's scripts and the other the head of the State Security Service ( #SBU) , and the producer and owner of their joint production company Kvartal 95 – had cautiously transferred considerable sums to offshore accounts opened in his wife's name, while acquiring three undeclared apartments in London for the sum of 7.5 million dollars.
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It is certain that, personally, Zelensky was never close to neo-Nazi ideology or even to the Ukrainian nationalist extreme right. His Jewish ancestry, even if it is relatively distant and was never claimed before February 2022, obviously excludes any anti-Semitism on his part. This rapprochement, therefore, does not betray an affinity but stems from banal raison d'etat and a well-understood mixture of pragmatism and instinct for physical and political survival.
You have to go back to October 2019 to understand the nature of the relationship between Zelensky and the far right. And it must be understood that these far-right formations, even if they weigh only 2% of the electorate, still represent nearly a million highly motivated and well-organized people who are divided into numerous groups. and movements, of which the #Azov regiment (co-founded and financed in 2014 by Kolomoisky, still him!) is only the best known. The Aïdar, Dnipro, Safari, Svoboda, Pravy Sektor, C14 and National Corps organizations must be added to it to be complete.
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