Seymour Hersh, an internationally renowned US investigative journalist and Pulitzer Award winner, claimed last Sunday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States that Washington had allotted for the purchase of fuel.
Hersh stated that Ukrainian officials were “competing” to establish front companies in an effort to secure contracts with international private arms dealers, and that the Ukrainian government was using US taxpayer money to buy Russian fuel from Moscow to bolster its military.
According to Hersh’s report, “One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 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 Ukraine.”
Hersh stated that he was aware that many Ukrainian government agencies were competing for ownership of front businesses to sell weapons and ammunition to arms dealers, noting that some of the importers were located in Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Israeli occupation.
Hersh revealed that Ukraine, under the leadership of its president, has been buying fuel from Russia rather than Pakistan, which Kiev accuses of invading its territory. Hersh also noted that the Ukrainians were embezzling enormous amounts of money provided by the United States for diesel purchases.
Gains on Gains
When one compares the price of Russian diesel to that of other foreign parties, such as the United States, there is a variation since Russian energy is less expensive. According to the US journalist, the Ukrainians are keeping the difference, which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
This is in response to earlier reports detailing the route taken by oil products from Russia to reach Ukraine via Bulgaria and Latvia.
CIA Director William Burns met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev, according to an intelligence source, who conveyed a “striking message” to the Ukrainian leader, Hersh noted.
“The senior generals and government officials in 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,” he stated.
“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,” Hersh continued.
He further emphasized that on January 24 Zelensky “announced ‘personnel decisions’ across different government ministries and within Ukrainian law enforcement,” following the revelation of many corruption scandals involving the Kiev government.
In response to a report that a former top prosecutor took a vacation in Spain while martial law was in effect prohibiting Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving Ukraine without the government’s permission, Zelensky announced that state officials would be prohibited from travelling internationally for purposes unrelated to their official activities.
The Suspicious Background
Hersh previously discovered in February that the US was responsible for the sabotage that disrupted Russia’s Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, and numerous reports on Ukrainian-US relations have since been published by the noted journalist.
According to the statement Hersh stated in his Substack newsletter, “Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.”
Midway through March, Hersh said that if Kiev begins to show signs of lacking against Russia and violates in its defences, the United States was considering the idea of getting involved in the Ukraine war.
Hersh made it clear that the US leadership was dissatisfied with the way their proxy war against Moscow was “going well.”
