KYIV, Feb. 1 (Sputnik) - Earlier this week, Ukraine's security service announced that five Ukrainians, including the current head of a department in Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, had been served with notices of suspicion related to the embezzlement of nearly $40 million that was supposed to be spent on artillery shells.
The news was the latest in a consistent pattern of fraud and corruption being reported in Ukraine since Russia’s special military operation began nearly two years ago. Former Ukrainian ambassador and whistleblower Andrii Telizhenko told Sputnik’s Fault Lines that corruption is rife in Kiev and is only getting worse.
“So this whole scheme of $40 million is just a small little example,” Telizhenko explained. “Ukraine became a failed state,” Telizhenko said, “because of the corruption and because Ukraine was sold off to the people inside Ukraine, was sold off to its Western allies, and people in Ukraine are suffering from this.”
Telizhenko noted that despite all the aid that has been sent to Ukraine, which he estimated to be over $200 billion, the army itself is woefully ill-equipped for battle. “People are still collecting money to buy medical kits and drones for the soldiers,” Telizhenko said. “[This is] what is happening in Ukraine, total corruption.”
Telizhenko noted that there was another case in which more than $1 billion worth of military equipment that the US Department of Defense authorized to be sent to Ukraine never arrived and the DoD was unable to locate them. “So this is a great example where equipment is being lost for billions of dollars, equipment is not being made for hundreds of millions of dollars, and it’s all being stolen by the Kiev regime, and I think, with the help of the deep state government in Washington.”
The actions by Ukrainian authorities to arrest those involved in the motor scandal are token gestures, says Telizhenko, “It's all a big show.”
The corruption in Ukraine has always been there but grew exponentially after the West began meddling in Ukrainian affairs, he explained.
“Corruption, which was inside Ukraine, which [already] was pretty big, but then it came from the outside, from people like [US President Joe] Biden in Washington, the deep state, which said, 'Oh, why [don’t] we also make money on this together with the Ukrainian politicians?'” Telizhenko blasted the Ukrainian officials calling them “hypocrites” and “so-called patriots.”
The corruption is so entrenched, Telizhenko said, that it will take more than the removal of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to root it out.
“It [is] coming to a situation where a change of government in Washington, DC, a change of national policy issues in Washington, people like [Former US President Donald] Trump [could] come in,” Telizhenko explained. “He spoke about making peace in 24 hours, that's a possibility.”
“The end game… for Ukraine is to have a new government inside Ukraine and to see what government comes from Washington, maybe that will give some stability in the world,” he concluded.
Photo from AP
