How $1.8 billion in aid to Ukraine was funneled to the outposts of the international finance galaxy
[Heart of Empire] | Undelivered Goods, by Andrew Cockburn | Harper's Magazine
Undelivered Goods
How $1.8 billion in aid to Ukraine was funneled to the outposts of the international finance galaxy
By Andrew Cockburn
Arriving home from a recent trip to Ukraine, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle reported his joy at witnessing “the Ukrainian people . . . coming together to rebuild their country from scratch.” Ukrainians had, he wrote, moved him with their dreams of joining the European Union, fighting corruption, and rebuilding their shattered economy, inspiring Daschle, now a highly paid lobbyist, to endorse the ominously strengthening Washington consensus on escalating the fighting with “$3 billion in lethal and nonlethal military assistance.”
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“Toria” Nuland, as I reported in the January 2015 issue of Harper’s Magazine, has enjoyed a remarkable career, occupying a succession of powerful positions through changing administrations, despite her close neocon associations over the years both marital—her husband being leading neocon ideologue Robert Kagan—and political, notably as a national-security adviser to former vice president Dick Cheney. In the buildup to the 2008 Russo-Georgia war, for example, Nuland, at the time ambassador to NATO, urged George Bush to accept both Georgia and Ukraine as NATO members. Since Georgia’s then president and neocon favorite, Mikheil Saakashvili, had high hopes of drawing the United States in on his side in the coming conflict, this was a dangerous initiative. Fortunately, Bush, by that time leery of neocon advice, stood firm against her pleas.
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However, despite her enthusiasm for Yatsenyuk, Nuland was clearly well aware of who was really pulling the strings in Ukrainian politics: the oligarchs, who had assembled enormous fortunes out of the wreckage of the Soviet economy. Chief among these were those connected to the import of Russian natural gas, on which Ukraine was heavily dependent, most especially Dmitry Firtash, a multimillionaire and key supporter of the government Nuland hoped to displace. This may explain why, at the end of 2013, Firtash found himself the subject of a U.S. international “wanted” notice, charged with attempting to bribe local officials in distant India. He happened to be in Vienna, and a request was accordingly submitted to the Austrian government for his extradition back to the United States to stand trial.
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As for Firtash, the State Department has been less forgiving. In April this year a Vienna court presided over by Judge Christoph Bauer finally got around to hearing Firtash’s appeal against the extradition request in the Indian bribery case. In a daylong hearing, a crowded courtroom received a fascinating tutorial on the inside story of recent Ukrainian political events, including the background to Washington’s on-again, off-again with the Firtash extradition requests according to the status of Ukraine’s E.U. negotiations, not to mention Firtash’s role in the Poroshenko-Klitschko negotiations. Firtash’s lawyers argued that the case had little to do with bribery in India and everything to do with United States meddling in Ukrainian politics. The judge emphatically agreed, handing down a withering verdict, stating that “America obviously saw Firtash as somebody who was threatening their economic interests.” He also expressed his doubts as to whether two anonymous witnesses cited by the United States in support of its case “even existed.” The State Department announced it was “disappointed” in the verdict and maintained its outstanding warrant for Firtash, should he leave Austria and travel to some country with a legal system more deferential to U.S. demands.
Complete story at - http://harpers.org/blog/2015/08/undelivered-goods/
Of course, some of us understood from the very beginning that US involvement in Ukraine had nothing to do with freedom and democracy and everything to do with stripping Ukraine of valuable economic assets, which then would no longer benefit the people of Ukraine; rather it would then benefit international economic entities, especially American and German.
