The military-political regime in Kiev has shown that it is prepared to do anything, including sacrificing its population, in order to prove to its Western curators that it can fulfil the plans laid out by Washington and Brussels. This is in order to attract as much funding, more military than for the benefit of its population, to increase the coffers and bank deposits of oligarchs, generals and members of Volodimir Zelensky’s government.
By Pablo Jofré Leal
In order to have a narrative that convinces its increasingly incredulous patrons, the Kiev regime shows urbi et orbi supposed “successes in combat” and recovery of territories that they can in no way prove despite the support of the Western disinformation and manipulation media, which bombard with news that have no correlation with reality, taking advantage of censorship, restrictions and invisibilisation of the Russian media at the hands of those who usually call themselves “defenders of freedom of expression and democracy”.
Zelensky and his ilk are well aware that increasing the already monumental Western financial and military support depends on what they call “military successes” which in turn has the correlation with US and European politicians convincing – or rather manipulating – their societies that the colossal sums given to a government that is considered one of the most corrupt in the world (1) is money well spent in order to protect Ukrainians, defend freedom and fight against powers considered enemies of the West. Such is the view of the Russian federation. The supposed territorial gains touted by Kiev as glorious triumphs, signs of a successful counter-offensive, have been described as “limited” by the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank that claims these advances are essentially small villages of no significant strategic importance (2). Russia has managed to establish a line of defence around the Donbas that has been impossible for the Kiev regime to overcome, not even the first defensive structures. For Zelensky and his ilk, a total failure, which he has tried to deflect by attacking civilian targets in Russia.
Criticism of this unbridled and uncontrollable arms support, some of which ends up on the black arms market on various continents and in money that enriches the Ukrainian hierarchy, has been growing. Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville noted on Fox’s The Ingraham Angle that “we’re missing the point in Washington. At the end of the day, it’s a high school team – referring to Ukraine – playing a college team – Russia – they can’t win…what we’re doing is trying to take our eyes off the real issue that the Biden administration and the Democrats are a total disaster” (3). On the same programme with Tuberville, it was revealed by the host that a poll conducted by SSRS – an opinion research firm – and CNN revealed that 55% of Americans say that support for Ukraine should not continue, no more additional funding. This. Against 45% who see continued support for Kiev as positive. A figure that contrasts with the 65% support had at the beginning of the operation of denazification and demilitarization by Russia in February 2022.
Opinions such as that of US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, who publicly declared that Kiev should not receive a “blank cheque”, are generating fear in the Zelensky regime and prompting it to order its army troops, mercenaries hired by the thousands, and to pray for Ottoman support in the management of the most advanced military technologies, not to stop its actions. The order against the troop of sheep that the Ukrainian army has become, is to try to keep at all costs every space or village that they can show as conquered to the popular forces of the Donbass and the Russian army. This, regardless of the losses which, according to figures provided by the Russian defence ministry, mean 300 casualties a day for Kiev. A deadly bloodletting that Zelensky does not seem to care about in his idea that withdrawing troops from a frontline can cause a “domino effect” and thus stop the supply of arms and money that is the only thing that keeps him staggeringly on his feet.
Corruption has reached levels that show the absolute rottenness of a regime that even has to remove it from circulation those in charge of the recruitment centres, created precisely by Zelensky last June, who received bribes for not sending those who paid high sums of money to fight (4). Ukrainian media and government officials pointed out that such cases of corruption have lived mainly in Odessa, Lviv and Kiev and internal investigations showed that those arrested and removed from their posts have enriched themselves by leaving out of compulsory military service those who were even paid in cryptocurrencies or were left on the border with Poland not to be part of the war. One hundred and twelve charges linked to the area of enlisting troops will be prosecuted – at least this is what the Ukrainian president announced – which raises fears that the ramifications of this particular business will reach the highest levels of the Ukrainian army and government. This is the fate of regimes that serve their masters rather than their society.
Corruption is a cancer that has spread throughout Ukraine. Already last January Zelensky dismissed 15 high-ranking officials for corruption allegations, at different levels: five governors: Oleksiy Kuleba of Kiev, Oleksandra Staruja of Ukraine, Oleksandra Staruja of Ukraine, and Oleksandra Staruja of Ukraine. Oleksandra Staruja of Zaporiyia. Dimitro Zhivitski of Sumy oblast, Yaroslav Yanushevich of Kherson and Valentina Reznichenko of Dnipropetrovsk. The deputy ministerial charges were: Deputy Social Policy Minister Vitali Muzichenka and Deputy Development Ministers Ivan Lukerya and Viachelsav Negoda. Even Zelensky’s deputy advisor was dismissed from his post. The Ukrainian president himself announced that changes would be made in the country’s leadership after several scandals within the Ministry of Defence. The most notorious case was that of Vasil Lozinski, deputy minister of infrastructure and community development, accused of receiving more than 400,000 dollars intended for the purchase of military equipment and machinery. In addition to the confession regarding the purchase of military rations at inflated prices for Ukrainian soldiers destined for the battle front, who had already made known the lack of clothing and food, these facts have been a continuation of the corruption that afflicts Ukraine, its regime and its own supporters, who will be charged with the bill for weapons and support in general at the end of the war. Ukraine is indebted to its patrons, who will pick up the bill for decades to come. Its reconstruction, estimated at this point to have cost in excess of $500 billion, will mean European and US transnationals demanding payment from the very riches of a ruined country. Perhaps the 250 billion that has already been spent on the war would have been a good incentive to lay the foundations for a country where corruption did not place it, before the war, in 122nd place among the 180 most corrupt countries in the world. And to achieve non-violent, good-neighbourly development. Euromaidan placed this Eastern European country in the warmongering camp of Washington and NATO, which, after a decade, has it at a crossroads that plunges it, with each passing day, into the morass of becoming a mortgaged state. Ukraine is a lamb marching to the slaughter house, led by its shepherds who have no interest whatsoever in Ukraine, but only that it should serve as cannon fodder and a figurehead for their Russophobic ambitions.
A month before the outbreak of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, as a front man for Washington and NATO, European media considered the Eastern European country as follows: “Ukraine is a sovereign country. But only formally. The reality is that it is economically, militarily and politically dependent on the West. Ukraine is not a failed state, but it walks the wire as if it were a tightrope walker. If it spills out one way or the other – a tightrope walker’s risk – will depend on how the current crisis is resolved. But at present, of course, its future is unknown, although its critical situation is not.
