Zelenskyj og hans generaler konkurrerer om å karre til seg mest mulig dollar. Korrupsjonen har nådd et nivå som minner om Afghanistan og det finnes ikke kontroll og revisjon, skriver Seymour Hersh. Det er full skjæring mellom amerikansk etterretning og Kyiv.

The Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.”

Den ukrainske presidenten og mange i hans følge har skummet utallige millioner amerikanske dollar øremerket diesel. Et anslag fra analytikere fra Central Intelligence Agency anslår de underslåtte midlene til minst 400 millioner dollar i fjor; en annen ekspert sammenlignet korrupsjonsnivået i Kiev med å nærme seg nivået av den afghanske krigen, «selv om det ikke vil komme noen profesjonelle revisjonsrapporter fra Ukraina.»

Det spesielle med lekkasjene er at det er et minst like stort kaos i Washington som i Kyiv. Det finnes ingen sentral planlegging eller kontroll. Alt flyter. Bidens to sikkerhetspolitiske støttespillere, utenriksminister Tony Blinken og nasjonal sikkerhetsrådgiver Jake Sullivan, er som guttunger.

Hersh sine avsløringer stiller amerikanerne i stor forlegenhet. Amerikanske dollar brukes til å kjøpe russisk diesel. Hvilken ydmykelse!

“Zelensky’s been buying discount diesel from the Russians,” one knowledgeable American intelligence official told me. “And who’s paying for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making millions” on it.

Krigen er blitt en racket: Ukrainere oppretter import og eksportselskaper i øst og vest, via Polen og Tsjekkia. Hvis dette stemmer vil boblen sprekke og kompromittere krigsinnsatsen og undergrave moralen. Også amerikanere deltar, selvsagt gjør de det. Presidenten er korrupt, hvorfor skulle de ikke ta for seg når sjansen byr seg?

Many government ministries in Kiev have been literally “competing,” I was told, to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks. Many of those companies are in Poland and Czechia, but others are thought to exist in the Persian Gulf and Israel. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are others in places like the Cayman Islands and Panama, and there are lots of Americans involved,” an American expert on international trade told me.

I Vesten hylles Zelenskyj som en krigshelt. I virkeligheten er han så korrupt at generalene hans protesterer. Han tar en for stor del av kaka. De vil ha en mer likelig fordeling av krigsbyttet.

CIA-sjef William Burns konfronterte Zelenskyj under et møte i januar. Hersh har snakket med en førstehåndskilde. Det var som fra en scene i en gangsterfilm.

The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting last January in Kiev with CIA Director William Burns. His message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob movie. The senior generals and government officialsin Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because “he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.”

Burns presenterte en liste med 35 generaler og byråkrater hvis grådighet var slik at Kyiv måtte foreta seg noe. Noen uker senere sparket Zelenskyj ti av dem.

Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of thirty-five generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government. Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious officials on the list and doing little else. “The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,” the intelligence official told me.

Etterretningsmiljøene har ingen tillit til Kyiv. Men hva verre er: De har heller ingen tillit til Biden og Sulllivan/Blinken som lever i sin egen verden.

Another divisive issue, I have been repeatedly told in my recent reporting, is the strident ideology and lack of political skill shown by Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. The president and his two main foreign policy advisers “live in different worlds” than the experienced diplomats and military and intelligence officers assigned to the White House;. “They have no experience, judgment, and moral integrity. They just tell lies, make up stories. Diplomatic deniability is something else,” the intelligence official said. “That has to be done.”

Det som ødela forholdet mellom Det hvite hus og etterretningsmiljøet var sprengningen av Nord Stream. Det var en så brutal handling at det rystet etterretningen. Den kom out of the blue.

“There is a total breakdown between the White House leadership and the intelligence community,” the intelligence official said. The rift dates back to the fall, when, as I reported in early February, Biden ordered the covert destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. “Destroying the Nord Stream pipelines was never discussed, or even known in advance, by the community,” the official told me. “And there is no strategy for ending the war. The US spent two years planning for the Normandy invasion in World War II. What are we going to do if China decides to invade Taiwan?”