Zelensky’s diaspora delegation led by economic hit-woman who led plunder of Ukraine Max Blumenthal ·December 23, 2022 1 of 3

The Grayzone intercepted Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukrainian diaspora delegation outside the US Capitol and encountered Natalie Jaresko, the corporate operativewho helped guide Wall Street’s pillaging from Kiev to Puerto Rico. Jaresko indignantly justified Zelensky’s banning of his political rivals as a necessary wartime measure.

Steel fencing and police barricades ringed the perimeter of the US Capitol Building hours ahead of the arrival of Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian president appeared in Washington DC in the early afternoon on December 21, 2022, emerging from a US military jet clad in an olive drab sweatshirt and cargo pants, and charged with a singular mission: convince Congress and the Biden administration to send his government more than the whopping $45 billion in military and humanitarian aid it had already allocated for 2023.

Just outside the police barricades, at the eastern side of the Capitol grounds, as a demonstration by a small but dedicated group of antiwar activists wound down, a group of around 20 Ukrainians in dark business attire gathered for a photo. They were on their way into the Capitol, where they were to function as Zelensky’s personal cheering section, representing the Ukrainian diaspora before a nationally televised audience.

I approached members of the delegation to challenge them on Zelensky’s lobbying push and the planned expansion of the NATO proxy war he is leading against Russia. My questions were met with a torrent of worn-out talking points about Ukraine’s crusade to defend democracy, accusations that Moscow was sponsoring my reporting, and a complaint that $45 billion in US aid was too little.

Caught up w/ the Ukrainian diaspora delegation on their way into the Capitol to cheer for Zelensky

They told me $45 billion wasn't enough, neo-Nazis do not exist in Ukraine and thebanning of the Russian wing of the Orthodox Church & oppo parties was justified bc "martial law" pic.twitter.com/pFE2wmWaH9— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) December 22, 2022

Several of the Ukrainian delegates I encountered on the way into the US Capitol happened to have played significant roles in the transformation of Ukraine from a neutral state into a hyper-militarized vassal of the US and the IMF.

The most voluble among them, acting as ade facto spokesperson for the group, was Natalie Jaresko. A Ukrainian-American financial industry operative, Jaresko presided over several IMF austerity packages and the rampant privatization of Ukraine’s economy as the country’s Minister of Finance in its post-coup government.

The economic hit-woman

In our exchange, Jaresko unabashedly defended Zelensky’s outlawing of 11 opposition political parties, his banning of opposition media, and his plans to blacklist the Russian wing of the Orthodox Church. “It’s martial law!” Jaresko exclaimed, justifying Kiev’s authoritarian crackdown as a necessary wartime measure.

Jaresko has seen the corruption and de-democratization of Ukraine from within. She helped open up the country’s economy to Western multinationals after being appointed to the Foreign Investors Advisory Council of Victor Yuschenko, a neoliberal president who gained power thanks to the “Orange Revolution” backed by US intelligence and Western-aligned oligarchs George Soros and Boris Berisovsky in 2005.

Under Yuschenko’s reign, Ukraine’s government officially heroized the World War Two-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. During our exchange,Jaresko deflected when asked if she supported Bandera. However, her brother, John, has presided over the construction of a memorial in Bloomingdale, New Jersey to “Heroes of Ukraine” including World War Two-era Nazi collaborators, according to researcher Moss Robeson.

Nine years later, following the Euromaidan coup also engineered by Washington,Jaresko rose to Minister of Finance. She was granted Ukrainian citizenship on the day of her appointment.

Through her new post, Jaresko assumed control of Datagroup, the company that oversees Ukraine’s telecom sector. As former investment executive Tim Duff recounted, Jaresko “immediately proceeded to squeeze her competitor, the owner of Datagroup, out of business using the kind offoreign currency loan debt scam favored by Mafia hoods and economic hitmen employed by the CIA.”…

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/12/23/zelenskys-diaspora-hit-woman-ukraine/

>>18272202

Zelensky’s diaspora delegation…

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While in Kiev, steering the government alongside a cadre of Ukrainian-American operatives, Jaresko grumbled about her salary while angling for opportunities to supplement it. In a withering analysis of her financial self-dealing, the late investigative journalist Robert Parry found that Jaresko “collected $1.77 million in bonuses from a U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund where her annual compensation was supposed to be limited to $150,000”

As Jaresko lapped up praise from Beltway corporate media, the NATO-sponsored Atlantic Council that employed her as a visiting fellow acknowledged that under her watch, “the average monthly wage in Ukraine is only $194, an inflation rate of 55 percent is decimating citizens’ purchasing power, and a painful IMF-mandated austerity program involving sweeping cuts to social programs is being implemented.”

In 2017, Jaresko was rewarded with an appointment and $625,000 salary as director of Promesa, the unelected US board charged with restructuring Puerto Rico’s debt – and which average Puerto Ricans refer to derisively as “La Junta.” Jaresko resigned rom her position this April after leaving Puerto Rico’s economy firmly in the hands of Wall Street creditors.

Natalie Jaresko of the ⁦@FOMBPR⁩ is resigning. She was never welcomed in Puerto Rico.Her policies will leave people on the island suffering for decades while ensuring huge profits for wall street. Its time to #abolishlajunta https://t.co/6GuvLfmqwb — Julio E. (@jlopezvarona) February 3, 2022

The all-encompassing shock therapy that Jaresko prescribed from Puerto Rico to Ukraine was only possible thanks to society-wide disasters. In San Juan, it was Hurricane Maria that placed neoliberal capitalism on overdrive; in Kiev, it was a coup and a proxy war. Indeed, the conflict with Russia has provided Zelensky with justification to strip 70 percent of Ukraine’s workers of collective bargaining rights and arrest everyone from his political rivals to socialist organizers – a wave of repression that Jaresko explicitly justified in her exchange with me.

The Ukrainian president accompanied his Pinochet-style crackdown with an appeal this October at the NYSE Stock Exchange for multinational corporations to deepen their exploitation of his country’s economy and resources. As The Grayzone’s Alex Rubinstein reported, Zelensky’s foreign investment initiative plastered the word “deregulation” across the homepage of its website.

The diaspora lobbyist

As I challenged the Ukrainian delegation on the nearly $100 billion of military aid the US has forked over to Kiev, a bespectacled middle-aged man interjected,demanding to know why I supposedly supported an “unprovoked” assault on an “innocent people.”

I countered that I opposed the Ukrainian military’s 8-year-long attack on the ethnic Russian population of Donetsk and Lugansk, where thousands had been killed before the Russian military ever entered Ukraine in February 2022. I then asked the indignant character if he also opposed the shelling of civilians in the eastern republics. His reply came in the form of a firm “no!”

That person turns out to bea member of the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe named Orest Deychakiwsky. His commission is charged with monitoring Ukrainian compliance with OSCE commitments, including those Kiev made – and relentlessly violated –– to the Minsk Accords. As former German Chancellor Angela Merkel confessed this December, Ukraine’s Western backers used the Minsk Accords as a stalling tactic to prepare it for military conflict with Russia.

So the guy at :39 who says the Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk and Lugansk should not stop appears to be Orest Deychakiwsky, who was a member of the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe

https://t.co/MJYkLN1JXP pic.twitter.com/H6jrfPhjol— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) December 22, 2022

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/12/23/zelenskys-diaspora-hit-woman-ukraine/

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The son of a former member of Stepan Bandera’s OUN-B organization that collaborated with Nazi Germany towards the end of World War II,Deychakiwsky serves as the Vice President of the US-Ukraine Foundation. He previously worked at the Helsinki Commission under Sen. Ben Cardin, the pro-war Democrat who sponsored the Magnitsky Act imposing the first set of harsh post-Cold War sanctions on Russia and helping set the stage for the current conflict.

The Maidan infowarrior

A member of the Ukrainian delegation who remained in the background while her fellow delegates jawed at me strongly resembled a prominent functionary of the post-Maidan media complex spawned with hundreds of millions in Western donations.

She closely resembled Anastasia Stanko, the deputy editor of Hromadske, a broadcast network she helped to found on the eve of the Maidan coup. Stanko was honored by the corporate-funded Committee to Protect Journalists with its 2018 press freedom award.

While opposition and Russian-language outlets have been banned by Zelensky, pro-NATO infowar instruments like Hromadske have flourished thanks tomassive donations from the EU, USAID, the Thomson Foundation and transnational elites like Paypal founder Pierre Omidyar.

Though Hromadske has attempted to strike the liberal tone its benefactors prefer, it has occasionally provided a platform for genocide-level anti-Russian nationalism.

This March, days after Russia launched its military operation inside Ukraine, a guest onHromadske ranted that the ethnic Russian population of Donetsk was filled “superfluous” and “absolutely useless people” who “must be killed.”

Pierre Omidyar partnered w/the US Embassy in Kiev to found Hromadske & advance the Euromaidan color revolution As @RealAlexRubi and I reported, Hromadske has hosted a radio show that was part of the Omidyar-sponsored International Fact-Checking Network https://t.co/dh0DhilRxL https://t.co/RH6vz5smg4— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 20, 2022

Researcher Moss Robeson noted in his analysis of Zelensky’s Ukrainian diaspora delegation that it also includedAndrew Mac, an unpaid advisor to Zelensky described by Politico as “one of the biggest Washington power players for Ukraine.”

“We’re gonna send a lot more!”

With tens of billions more on the way to Ukraine, the country’s debt to international creditors continues to grow, setting the stage for another crushing wave of austerity after the war. The diaspora operatives I encountered on their way into the Capitol gallery appeared poised to guide the plunder from the comfort of suburban America.

In the meantime, lawmakers from both parties can hardly contain their exuberance for expanding the proxy war. As one of the energy industry’s favorite senators, Democrat Joe Manchin, exclaimed when I asked him on a sidewalk outside the Capitol about the billions in military aid on the way to Ukraine, “We’re gonna send a lot more. I’m all in!”

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/12/23/zelenskys-diaspora-hit-woman-ukraine/

(Note the reason for the Coup in 2014 was because the President had been negotiating with the IMF to bail them out, and the terms were so drastic and catastrophic, they worked with Russia to help with their debt and turned down the IMF. No wonder their are IMF mafia behind Zelensky)

The ADL issues statement declaring Ukraine’s Azov Battalion no longer ‘far-right’

Alexander Rubinstein·December 8, 2022

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has emailed The Grayzone a defense of the Azov Battalion and refused to condemn the Pentagon for honoring a veteran of the group who sports Nazi-inspired tattoos.

A November 9 email from the Anti-Defamation League to The Grayzone provided a twisted defense of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion. Despite its self-proclaimed “anti-hate” mission, the ADL insisted in the email it “does not” consider Azov as the “far right group it once was.”

The Azov Battalion is a neo-Nazi unit formally integrated into the US government-backed Ukrainian military. Founded by Andriy Biletsky, who has infamously vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led untermenschen,” Azov was once widely condemned by Western corporate media and the human rights industry for its association with Nazism. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In the months that immediately followed, Azov led the Ukrainian military’s defense of Mariupol, the group’s longtime stronghold. As the militia assumed a frontline role in the war against Russia, Western media led a campaign to rebrand Azov as misunderstood freedom fighters while accusing its critics of echoing Kremlin talking points. The New York Times has even referred to the unit as the “celebrated Azov Battalion.”

Like the Washington Post and other mainstream outlets, the ADL ignored Azov’s atrocities this April in Mariupol, where locals accused the group of using civilians as human shields and executing those who attempted to flee. One video out of Mariupol showed Azov fighters proudly declaring the Nazi collaborator and mass murderer of Jews, Stepan Bandera, to be their “father.”

The Azov Battalion has long served as a magnet for the international white nationalist movement, attracting recruits from the terrorist Atomwaffen Division to a US Army Specialist arrested on charges of distributing bomb-making instructions.

Back in March 2022, just a month before the battle of Mariupol, the ADL itself issued a report acknowledging that white nationalists see Azov “as a pathway to the creation of a National Socialist state in Ukraine.”

Eight months later, however, the ADL has changed its tune, asserting to this outlet that Azov has rooted the fascists from its ranks. So did Azov change its Nazi ways, or did the ADL simply shift its messaging to conform to the imperatives of a Biden administration still intent on sending billions in military aid to Ukraine?

The ADL responds to Grayzone report with defense of Azov

The ADL’s defense of the Azov Battalion was triggered by an incident this September, when this journalist filed a “hate incident” report through the ADL’s website which detailed the contents of a Grayzone exposé on a Pentagon-sponsored sports competition. Held at Disney World, the weeklong competition hosted and honored Ihor Halushka, a Ukrainian Azov veteran branded with a Nazi Sonnenrad tattoo — a hate symbol, according to none other than the ADL.

The Grayzone provided a brief summary of these facts and events to the ADL, furnished supporting photographs, and included a link to the entire report. Asked what the ADL could do to help, this reporter requested they condemn the Pentagon for hosting a neo-Nazi. Upon filing the report, I was immediately given an automated case number and put on the organization’s mass mailing list….

The ADL’s stunning defense of Azov as a largely depoliticized fighting unit is undermined most strongly by the ADL’s own research material.

The ADL harshly condemned Azov before it legitimized it

In 2019, the organization published a report on “The Internalization of White Supremacy,” which name-dropped Azov 18 times and branded it “a far-right group and militia,” “the far-right organization and militia,” and “a Ukrainian extremist group and militia.”

This Ukrainian extremist group, called The Azov Battalion, has ties to neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Our latest report on international white supremacy details how they try to connect with like-minded extremists from the US: https://t.co/GtvssxwzbN https://t.co/gGHMM8L46k

— ADL (@ADL) September 23, 2019

The report also stated that Azov “has ties to neo-Nazis in Ukraine,” “has reached out to like-minded American extremists,” and “reportedly has connections to Atomwaffen (AWD), an American neo-Nazi group allegedly tied to five murders.”

Later that year, the ADL noted that an neo-Nazi US Army Specialist that pled guilty to unlawfully distributing bomb-making instructions had “expressed desire to find more ‘radicals’ and travel to Ukraine to fight with paramilitary group the Azov Battalion.”…

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/12/08/adl-ukraines-azov-battalion-far-right/

Russia vows to 'gain world's attention' on Ukraine war anniversary

The foreign minister gave few details, but experts worldwide have warned of an impending renewal of the Russian war effort that may loosely coincide with the war's one-year anniversary.

Updated: February 2, 2023 - 5:20pm

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this week indicated that Moscow was planning measures to draw the world's attention toward it instead of planned anti-Russian demonstrations slated for Feb. 24, the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion.

"Our diplomacy will do everything to ensure that the anti-Russian sabbaths planned for the end of February — as if timed to coincide with the anniversary of the special military operation, both in New York and at other sites that the West is now actively working on together with the Kyiv regime — so that this will not turn out to be the only events that will gain the world's attention," Lavrov said on state television, per the New York Post.

The foreign minister gave few details, but experts worldwide have warned of an impending renewal of the Russian war effort that may loosely coincide with the war's one-year anniversary.

It further comes as Muscovite forces appear to be making gains in the Donetsk region in Ukraine's east, capturing the city of Soledar and the nearby village of Blahodatne in recent weeks as Russian forces move to encircle Ukrainian defenders entrenched in the strategically positioned city of Bakhmut.

President Joe Biden committed to supplying Ukraine with 31 M1A1 Abrams tanks earlier this year, though the delivery of the vehicles and training process are likely to prevent them from taking the field for several months.

Lavrov further addressed the Western supply of war materials to Kyiv, including long-range weapons that he said necessitated that Russia push Ukrainian forces further from the border.

"We're now seeking to push back Ukrainian army artillery to a distance that will not pose a threat to our territories," the Kremlin's top diplomat said. "The greater the range of the weapons supplied to the Kyiv regime, the more we will have to push them back from territories which are part of our country."

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/russia-vows-gain-worlds-attention-ukraine-war-anniversary

House GOP investigating John Kerry's secret China negotiations

Comer's letter to Kerry is but one of many such document requests House Republicans have sent in recent weeks.

Updated: February 2, 2023 - 3:42pm

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are investigating private discussions that White House climate czar John Kerry held with Chinese Communist Party officials.

In a Thursday letter, committee chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., informed Kerry of the investigation and renewed requests for documents and materials connected to his activities as the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), according to Fox News. Comer made similar requests while Republicans were the minority in the lower chamber, but Kerry ignored them.

While in his current post, Kerry has held a number of private discussions with Beijing officials about the administration's ambitious climate agenda. The details of those conversations and the origins of the administration's seemingly lenient stances on Beijing-related environmental issues are of interest to Comer.

"The Committee requests documents and information to understand your role and provide necessary transparency over the SPEC and its activities," the Kentucky lawmaker wrote. "As a member of the President’s cabinet, you should be representing the United States’ interests. Your statements, however, consistently show disregard for American national security and taxpayer dollars."

"To date, you have failed to respond to any of our requests… Yet, you continue to engage in activities that could undermine our economic health, skirt congressional authority, and threaten foreign policy under the guise of climate advocacy," he added.

Comer's letter to Kerry is but one of many such document requests House Republicans have sent in recent weeks. Under Comer's leadership, the Oversight Committee is mounting a bevy of investigations into the Biden administration, including an inquiry into the Biden family's private business dealings and the president's alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Kerry took up his post as SPEC in 2021. He previously served as former President Barack Obama's second secretary of state and unsuccessfully challenged former President George W. Bush for the nation's top job in 2004.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/house-gop-investigating-john-kerrys-secret-china-negotiations

Dear Secretary Kerry:

The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating your role in the Biden Administration and the nature of your negotiations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In the 117th Congress, we requested information from you regarding your position as special presidential envoy for climate (SPEC)—a cabinet-level position that does not require Senate confirmation despite your apparent ability to bind the United States to international agreements1—and SPEC employees’ ties to outside organizations.2 To date, you have failed to respond to any of our requests. Yet, you continue to engage in activities that could undermine our economic health, skirt congressional authority, and threaten foreign policy under the guise of climate advocacy. The Committee requests documents and information to understand your role and provide necessary transparency over the SPEC and its activities.

In May 2022, you told the Associated Press that you were in negotiations with the CCP to form a group to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.3 Most recently, at the World Economic Forums (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, you claimed that the solution to changing global temperatures is, “money, money, money, money, money, money, money.”4 As a member of the President’s cabinet, you should be representing the United States’ interests. Your statements, however, consistently show disregard for American national security and taxpayer dollars.

You have also continued to downplay the CCP’s human rights violations and its antagonism against the U.S. while promoting climate negotiations that the CCP does not even appear interested in entering. In April 2021, you insisted that CCP’s intransigence “on human rights, geostrategic interests… do not have to get in the way of something that is as critical as dealing with climate.”5 You recently insisted that the CCP’s behavior should be decoupled from our attempts to enter into climate agreements, stating “I think the key is that this is not a bilateral issue and that we need to get back to the table because the world depends on it and it could be helpful to China’s efforts to protect its own population….”6

Your office continues to ignore requests for information. We are left with an insufficient understanding of your office’s activities, spending, and staffing. To enable long overdue oversight of your office, please provide the following documents and information no later than February 16, 2023, covering the time period January 20, 2021, to the present: