Quote:
Originally Posted by Daryl_G
With all the money flowing through Ukraine, I really have doubts about Trump's claim of rooting out corruption. Seems Americans are the corrupting factor in the Ukraine and Trump's name is all over Ukraine. Seems every American in the Ukraine is gambling on the corruption to work in their favor. I'm sure Giuliani and Hunter Biden were all playing the game, Giuliani has some interesting Ukraine links.
It seems no one is clean when it comes to Ukraine.
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Ukraine went through the same post-soviet mayhem that Russia and Belarus did.
The national industries were privatized, which to western eyes like ours would seem to be a good thing, except that politically influential people had an inside track on it, and instead of simply opening a stock market and giving each citizen some shares, they held rigged auctions where dubious characters siezed the assets. The nation quickly became one where the wealth gap between rich and poor went to extreme limits.
This set up the corruption all of those countries are laboring under today, a small group of individuals have basically stolen most of the assets of these nations, and their money influences how the government functions (or conveniently does not function).
Corrupt prosecutors do not prosecute the people who pay them off, but they will prosecute the reformers and competitors of their 'clients'. Sometimes people of means and influence will get business rivals arrested on trumped up charges. Prosecutors have their own protection rackets going.
Ukraine is in the unfortunate situation of having a large Russian speaking component of the population. Most of these people probably share some common ancestry with their Ukrainian neighbors but during the Czarist period those families had assimilated into Russian society and identify strongly with 'Greater Rus'. Many of the Ukrainian oligarchs and politicians are from this Russo-Ukrainian minority and would be equally comfortable whether under Russian law or Ukrainian law, the placement of the border being an accident of history to them. They react to the reformers efforts by aligning themselves with Putin and tearing the country apart.
Americans find opportunities in situations like this (Paul Manafort helped discredited Pro-Russian
Viktor Yanukovych win the presidency and was paid handsomely for his efforts,
see pictures of Yanukovych's house turned into a museum). Hunter Biden greedily accepted a juicy seat on the board of Burisma, owned by
Mykola Zlochevsky another corrupt oligarch, because Zlochevsky wanted give the faux appearance of an honest trustworthy company. Rudy Giuliani, knowing how maleable and pliant the government is, is dipping deep in the same sort of corrupt well trying to get Ukrainians to start a malicious prosecution on an American fellow citizen.
The common people of Ukraine are great, but the place stinks to high heaven. The country has had it's own overwhelming problems for decades already, and the presence of all these Americans on the make doesn't help one bit.
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