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omgstupendousbouquetbasement · 3 years

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Zelenskiy Visiting White House for Talks on Security, Energy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visits the White House for talks Wednesday with U.S. President Joe Biden, a trip that has been in the works for two years and delayed one day due to consultations about events in Afghanistan.

Senior U.S. administration officials said the message behind the visit is “the United States’ commitment to Ukraine sovereignty, territorial integrity, and Euro-Atlantic aspirations.”

The officials told reporters the agenda would include security issues, energy and climate policy and anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.

The officials also said the two sides would be announcing several agreements, including security assistance for Ukraine, humanitarian aid for those “impacted by the crisis with Russia in the east” and coronavirus aid.

During the administration of former President Donald Trump, surrogates for Trump pressed Ukraine to open an investigation into activities involving the son of then-candidate Biden. The incidents led to President Trump’s first impeachment by the House of Representatives, and the political furor sidelined relations with Kyiv.

Analysts say there are both challenges and opportunities in the meeting between Biden and Zelenskiy in Washington.

Ukraine Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova expressed optimism about the visit, saying it sends an important message about the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Defense Minister Andrii Tarant are welcomed at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, Aug. 31, 2021.

“After (German) Chancellor (Angela) Merkel, President Zelenskiy is the second leader the U.S. is inviting to the White House with a visit to discuss some strategic issues,” Markarova told VOA. “So, I believe it shows the level of attention, focus and importance of our bilateral relations for both Ukraine and the United States.”

American experts agree that the Biden-Zelenskiy meeting is an opportunity to strengthen Ukraine-U.S. relations. Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, says the outcome of the meeting will depend to a great extent on Zelenskiy.

“It seems to me, though, that part of the ability to make this a successful meeting will depend on what President Zelenskiy asks for,” Pifer told VOA. “He should moderate some of his requests because if he asks too much, he may be disappointed. You do not want to ask the question unless you are sure the answer is going to be ‘yes.’”

Among the more sensitive subjects are NATO membership and the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Europe, which Ukraine opposes. Experts say it is important that Zelenskiy remain realistic and balanced when discussing these issues.

“He should not expect any commitment from the United States regarding Ukraine and NATO. He should also not expect any change in the Biden position on Nord Stream 2,” said John Herbst, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and the director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “Zelenskiy has to make clear that he still opposes that decision and would like to see a change without antagonizing the president. So, he can do that, I think, by mentioning it, but not in a confrontational way in their White House meeting.”

Daria Kalenyuk, the executive director of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center, says Zelenskiy should remain assertive when discussing the Nord Stream 2 issue. She said White House’s decision to waive sanctions on Nord Stream 2 contradicts Biden’s statements on fighting corruption abroad.

“The right thing would be to talk, not only about corruption in Ukraine, but also about geopolitical corruption and strategic corruption. We can and should ask why Nord Stream 2 is being finished despite it being the symbol of strategic corruption,” Kalenyuk said.

Regarding security cooperation, the Biden administration has decided to support providing additional military aid to Ukraine in case of a possible escalation of its longstanding conflict with Russia in eastern Ukraine. In addition, Biden did signal his intention to provide Ukraine with $60 million more in U.S. military equipment.

“I would think that additional American military assistance would be good," Pifer said. “First of all, because it would help improve Ukrainians’ defense capabilities. That’s the practical step. But second of all, it would be a way to send a strong message of American support for Ukraine.”

Ambassador Herbst said Biden should also be interested in supporting Ukraine through strong rhetoric.

“He needs to demonstrate in very clear ways that the United States has Ukraine’s back — is supporting Ukraine — as Moscow continues this war. And Biden has even more reasons now to do it, after his administration’s disastrous handling of the pullout from Afghanistan. He needs to show that, in fact, he is a strong international player.”

At the same time, the White House has repeatedly emphasized that it expects Ukraine to deliver tangible results in the country’s fight against corruption. Pifer said the biggest thing Zelenskiy can bring is a credible, compelling message of Kyiv’s commitment to reform.

“And that means a more open and competitive economy. It means rule of law, including reforming the judicial sector,” Pifer said. “It means reducing the outsize political and economic influence of the oligarchs. It means combating corruption.”

Ambassador Markarova is convinced the two presidents will see eye to eye, even on the more complex issues. “We know that both Ukraine and the U.S. are strategic partners and friends. So, the two leaders will discuss all the issues on the agenda like partners — sincerely and earnestly. And they will find solutions that are acceptable for both sides,” she said.

Myroslava Gongadze contributed to this report.

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/ukraine-likely-to-reopen-probe-of-hunter-biden-firm-sources?ref=scroll

EXCLUSIVE: Sources in Ukraine tell The Daily Beast that the Kyiv government is likely to re-open the corruption cases that Trump pushed in that now-infamous July phone call. But not the way Trump intends, and not necessarily to the detriment of Joe Biden. https://t.co/kVPwByEnYQ

Ukraine Likely to Reopen Probe of Hunter Biden Firm: Sources

By Anna Nemtsova | Updated 09.24.19 1:05PMET Published 09.24.19 12:33 PM ET | Daily Beast | Posted September 24, 2019 4:40 PM ET

KYIV, Ukraine—The Daily Beast has learned from an influential member of Ukraine’s parliament, from one of the country’s prosecutors, and from a center combating corruption that the government here is likely to pursue the cases that President Donald Trump urged on President Volodymyr Zelensky in a controversial phone call last July. But not the way Trump intends, and not necessarily to the detriment of Trump challenger Joe Biden.

The investigations and possible prosecutions, if they happen, would take place in the context of a new law signed by Zelensky just before his departure for the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where he is expected to meet face to face with Trump for the first time.

In Kyiv, there are widespread hopes that the reforms will help Zelensky, a former comedian who played a corruption-fighting president on television, deliver on his campaign president to clean up Ukraine for real. A new team of independent prosecutors is supposed to re-open investigations of past cases and answer questions about the corruption in post-revolutionary Ukraine over the last five years.

During much of that time, investigations were launched against various powerful oligarchs, then quietly shut down when, it was widely assumed, the prosecutors were paid off. As a result it has been hard to know if the investigations were justified, or merely launched for purposes of extortion.

“We are trying ultimately to re-set the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, to speed up the reform,” Kirill Timoshenko, deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. In accordance with the new law, all Ukrainian prosecutors will go through a process of recertification. The number of prosecutors will be cut down from 15,000 to 10,000. Timoshenko said he could not comment on specific cases and could not say more about Zelensky’s agenda for the meeting with Trump on Wednesday.

Valentin Nalyvaichenko, a former head of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency and a member of Ukraine’s parliament, says he expects the corruption case of the Burisma gas company—two cases were opened and dropped by various prosecutors over the years —to be revisited. Hunter Biden, the son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, was a board member.

Joe Biden is now Trump’s leading opponent in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, and both Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, have been working to find dirt on Biden in Ukraine.

“Ukraine’s parliament is planning to hold hearings about the various corrupt schemes.”

Nalyvaichenko said his country will be best served by pursuing an investigation related to Burisma’s alleged multimillion-dollar corruption deals, not because of Trump’s pressure but because Ukraine wants to know the truth about its own corruption, whether the founder of Burisma, Ukraine’s ex-minister of natural resources Mykola Zlochevsky from 2010 to 2012, had paid to quash the earlier investigations into the way he acquired gas licenses.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Nalyvaichenko said Ukraine’s parliament is planning to hold hearings about the various corrupt schemes. Nalyvaichenko, who is a member of the opposition Fatherland Party, serves in parliamentary group focused on U.S.-Ukraine relations.

“I am going to support President Zelensky’s initiatives to have new investigations by a new team at the law-enforcement agency,”

Nalyvaichenko said. This would include inquiries into the actions of previous prosecutor generals, Yury Lutsenko and Victor Shokhin. “I am convinced that Zelensky will say in New York that these are our domestic investigations, we are going to figure them out on our own.” He added, however, “We’d be happy to cooperate with the FBI.”

Prosecutor Sergiy Gorbatyuk investigated the founder of Burisma company, Zlochevsky, for three months in 2016, until Prosecutor General Lutsenko made a decision to drop the probe. First, Lutsenko took the case away from the investigators, then closed it down illegally, Gorbatyuk told The Daily Beast on Tuesday.

“There would not have been any question [about pursuing] such cases today, if Lutsenko did not interfere in the investigations,” the prosecutor said. “I hope that with the change of management at the prosecutor general’s office there will be no illegal interferences and this case as well as other probes will be investigated strictly in accordance with the law.”

“We are going to see some big former decision makers behind bars very soon, I have no doubt.”

— Ukrainian sociologist Irina Bekeshkina

A leading Ukrainian sociologist, Irina Bekeshkina says there is powerful will in Zelensky’s team and a strong social demand to see some former corrupt bureaucrats in jail. “It is not the number of punished criminals but their status that will make the difference and set a good example,” Bekeshkina said. “We are going to see some big former decision-makers behind bars very soon, I have no doubt.”

The Ukraine scandal has rocked American politics, where opponents of Trump have fixed on reports that, at least implicitly, he threatened to withhold vital military aid from Ukraine if Zelensky did not pursue the Burisma case.

Trump has said there was no quid pro quo, but admits that he raised the issue of Burisma, and the Biden connection, in his July 25 phone call with Zelensky as part of a discussion about corruption.

A major part of the Trump narrative is that in 2016 then-Vice President Biden pressed for the resignation of Prosecutor Lutsenko in order to protect his son. That is not the way people in Ukraine remember things. Lutsenko’s reputation for corruption was infamous, and Biden supported the efforts of Ukraine’s reformers to be rid of him.

According to Nalyvaichenko, Lutsenko needs to be investigated further, not least because he has been in communication with Trump’s agents “for vindictive purposes.”

Nalyvaichenko said Ukraine should also be interested in a thorough investigation into the “black ledger” that recorded slush-fund payments to Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

“In a Ukrainian dream scenario, Kiev would want Zelensky to agree with Western leaders on an approach to settling the war in the east.”

“As it turns out, nobody really investigated the case properly,” Nalyvaichenko said. “Officials close to former President Petro Poroshenko mentioned two names of the U.S. citizens. One was Paul Manafort, who lost his job as Trump campaign manager, the other, Larry King, was never talked about again.”

Ukraine previously suspected the well-known television host, Larry King, of accepting $225,000 from the “black ledger” for interviewing a pro-Russian politician in 2011. At the time of the allegations, King hosted the Larry King Now show on RT America, the Kremlin’s propaganda channel. At the time, King did not respond to requests for comment from Ukraine’s Kyiv Post, and as Nalyvaichenko says the allegations faded away.

There are high expectations in Ukraine this week for Zelensky’s meetings on the sidelines of the United Nations. In a Ukrainian dream scenario, Kyiv would want Zelensky to agree with Western leaders on an approach to settling the war in the east. There has been talk here, at least, of a sweeping peace treaty in the works.

Sovereignty is not just a word here, threatened as Ukraine is by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s irredentist ambition to resurrect the Russian Empire. Since 2014, Ukraine has paid with thousands of lives and territory, first during the uprising on Independence Square and during the war that has raged since.

Memories are long in such conflicts, and efforts to help are deeply appreciated. Nalyvaichenko says he has no ill will toward Biden. He remembers the U.S. vice president as one of the “bravest” Ukraine friends coming from Washington during the first and most violent year of war with the Kremlin-backed forces.

“Biden asked me about Russia’s aggression at the time when not many believed in it,” Nalyvaichenko said. He said Ukraine’s intelligence service shared with U.S. officials data they had at the time on Russian military forces fighting in Ukraine.

Nalyvaichenko said Biden did not shrink from denouncing corruption. “He is a man of sharp and fresh thoughts; he had no fear to turn with his face to the government, to our prime minister and top politicians and say: ‘You have corruption at a high level.’”

The executive director of the Center for Combating Corruption, Darya Kalenyuk, said that all of Ukraine’s corruption fighters expect the Burisma probe to be reopened. “The Burisma case has been a systematic problem for years, first Prosecutor General [Viktor] Shokin, then Lutsenko blocked the criminal investigations,” Kalenyuk told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “The pressure from Joe Biden was really needed, we welcomed it with gratitude, now it is up to the newly formed team of prosecutors to revisit the probe.”

International experts working in Ukraine also have strong memories of Biden’s move to pressure Ukraine to fire the top prosecutor, Victor Shokin, in 2016. “The U.S. law-enforcement community was very supportive of the efforts to oust Shokin at the time, working with civil society,” Donald Bowser, a former adviser on institution building, told The Daily Beast.

In 2016, Bowser’s group advised NABU, Ukraine’s national anti-corruption agency. “For example, a current serving Republican congressman, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, was seconded by the FBI in Kyiv at the time of the push to oust Shokin, he was helping on the anti-corruption efforts.”

Bowser also suggested it was just about time to pay attention to one of the erroneous statements by Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani. “Giuliani claims the Anti-corruption Center, ANTAC, was [George] Soros-funded,” he said. “But they were mostly funded by INL [the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement] of the State Department.”

MP Nalyvaichenko welcomed President Trump’s and Vice President Mike Pence’s critical statements about Ukraine’s corruption, but pointed out how important it was for Kyiv to remember its own history, value its old friends, and keep good relationships with all political powers in the United States, Ukraine’s most important strategic partner. “Please understand us correctly—our bipartisan position—U.S. support is very important for us as a state.”

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