Free Republic

When Volodymyr Zelensky was elected as Ukraine’s new president in 2019, there was hope he would continue reforms. It evaporated quickly.We may now be watching the slow death of the Ukrainian people’s dreams of becoming a western oriented countryThe first sign of trouble came when Andriy Bohdan was appointed as Zelensky’s first Chief of Staff. He had long served as the Ukrainian oligarch Kolomoysky’s lawyer. (Kolomoysky moved back from exile in Israel to Ukraine on the day after Zelensky’s inauguration.) Things only worsened with Zelensky’s second Chief of Staff, Andriy Yermak. He has reportedly been identified as a Russian agent...

KYIV/LONDON, May 10 (Reuters) - Ukraine said on Tuesday it would suspend the flow of gas through a transit point which it said delivers almost a third of the fuel piped from Russia to Europe through Ukraine, blaming Moscow for the move and saying it would move the flows elsewhere. Ukraine has remained a major transit route for Russian gas to Europe even after Moscow's invasion. GTSOU, which operates Ukraine's gas system, said it would stop shipments via the Sokhranivka route from Wednesday, declaring "force majeure", a clause invoked when a business is hit by something beyond its control. But...

Nearly two months since Moscow’s invasion, Kyiv is still bearing the brunt of Western Europe’s dependence on Russian oil. Ukraine has continued to transport close to one-third of Russian gas to the European Union through its network of pipelines, as western leaders struggle to break their dependence on Russian energy, putting Ukrainians at risk to maintain the same infrastructure that keeps their enemy afloat. “Even inside of Ukraine it is very difficult to explain,” Naftogaz CEO Yuriy Vitrenko told The Washington Times in an interview. “It’s almost two months into the war. They’re killing innocent people and you read these...

A senior Biden administration official, handling global energy policy, recently held a high-level position at a Ukrainian state-run natural gas firm but resigned citing corruption. Amos Hochstein, who President Joe Biden appointed to be the State Department’s top adviser for energy security over the summer of 2021, was a member of the energy company Naftogaz’s supervisory board. Hochstein took the position in 2017 after he said government officials persuaded him to accept the offer. “When fears abounded in late 2017 that Ukraine’s efforts to dismantle corruption were weakening, U.S. and foreign officials encouraged me to accept the (European Bank for...

(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) The White House has revoked its support for the Eastern Mediterranean pipeline, a 1,900km project that will transport natural gas from an Israeli-owned offshore drilling site to Egypt, Greece, and Cyprus, The Gatestone Institute reported. The Biden administration discussed the decision with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan but apparently did not include the pipeline’s main beneficiaries—Israel, Greece, Egypt or Cyprus—in the talks. The White House said the EastMed pipeline will harm its “climate goals” and escalate tensions in the region without serving viable economic interests, Keep Talking Greece reported. Erdoğan has opposed the EastMed pipeline because...

Biden's decision — reportedly coordinated with Turkey but reached without consulting Israel, Greece or Cyprus, the main countries involved in the project — undercuts three of the strongest American allies in the Mediterranean region.EastMed's cancellation — variously described as a "disastrous decision," a "strategic mistake" and an act of "appeasement" of Erdoğan — represents a major geopolitical victory for the Turkish strongman.The EastMed pipeline has been in the works for more than a decade. The Israel-Greece-Cyprus project — joined by Bulgaria, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia — has long been seen as a way to diversify natural gas supplies...

He says that Ukrainian companies affiliated with Naftogaz's top management rather than European firms most often trade in Russian gas in Ukraine. "The scheme they earn on Ukrainians is as follows: Naftogaz's top managers sell Russian gas to Ukrainians, calling it European. And this 'renaming' has brought them $1.5 billion in revenue. The originators of the Naftogaz reform, including Mr. [Amos] Hochstein, who is fully accountable to Biden, could not help but know about the scam with Russian gas. And judging by the fact that part of the stolen money was wired to American companies, they also covered up that...

As Rudy Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian officials last spring to investigate one of Donald Trump’s main political rivals, a group of individuals with ties to the president and his personal lawyer were also active in the former Soviet republic. Their aims were profit, not politics. This circle of businessmen and Republican donors touted connections to Giuliani and Trump while trying to install new management at the top of Ukraine’s massive state gas company. Their plan was to then steer lucrative contracts to companies controlled by Trump allies, according to two people with knowledge of their plans. Their plan hit a...