What Does Zelensky Have On Joe?

I'm not posing this question as though I think there may be a specific answer. I'm posing it more in a spirit that there is a range of possible explanations for current US Ukraine policy, of which one answer might be that Zelensky does have something on Biden, but there are other answers that might include policymaker stubbornness, confirmation bias, or conventional-mindedness, but this would be attributable to Joe's handlers, not Joe himself. If the policy decisions are traceable to Joe and not his handlers, the most likely explanation probably does have more to do with pure venality.

But I think this also goes to what Trump intended to say on the "perfect phone call", in which he is reported to have asked Zelensky in very general terms to help Trump's people to look into Biden and his son, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. I think putting this request in the way he did, a by-the-way “I would like you to do us a favor, though”, was in Trumpspeak a reference to a set of circumstances that, as I suggested yesterday, was an open secret to everyone on the call, including those in the Deep State who were listening in, and the by-the-way tone was in fact intended to annoy those in that group.

This was Trump as truthteller, Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield, James Dean playing Caleb Trask in East of Eden, and I think Trump was perfectly aware of its likely effect, viz, that it would prompt an impeachment. He was simply saying out loud that there was a great deal in Ukraine that would offend proprieties, and let's acknowledge that in light of present developments, he was right; it's likely to prompt not just one impeachment, but two.

Let's consider, though, that the current status of the Russo-Ukraine war, now in its ninth year after a US-prompted coup deposed an elected president in Kyiv and caused Russia to annex ethnically Russian territory in retaliation, is stalemate. There was an optimistic phase last year, when Ukraine successfully repelled a Russian blitzkrieg and drove those forces back to something approximating the post-2014 borders, but subsequent circumstances haven't been encouraging.

In addition, Volodymyr Zelensky hasn't lived up to his 2022 media hype. For perhaps six months, he could be spun as a modern-day Victor Laszlo -- as a onetime instructor in rhetoric, I bought into this myself -- but the impression didn't survive his Vogue cover shoot, and the uplifting addresses to the world audience stopped (did he lay off his speechwriters?). Word leaked out that he could no longer afford the political cost of the casualties incurred by counteroffensives against dug-in Russian troops.

As time went on, he had his own scandals. As of early this year,

Volodymyr Zelensky has fired a slew of senior Ukrainian officials amid a growing corruption scandal linked to the procurement of war-time supplies, in the biggest shakeup of his government since Russia’s invasion began.

. . . The announcement came after the arrest on Sunday of Vasyl Lozynskyy, the acting minister for regional development. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine has accused Lozynskyy of receiving $400,000 in “unlawful benefits” for facilitating contracts, including for power generators – a sensitive issue in a country that is struggling to cope with freezing temperatures and frequent power cuts caused by the Russia’s attacks on its infrastructure.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau also said it was investigating “high-profile media reports” into allegations that Ukraine’s defense ministry was buying military provisions, including food for the troops, at inflated prices.

More recently,

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has dismissed all officials in charge of regional military recruitment centers amid a widespread corruption scandal.

A scandal linked to the procurement of war-time supplies had already led to Zelensky firing a slew of senior Ukrainian officials at the start of the year, and prompted Ukraine’s deputy defense minister Viacheslav Shapovalov to resign after allegations of corruption surfaced in the media.

. . . Among the issues, Zelensky cited “iIllicit enrichment, legalization of illegally obtained funds, unlawful benefit, illegal transportation of persons liable for military service across the border.”

He said the decision was to “dismiss all regional ‘military commissioners.’ This system should be managed by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery in time of war are high treason.”

Let's recall that the US sponsored the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych as president of Ukraine in 2014, which started the whole war, on the pretext that Yanukovych was corrupt. Yet accounts I've linked here insist that Ukraine is now about as corrupt as it's ever been, except that as a US client, it's demanded far more US money than it ever got under Yanukovych. Most recently, Zelensky is insisting that if the West wants elections as specified in Ukraine's constitution, it needs to cough up even more than it has been:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded that taxpayers in the United States and European Union send the country even more aid if the West wishes for elections to be held next year.

In an interview published by the president’s office on Sunday evening, Zelensky said that he would be willing to hold elections despite the ongoing martial law amid the war with Russia, so long as the U.S. and EU bankroll the voting process.

. . . Zelensky said that he discussed the topic of funding for the 2024 elections with U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been one of the staunchest supporters of sending more aid to Ukraine on Capitol Hill.

“I told [Sen. Graham]: If the United States and Europe give us financial support… I’m sorry, I will not hold elections on credit, I will not take money from weapons and give it to elections either. But if you give me this financial support, if the parliamentarians realize that we need to do this, then let’s quickly change the legislation and, most importantly, let’s take risks together,” Zelensky said.

Meanwhile, reports have emerged that Zelensky has bought a luxury home in Egypt:

Egyptian investigative journalist Mohammed Al-Alawi provided exclusive materials concerning the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy. According to the documents, Zelenskyy’s family has acquired a luxury villa in “the city of [millionaires]” El Gouna. According to investigation, Olga Kiyashko, whose name matches the name of Zelenskyy’s mother-in-law, owns a VIP estate worth $5 million. Political scientist Abdulrahman Alabbassy draws a conclusion that the president’s relative purchased the estate with the humanitarian aid funds allocated to Ukraine by the West to repel Russian military aggression.

This guy looks less and less like a Victor Laszlo for our time and more like yet another chiseling strongman in a succession of US clients worldwide. The deal he pitched in 2022 was that he could accomplish the neoconservative agenda -- strengthening the Western alliance by peeling Ukraine away from the Soviet orbit -- quickly and cheaply, with Ukrainian lives and Western weapons. It's looking more and more as though he was writing checks he couldn't cover, that Ukraine wasn't going to sustain casualty rates that experienced observers knew the counteroffensive would incur, while the level of continuing corruption in the country would be harder and harder to conceal.

As of now, official expressed US policy continues to be that it will fund Ukraine for "as long as it takes", although accounts I've linked here suggest the CIA and Pentagon are less confident of the outcome. The queston continues to be why Joe Biden is still the standard bearer of the happy-face faction.

I have a little voice that's been telling me several things. The current indications we have are that Joe was definitely getting payments from Ukraine via Hunter and Burisma between 2014 and 2019. On the other hand, the National Archives now says that it has over 5,000 e-mails to Joe that were addressed to him via any of several aliases, which it's currently refusing to release, although as unclassified public records, it must. I can't imagine that 5,000 e-mails addressed via aliases covered only Hunter and Burisma, or indeed only years from 2014 to 2019.

My little voice tells me this kind of behavior is habitual. People don't just start taking payoffs and stop after five years. Look just at Spiro Agnew, who had been taking payments since he'd been Baltimore County Executive but continued to get bundles of cash while he was vice president and had had nothing to do with Baltimore for years. Joe needed money while he was vice president,didn't stop needing it when he left office, and definitely didn't stop needing it after Hunter left the Burisma board.

I would certainly not rule out that Zelensky has stuff on Joe, but what he has, if he has it, is likely not the end of the story. But that's just my little voice.