(ReclaimingAmerica.net) – The New York Times, one of the nation’s most prominent leftist mainstream media outlets, has finally admitted the existence of significant corruption issues in Ukraine as the post-Soviet country is fighting off the full-scale aggression of Putin’s Russia, a report notes.
Moscow invaded Ukraine, a pro-Western nation, from three sides with about 200,000 troops on February 24, 2022. The Russians failed to overwhelm the Ukrainians in mere days, as Vladimir Putin’s regime had hoped. Ukraine uses US and NATO-supplied weapons for a counter-offensive to liberate its occupied regions.
In early January, the Times wrote that nine senior government officials in Ukraine were fired over corruption allegations, such as buying food for the military at inflated prices.
“Corruption has otherwise not been a significant factor in the war, despite Russian propaganda claims to the contrary that are aimed at undermining his [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s] government,” the Times argued at the time.
However, the leftist newspaper has now acknowledged an “enduring challenge of corruption in Ukraine,” which has “emerged as a rare area of criticism of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s leadership,” Breitbart News notes.
The acknowledgment came after Zelenskyy decided to replace his long-time Defense Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, earlier this week.
Media reports in Ukraine presumed the ouster could be connected to corruption allegations.
The official reason was declared as a desire to shift the approach to the war. However, some observers claimed it was due to his failure to enroll Ukraine in a US program for monitoring the end-use of American-supplied weaponry.
“Although Reznikov has yet to be tied with any of the corruption scandals personally, the Times went on to admit that the resignation has ‘elevated the issue to the highest level of Ukrainian politics,'” Breitbart comments.
The Times quoted Ukrainian officials as saying that in the early days after Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine, some government money slated for military contracts “failed to produce weaponry or ammunition and that some money has vanished.”
Breitbart points out a corruption ranking by liberal nonprofit Transparency International, which ranks Ukraine 116th among 180 countries. Russia is ranked 137th.
The report also claims that the US government has sent $113 billion in American taxpayer dollars to Ukraine, a figure from a January 5, 2023, report by a nonpartisan nonprofit called Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
The nonprofit wrote that Congress had approved the above sum for “aid and military assistance to support the Ukrainian government and allied nations.”
The Washington Post reported in August that the US “has committed more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion.”
The NYT report notes no specific corruption allegations involving US military aid to Ukraine have been made yet.
In January, US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland announced US auditors were working in Ukrainian institutions to guarantee that “no aid or weapons are diverted.”
The work of US auditors in Ukraine was confirmed in a YouTube broadcast earlier this month by exiled Russian dissident journalist Yulia Latynina, quoting Ukrainian sources.
