Posted on 06/16/2022 10:45:11 PM PDT by Mount Athos
In May, the Ukrainian hardware store chain Epizentr had a very special offer: flak jackets for the equivalent of 400 euros each. A lot of money by Ukrainian standards. A scandal ensued because the manufacturer of the vests, a company in Lviv in western Ukraine, recognized them on the chain's website by the fabric and the visible barcode on the goods and sounded the alarm.
It turned out that the Lviv company had sold the vests to the Cherkassy regional administration, which in turn wanted to "give away" vests to the army as part of a PR campaign. However, the official responsible had the goods sent "for interim storage" to the upholstered furniture company Weneto, which belongs to a member of the regional parliament. From there, "look-alike" goods were delivered to the military, allegedly a "human error." The original vests went to Epizentr hardware stores from the Weneto company. They, in turn, belong to a married couple – he is a member of parliament and she is a member of the Kiev city council.
So the thing stinks from the head. Polish volunteers who delivered "relief goods" for the army and the population across the border in the first weeks of the war reported to the OKO.press portal that the attempt to gain access to them practically begins in the border area: with a border guard who half a dozen protective vests "for material testing" under his arm, while another then tells the "helpers" to drive on.
The country's political leadership knows how general the problem of such embezzlement is. As early as March 13, a bill was introduced in Parliament that would drastically increase the penalties for embezzling aid supplies. The change was decided in April, but apparently not much has happened since then. For example, "volunteers" presented themselves to the city administration of Smila in the Cherkassy district, who asked the administration for the allocation of donated canned meat in order to bring them "to the front". She got there too, but the enterprising "helpers" offered the 2,000 goulash cans of a military unit for sale: for a whopping 3.50 euros each.
At another distribution center for relief goods from Poland, a woman said she wanted to take the donated goods “to the front in Wolnowacha” – even though the city had long since been taken by units of the “VR” Donetsk by that time. A Polish helper told OKO.press how a stranger approached him during a fuel stop: "What do you have for sale?" - "Nothing at all, these are donations." - "It doesn't matter." On the streets of Lviv Western aid goods are often sold straight from the trunk of cars parked on the outskirts of markets.
In the Rivne district, branded Italian pasta miraculously ended up in village shops where such goods had never been seen before. In Chernivtsi, Bukovina, the manager of the local clinic sold five used ambulances donated from Italy on his own account. In Lviv, an official from the regional administration was caught trying to sell minibuses donated from Finland. The man is a politician from the "pro-Western" and "reform-oriented" party Holos (voice).
Not even military equipment is apparently exempt from the danger of being embezzled. It's not just about soldiers trying to cash in on a Kalashnikov or a couple of hand grenades. A few weeks ago, the New York Times newspaper reported that the US military leadership does not know what will happen to their arms shipments once they arrive in Ukraine.
The West obviously knows what kind of Pappenheimers it is dealing with in Ukraine. EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen told Volodymyr Zelenskiy last weekend that without more intensive controls from the EU side, it could be difficult to push through further aid deliveries. After all, it's about "a lot of money," says von der Leyen.
Is Bob Geldof in charge of this operation?
Ukraine has spivs, just like Britain had during WW2. The Resistance in Europe wouldn’t have gotten as far as it did without spivs in the occupied countries.
Many American spivs did very well thank you out of the conflict. Lace, hose and chocolate as a side trade.
It’s ugly but all wars have profiteers.
If America was under the same conditions Ukraine is in you’d have the same thing.
It’s nothing to do with the general morality of a country, more that any entrepreneur with no scruples will exploit any opportunity to make a fast buck no matter how unethical, and there’s nowt more profitable than war.
that is how Ukraine is fighting RussoNazis to standstill.
by not having any military equipment.
How did you convince yourself that every wartime country is equally corrupt?
“ After all, it’s about “a lot of money,” says von der Leyen.”
It’s our $. Your $. The govt cares less.
Russia is encroached upon and prodded into invading Ukraine and Western oligarchs profit from the military contracts.
The West imposes sanctions against Russia that are scarcely observed and Russian oligarchs profit.
Kleptocrats profit from the black market sale of goods meant for the war effort.
Russian and Ukrainian troops and civilians pay with their lives while performing the duties expected of them. US and Russian taxpayers are on the hook for the bill.
Is it so hard for folks to understand that a person can be simultaneously disgusted by Biden, Putin, and Zelensky; be sympathetic to the plight of both side’s troops and citizens; and want the killing, looting, and stupid to end?
I’m disgusted by Europe’s “leadership,” too.
I stared at pics of conscripts for a while today.
It’s really disturbing how a huge number of people are in the fight and really don’t want to be there at all.
I also posted videos of people running away from being drafted earlier.
I saw a letter from the Ukraine government to Poland today, asking them to return male refugees so they can be drafted. I don’t know if it is fake or not.
There are lots of videos of conscripts and reservist saying they are in an impossible situation and refusing to follow orders.
I didn’t see an “equally” in the contention, just that some amount of situation explotation exists.
It happens in peacetime too. Lots of fraud in and by government. Where money collects, so does fruad.
They are drafting old people, teenagers, women, dogs, cats, and anything else that moves....
Disgusting, so is your comment.
No, I find it very easy to agree with you.
America needs to stop funding Ukrainian kleptocrats.
No one wants to be cannon fodder.
Wrong - in Ukraine it has everything to do with the overall morality of it’s country and people.....even when they aren’t in conflicts.
The Biden Crime Family at work
“It’s nothing to do with the general morality of a country,”
Yes, it does. Ukranians have corruption in their blood. It’s part of their way of life. All countries are not the same; all cultures are not. Some are definitely more moral than others.
Ukraine and its people are known as among the most corrupt in Europe. That’s why the US State Department and Congress LOVE Ukraine. Corrupt cultures are easier to deal with when you yourselves are also corrupt. Birds of a feather. Want to put in secret military biolabs, with doom viruses? No problem! Just bribe the locals, and nobody will see or say anything. Couldn’t get away with it in Switzerland, for example.
Those of us with eyes that see knew this would happen. As did Congress, who shot down an amendment that would have appointed an IG to oversee accountability of all moneys sent there by the US. Nope, can’t have that! Would ruin the narrative.
Problem with that counterargument is it just confirms the worst of prejudices that people particularly in the BRICS regions have held against America and the West for a very long time - surely we don’t *really* want Putin to have the moral upper hand by equating our mercantilism with his revanchism?
Putin, 2014: “Millions of Russians went to sleep in one country and woke up living abroad, as a national minority in former republics of the union. The Russian people became one of the biggest, if not the biggest, split-up nation in the world.”
If you do not understand the consequences of this fanatical belief you have not been paying attention to Putin at all over the last thirty years.
From the early 1990s Putin blamed corrupt Soviet leadership in collusion with a (he thinks corrupt) West for the breakup of the USSR - the “geopolitical catastrophe”. He doesn’t accept that the Soviet Union imploded for any other reason. He firmly believes that Russia has a divine right to everything east of the old Iron Curtain.
But he needs plausible deniability to deliver on that.
He needs useful idiots in the West.
He needs the whataboutism.
What about Iraq, what about Kosovo, what about Afghanistan. What about biolabs. What about nazis. What about NATO. His pyramid of propaganda is entirely focused around the argument that because America is more corrupt than Russia, no matter how evil his behavior gets, he’s still not as evil as America.
In other words his causus belli boils down to, “Russia always has the moral high ground but as much as America is an asshole Russia can be an even bigger asshole... As we will now demonstrate.”
Has NATO deployed nerve agents, radioactive poisons or bioweapons in Russia?
Now, Russia deployed nerve agents and radioactive poisons and bioweapons on NATO soil?
Russia has egregiously reneged on its commitments to not invade Ukraine or otherwise challenge its self-determination. Has America done anything comparable?
Russia has used biological, chemical and even radioactive substances as weapons on targets on NATO soil, AND has unilaterally modified three country’s borders, AND has ordered military invasions of those countries, AND has destroyed cities in those countries.
Has America done ALL those things - to either Russia or Ukraine, or in fact to any country friendly to Russia - at any time in the last 20 years?
If the answer is no, then Putin’s justifications are entirely disingenous. Read this:
After all, why would Russia and America both be so obsessed with such a poor country.
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