Free Republic

ransomnote: Art at the top of the page features a (protest) placard of Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy and oligarch Kolomoiskyi kissing. On 3 October, a Kyiv theater saw the screening of the film “Offshore 95” by Slidstvo.Info, a team of independent investigative journalists, despite attempts to disrupt it. The theater’s management reported technical issues, such as maintenance and problems with lighting. But according to some activists, this was due to threats from the Security Service of Ukraine led by Ivan Bakanov, Zelenskyy’s close friend. Slidstvо.Info journalists discovered that the offshore network of Ukraine’s President and his circle could have received millions...

Kolomoisky has been making use of his ambiguous position as the future president’s business partner since the very start of Zelensky’s election campaign, but this didn’t prevent Zelensky from sweeping to victory in the elections. Now, however, the trickster oligarch is becoming increasingly toxic for Zelensky’s team, not only within the country but also abroad. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is still firmly in the honeymoon period of his rule. The former actor’s approval rating hovers around 70 percent; the country’s Western partners have welcomed his plans for reform; stalled relations with Russia have got off the ground once again; and...

Ukraine has imposed sanctions on former president and opposition politician Petro Poroshenko, including asset freezes and a ban on withdrawing capital from the country, a presidential decree published on Thursday said. Poroshenko, one of Ukraine's richest men who heads the largest opposition party in Ukraine's parliament, served as president from 2014 until 2019 when he lost his bid for a second term at an election won by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The decree did not say why the sanctions were imposed, but Zelenskiy said earlier that his security council would announce sanctions targeting people who had undermined Ukrainian national security. "The...

Ukraine's main security agency accused tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky of fraud and money laundering on Saturday, naming one of the country's most prominent businessmen a suspect in a criminal investigation. The move against Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine's richest men and a one-time supporter of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy whose election he backed in 2019, comes as Kyiv is trying to signal progress during a wartime crackdown on corruption. "It was established that during 2013-2020, Ihor Kolomoisky legalized more than half a billion hryvnias ($14 million) by withdrawing them abroad and using the infrastructure of banks under (his) control," the Security Service of...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 sparked the beginning of an intensified war between the two forces. Now, the richest man in Ukraine, Rinat Akhmedov, set out to build shelters for Ukrainian soldiers as the war raged on with all of its devastations. According to Bloomberg's report, a Ukrainian steelworks controlled by billionaire Akhmetov has started constructing prefabricated dugouts and transporting them to soldiers engaged in front-line combat with Russia. WAR CAPSULES According to steel manufacturer Metinvest Holding LLC, the capsules can resist impacts from 150-millimeter rounds after being buried 1.5 meters (5 feet) beneath the surface. They...

The information presented below confirms the participation of each of the listed individuals in the Derkach tapes disinformation campaign, demonstrates the connection between them, as well as the coordinated nature of their actions. On January 11, 2021, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a number of Ukrainian politicians and civil servants for interfering in the US presidential elections by spreading disinformation. The decision concerned the individuals involved in the publication, legitimization and distribution of the disinformation concerning so-called “Derkach tapes”, in which allegedly Joe Biden and Petro Poroshenko discuss issues of Ukrainian politics and raise the topic of Burisma....

The fact that George Soros can live freely in any democratic society including in the United States after purposefully working to undermine and destroy those democracies should tell you how much wealth and influence he really has. With that said, it should also come as no surprise that among his many ‘accomplishments’ was playing a major role in financing the overthrow of Ukraine’s government in 2014 and the installment of its current leader, a former comedic actor named Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is now trying to lead his country through a Russian invasion. As noted by Bill Kloss’ law blog: George...

For Ukraine oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, the Westin hotel in Cleveland that he owns with partners became the center of the most powerful Republican gathering in the nation during the 2016 convention. Then-candidate Donald Trump set up his headquarters in the downtown luxury hotel. His family members and top advisers stayed in the penthouse presidential suite. In the lobby that showcases modern, eclectic art, the future president met with a crush of reporters the morning after he delivered his acceptance speech at the convention, gushing over the local hospitality. “The lobby of the Westin Hotel is a palace for insiders,” wrote...

The U.S. Justice Department has filed a civil forfeiture complaint claiming that a piece of commercial property in Ohio was obtained with funding misappropriated from PrivatBank. Two civil forfeiture complaints were lodged earlier this year regarding properties located in Texas and Kentucky which are also alleged to have been secured with funds misappropriated from the bank in Ukraine, according to a DOJ press release. "The three complaints allege that Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholiubov, who owned PrivatBank, one of the largest banks in Ukraine, embezzled and defrauded the bank of billions of dollars," according to the DOJ. "The two obtained...

Just before Christmas 2015, the British intelligence operative Christopher Steele emailed a report to private clients that included an American lawyer for a Ukrainian oligarch. The title of the dossier was “FIRTASH Abortive Return to Ukraine,” and it purported to provide intelligence on why the energy oligarch Dmitri Firtash tried, but failed, to return to his home country of Ukraine. “FIRTASH’s talk of returning to Ukraine a genuine ambition rather than merely a ruse to reveal Ukrainian government’s hand. However the oligarch developed cold feet upon the news of a negative reception at Boryspil airport,” Steele reported on Dec. 23,...

Ukraine's arms firms walk tightrope between Kiev and Moscow Thomas Grove 8 MIN READ KRAMATORSK Ukraine (Reuters) - In quiet defiance of a promise by Kiev's pro-European government to cut arms ties with Moscow, a state-owned defense firm in eastern Ukraine has vowed to work around the clock to fill every Russian order it gets. As for many of Ukraine's defense firms, the stakes are high for Yuzhmash, an industrial behemoth that was so jealously guarded by the Soviet Union that the nearby city of Dnipropetrovsk was closed to foreigners until the bloc split apart. Now, in the face of...