Most Americans are willing to support Ukraine's fight to remain separate from Russia.
But that's what's not going on over there as the U.S. sends aid package after aid package to the battered country.
According to this admission reported by Breitbart News:
A top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reportedly admitted that corruption is so rampant in the wartorn former Soviet state that officials are “stealing like there’s no tomorrow”.
Speaking anonymously to Time magazine, what is alleged to be a top presidential advisor to Zelensky said that the Ukrainian government’s efforts to stamp out corruption have proved fruitless, given that they were implemented too late to have any impact, including the firing of Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov.
“People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow,” the top advisor is said to have told the publication, saying that officials do not “feel any fear” of engaging in corruption because the firing of Reznikov and others took over six months after Zelenksy was warned that the Defence Ministry was drowning in graft.
Every U.S. dollar stolen from a U.S. taxpayer is money this kind of corruption is money that isn't going to Ukraine's war effort.
So to the extent that Congress approves yet another aid package to Ukraine -- the latest a $61 billion request from Joe Biden -- it's money for someone's pocket in Ukraine, not money to send the Russians packing. The Russians must be laughing as they continue to make encroachments in their steady move towards winning their war.
The sad thing here is that the officials taking this money must know that the war effort is lost and Ukraine isn't going to win in the end. The army is dead, the numbers aren't there, and the locals are embracing the E.U. in order to emigrate. Since the officials are all stealing, they're all wagering that Russia is going to win, and with that the reality, they're amassing their own nest eggs in places like Cyprus, Monaco and Switzerland for themselves in order to land with their feet on the ground. Why fight for Ukraine's future when you've already calculated that there is none and your best bet is to just look out for yourself before the Big Guy's cash flow runs out?
That's what seems to be going on here, yet guys like Joe Biden, and Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky keep calling for more, more, more money to flow for the war effort, making increasingly hollow appeals about democracy and the West being at stake when the only thing that is at stake is their own bank accounts.
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What's about as bad, the U.S. is bankrolling things like Ukrainian bureaucrat pensions as if that's an appropriate use of U.S. taxpayer money. If Ukraine is worth defending, these bureaucrats need to stay on the job without it, placing their bets that Ukraine will win, and that there will be a tax base to support their pensions. But we don't see that kind of risk taking there. It's all about feeding at the troughs, and when the troughs run dry, they'll pack up and head to Monaco, leaving Ukraine without its useless bureaucrats, which might be a blessing.
Sen. Rand Paul tried hard to get some kind of accounting for how these continuous aid packages are spent, yet was rebuffed mightily on both sides of the aisle, which was puzzling ... but only if one considers that there may be U.S. consultants and advisors making their piles, too. Most foreign aid ends up going to U.S. defense contractors and Washington consulting agencies, members of the swamp who have taken the revolving door in and out of government. I'd like to know how much Alexander Vindman is making if anything, given his supposed work on Ukraine, but he's far from the only one involved in this game. Apparently much of the swamp is, too.
With that kind of hog wallow going on, why is the U.S. financing this at all. When even the leading Ukrainians admit there's 'stealing like there's no tomorrow,' it's time to pull the plug. This isn't a war for independence. Nor is it a route to victory. It's not about victory at all. It's the world's biggest hog wallow.