In the US, the future of the Biden administration and the President himself are at stake because of an ongoing corruption scandal that is closely linked to the war in Ukraine. The New York Times, a leading voice for Liberal America, published a rather unexpected special report, which confirmed the truth of the two-year-old leaks about Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and described the serious legal problems he is facing as a result of his business dealings in Ukraine. It turns out that Hunter has had to borrow heavily to pay his debts to the US tax authorities, from whom he had hidden the dubious proceeds of his activities in Ukraine.
But the rush for dirty money in Ukraine is still on, and in recent months it has picked up speed as a result of the West’s corrupt supply of arms and financial support to the Ukrainian government. Anxious to profit from these deliveries, the US, evidently quite deliberately, is wasting the funds earmarked for the Ukrainian armed forces, and turning a blind eye to the disappearance of arms, ammunition and military hardware. The same thing happened in Iraq and in Afghanistan, but the US has not made any effort to change its “military support” systems, as certain groups have a clear financial interest in the current situation.
In this context, it is worth remembering that, according to estimates by industry insiders, the US “invested” some $2.5 trillion in Afghanistan, of which $80 billion were spent on arms. However, according to many experts, most of this money was wasted, with only 10-15% reaching its intended destination. Moreover, the siphoning off of money began before it ever left the US, and at every stage somebody rushed to help himself to a slice of the bounty.
Many members of the US military and political establishment are currently involved in milking the military aid cow, as are their partners in crime in Ukraine and in Europe, including many EU officials. The latter, without any legal grounds (under the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, it is a political and economic union, not a military one) are using contributions from EU members to supply military support to a non-member, and have forced through a program of military partnership with Ukraine. Clearly they are personally profiting from this support. The author has already written about the involvement of US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in this business. He has personally taken charge of supplying Ukraine with the Javelins, and has long had links with their manufacturer.
Western arms manufacturers, who stand to earn billions of dollars in this new gold rush, are rushing to cash in on the boom in sales caused by Russia’s special operation in Ukraine. According to the experts cited in a recent article in the British newspaper The Independent, the war in Ukraine is likely to result in an increasingly militarized Europe. The US and other western nations have already provided Ukraine with large amounts of funding for the purchase of new arms. In the last six months the shares of the aerospace manufacturer Raytheon Technologies and other defense corporations have rocketed in value. These companies have representatives who sit on secret Pentagon meetings to keep abreast of the potential profit to be gained from Ukraine’s, and President Volodymir Zelenskyy’s determination to obtain more arms for the fight against Russia.
The participants in these crooked schemes insist on using the tried and tested methods for providing Ukraine with military support. And no-one is concerned about the fact that once Kiev takes possession of the financial support and arms the siphoning off just continues. This is despite the fact that the media are increasingly describing Ukraine as a financial “black hole.” According to a recent CNN interview, the US does not have the capacities to track the further movements of the large numbers of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other weapons it supplies once they have crossed the Ukrainian border. Joe Biden’s administration is well aware that these weapons may sooner or later end up in “unexpected places” or be resold on the black market to, for example, terrorist or other extremist groups. As in the past, Ukraine resells the military hardware it receives, some of which ends up in the Middle East or other hotspots – thus confirming the Western media’s worst fears about Ukraine. But that is not a problem for Washington. On the contrary, it is part of its plan – to provide arms, via intermediaries, to terrorist groups in order to destabilize various regions in different parts of the world.
The US is the world’s largest arms exporter, and, according to the Japanese business news web site JBPress, its military-industrial complex will continue to flourish as a result of the Biden administration’s increase in its military support for Ukraine both before, and, even more so, after the beginning of Russia’s special operation. And Washington will continue to assert its hegemony by spilling foreign blood. Between 2016 and 2020 the US accounted for approximately 40% of global arms exports. After the beginning of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine the stock prices of major US arms manufacturers immediately shot up. The defense corporation Lockheed Martin reported the biggest increase of all. Between January and mid-March 2022 its stock price rose by 30%. The runners up included Northrop Grumann and General Dynamics, both reporting a rise of some 20%. Next came the defense giant Raytheon, with an increase of some 10%. As recently as the beginning of this year these companies were reporting zero growth, at times dipping into negative growth – that is, they were losing value.
Many of the participants in the corrupt schemes to supply arms to Ukraine are also seeing an increase in their net worth. For example, former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Ilya Kiva recently published an article about the profits that Zelenskyy and many of his Ukrainian associates are earning from the current situation. He claims that the Ukrainian President, who had scarcely a penny to his name when he was elected two years ago, now has a fortune of over $1.2 billion and owns a villa in Miami.
In view of the situation described above, many both within the USA and abroad are calling for investigations into the corrupt schemes used by the current military and political establishment, and its activities in Ukraine. For example, Tucker Carlson, Fox News anchorman has criticized the decision by US President Joe Biden to send all possible assistance to Ukraine, and insisted on the need to carry out audits of the bank accounts held by President Zelenskyy, among others. He has also accused the White House of printing money to send to Kiev at a time when the US is in the throes of the highest inflation in many years. According to reports, the Kiev regime has received more than a billion dollars in the space of one week!
So, if the “forces of Democracy” in the US are true to their promises then in the near future we all can expect to see some dramatic revelations concerning the Biden family, their friends at home and in Ukraine, and senior EU officials.
Valery Kulikov, political expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
