Burisma Biden

From Moon of Alabama:

2010 Jul to 2012 Apr — Mykola Zlochevsky’s Burisma Holdings receives lucrative permits for its oil and gas companies while he heads Ukraine’s Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resource

2014 Feb 23 — US-supported coup drives out President Yanukovych

Mar — EU blocks Zlochevsky’s funds among others’

— UK blocks funds of Zlochevsky’s companies, opens investigation against him

Spring — Burisma hires Devon Archer and Hunter Biden (Rosemont Seneca investment firm) as board members (another principal, Christopher Heinz, US Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson, will cut ties with Rosemont Seneca in 2015)

June — Petro Poroshenko becomes President

Dec — Zlochevsky leaves Ukraine after put on most-wanted list

2015 Jan — UK closes case against Zlochevsky and releases companies’ funds

Feb — Viktor Shokin appointed as Prosecutor General

Mar — EU releases Zlochevsky’s and others’ funds

— Hunter Biden meets with US Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken

Jul — Hunter Biden meets with US Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken

Sep — US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt publicly urges Ukrainian prosecutors to do more against corruption

Oct — US Asst Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland testifies in Congress that Prosecutor General’s office is corrupt

— Shokin announces joint investigation reopening Zlochevsky case

Dec — US Vice President Joe Biden in Kyiv announces $190 million to fight corruption but withholds announcement of $1 billion loan guarantee, says Prosecutor General’s office needs reform

— Shokin transfers one of the cases against Zlochevsky to US-supported National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU)

2016 Feb — Shokin confiscates several of Zlochevsky’s properties

Feb 12 — VP Biden speaks to Poroshenko by telephone, emphasizing the importance of rooting out corruption as obliged by loan guarantee [Biden seems to have conflated this conservation, and perhaps that of Mar 22, with his Dec visit to create his dramatic 6-hours-to-fire-Shokin story]

Feb 17 — Shokin goes on paid leave after being asked by Shokin to resign, which requires parliamentary approval

Feb 18 & 19 — More calls from VP Biden

2016 Mar 1 — Representing Burisma, Karen Tramontano secures meeting with US Undersecretary of State Catherine Novelli (overseeing international energy issues) after mentioning Hunter Biden, to discuss ending corruption investigations of Burisma

Mar 2 — Devon Archer (college roommate of Christopher Heinz) meets with John Kerry

Mar 3 — Shokin is back at work

Mar 22 — VP Biden calls Poroshenko

Mar 29 — Parliament approves dismissal of Shokin

May — Yuriy Lutsenko appointed as Prosecutor General

Sep — Ukraine closes case against Zlochevsky

2017 Jan — Case closed against Burisma for 180 million hryvnias (~$6.8 million)

Feb — Burisma hires “former” CIA agent, National Counterterrorism Center director, and Mitt Romney advisor Joseph Cofer Black as board member

Aug — NABU closes case against Zlochevsky

2019 May 14 — Lutsenko says case against Zlochevsky had been reopened some months before

May 20 — Volodymyr Zelensky becomes President

Sep 24 — US House begins hearings to impeach President Trump

No such thing as a bad jew! It’s just impossible!

It seems that being jewish means never being wrong, let alone incompetent or even evil. And only someone who hates jews would note that someone who happens to be jewish does in fact appear to be wrong, incompetent, or evil.

That seems to be the premise behind a recent Agence France Presse (AFP) story misleadingly titled “Ukraine run by ‘miserable’ Jews: rebel chief”.

One has to scroll down to the second paragraph, however, for the complete quote, which shows how nefariously the title presents it: “Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, claimed that Kiev's pro-Western leaders were ‘miserable representatives of the great Jewish people’.”

Now he may be deluded about the “jewishness” of the Kiev government and/or their facilitators and cheerleaders, but his statement clearly suggests a respect for “the great jewish people”, the greatness of which is betrayed, not exemplified, by those running Kiev.

But AFP reported it otherwise with not only the headline, but also the first paragraph: “Ukraine’s pro-Russian rebel chief on Monday branded the country’s leaders ‘miserable’ Jews in an apparent anti-Semitic jibe.”

That paragraph already displays its bias/propaganda in how it describes Alexander Zakharchenko. Yes he is a rebel against Kiev, but the government in Kiev is the result of a coup against a democratically elected government (whose crime was not so much signing a trade deal with Russia before one with the EU was finalized (and obviously intended to be exclusive somehow), but rather its willingness to renew Russia’s lease on the Sevastopol naval base – it has been a goal of Turkey and Europe for 200 years to get Russia out of the Black Sea; Putin knew what the coup was really about and acted swiftly to secure not only the base but all of Crimea, much to the embarrassment of Nato and the US).

And Zakharchenko is not “pro-Russian” but simply a Ukrainian speaker of Russian, like most of the people of the Donbass region of the east. One of the first decrees of the Kiev coup was to outlaw the Russian language. It was shortly revoked, but the spirit of the coup was made clear (in case the crucial involvement of neo-Nazi groups hadn’t been enough).

Finally, Zakharchenko is called “chief”, evoking something less civilized than western society. In fact, he is the elected prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic.

Our thanks to Moon of Alabama for first writing about this.

Remember the Odessa Massacre: May 2, 2014

39 people die after radicals set Trade Unions House on fire in Ukraine's Odessa

‘They beat us with bats and chains’ - anti-Maidan activist in Odessa

Odessa slaughter: How vicious mob burnt anti-govt activists alive

West reluctant to point finger at nationalist radicals in Ukraine crisis

Radicals shooting at people in Odessa’s burning building caught on tape

Odessa tragedy survivor: ‘Many people strangled after escaping the fire’

Odessa massacre victims died in seconds, not from smoke – emergency service chief

Anti-Russian Ukrainians resent complexity

First up is the Orwellian warning by Chrystia Freeland, Canadian MP and long-time armchair anti-Russia agitator on behalf of Ukraine, against nuanced or neutral (let alone objective) language in describing the rebellion in Donetsk and Luhansk and particularly Russia’s involvement (Sept. 5, New York Times). Instead, she praises the popular success of the Twitter hashtag ”#RussiaInvadedUkraine” as perfectly conveying the truth of the matter. Needless to say, she does not mention the EU’s and USA’s, as well as her own, role in overthrowing a democratically elected government because it was not favoring “The West” enough — or likely even more simply because it was ready to renew the lease on Russia’s Black Sea naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea. The swift (and peaceful) action by Putin to secure Crimea in response to the coup must have been what sent Nato’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen round the bend, much as Putin’s protection of Edward Snowden and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s deft thwarting of American bombing of Syria left Obama seething — Putin is a devil because he sees through these hypocritical machinations of “The West”, especially those of the U.S. military empire.

What could be more Orwellian than reducing this complex situation to the nonsensical “#RussiaInvadedUkraine”?

Then today’s local newspaper featured an article about local Ukrainians (no Russians!), including Victoria Somoff, assistant professor of Russian at Dartmouth College, who grew up in Donetsk:

Somoff said she is used to sorting out problems rationally, but the conflict has put that approach to the test.

“It’s becoming this full-scale anger. It almost scares me because I’m not a confrontational person,” she said. “I feel it’s so unjust and unfair for Russia to take over my town and my country.”

Somoff said national tensions have led to sharp disagreements between her and colleagues, many of whom live in Russia, where local support for Russia’s action runs high. ...

That point was underscored to Somoff on Wednesday, when a conversation with a professor in Russia turned sour. “We were supposed to talk about scholarly matters, a completely unrelated topic,” she said. But the international conflict looms so large that it’s almost impossible to ignore, she said, and soon the discussion became heated.

While her colleague wasn’t defending Russia, he said some blame also was due to the Ukrainian government for its poor treatment of Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens.

But Somoff said she can no longer afford to see the picture in shades of gray.

“I am a scholar. I see complexity,” she said. “But there is a point where the boundaries are drawn and arguments for complexity play to Putin. I am kind of losing any ability to be objective here.”

Acknowledgement of complexity plays to Putin, so Somoff must deny that complexity and join Rasmussen and Obama in seething rage against Putin for denying them their “win” (and for making them act like simpletons?). They would rather start World War III than admit their own contributions to fomenting and perpetuating the crisis, simply because it did not go as they planned.

It is, after all, “The West” that has left a trail of death, chaos, and destruction throughout Africa and southwest Asia, and sought to add Ukraine to that list.