The following, together with the full transcript, is from ‘Why are we tempting nuclear annihilation?’ Watch Max Blumenthal address UN Security Council (29/6/23) | The Grayzone

We have published some excerpts citing an independent audit of US taxpayer funding below the video and of how US political figures rake in billions to their personal fortunes from this funding. Note that Australia is also funding this corruptly financed slaughter in Cabinet decisions made without consulting Australian taxpayers and citizens.

Excerpts from Grayzone's independent audit of US tax dollar allocation to Ukraine war

"The Grayzone published an independent audit of US tax dollar allocation to Ukraine throughout fiscal years 2022 and 2023. Our investigation was led by Heather Kaiser, a former military intelligence officer and veteran of US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We found a $4.48 million payment from the US Social Security Admin to the Kiev government. We found $4.5 billion worth of payments from the United States Agency for International Development to pay off Ukraine’s sovereign debt, much of which is owned by the global investment firm BlackRock. That alone amounts to $30 taken from every single US citizen at a time when 4 in 10 Americans are unable to afford a $400 emergency.

We found tax dollars earmarked for Ukraine padding the budgets of a television station in Toronto, a pro-NATO think tank in Poland, and, believe it or not, rural farmers in Kenya.

We found tens of millions to private equity firms, including one in the Republic of Georgia, as well as a million dollar payment to a single private entrepreneur in Kiev.

Our audit also revealed the Pentagon’s $4.5 million contract with a company called “Atlantic Diving Supply” to provide Ukraine with unspecified explosives equipment. This is a notoriously corrupt company that Thom Tillis, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, previously lambasted for its “history of fraud.”

Yet once again, Congress has failed to ensure these shady payments and massive arms deals are properly tracked. In fact, much of the military and humanitarian aid shipped to Ukraine has simply vanished. Last year, CBS News quoted the director of a pro-Zelensky non-profit in Ukraine who reported that only around 30% of aid was reaching the front lines in Ukraine.

The embezzlement of funds and supplies is at least as troubling as the potential consequences of the illicit transfer and sales of military-grade weapons.

Last June, the head of Interpol warned that the massive transfers of arms into Ukraine means “we can expect an influx of weapons in Europe and beyond,” and that “criminals are even now, as we speak, focusing on them.”

This May, a group of anti-Kremlin Russian neo-Nazis outfitted with gear supplied by the Ukrainian government, was hailed by Western politicians for carrying out terrorist attacks in Russian territory using American-made Humvees. Although the group, the so-called “Russian Volunteer Corps,” is led by a man who calls himself the “White King” and includes numerous open admirers of Adolf Hitler, the Western weaponization of this militia against Russian forces has not prompted any outcry from Congress.

And while the Biden administration has promised that it’s keeping tabs on the weapons sent, a State Department cable leaked last December conceded that “kinetic activity and active combat between Ukrainian and Russian forces create an environment in which standard verification measures are sometimes impracticable or impossible.”

The Biden administration not only knows that it can not track the weapons it is shipping to Ukraine, it knows it is escalating a proxy war against the world’s largest nuclear power, and is daring it to respond in kind.

We know they know this because back in 2014, President Barack Obama rejected demands to send lethal offensive weaponry to Kiev because, as the Wall Street Journal put it, he had a “long-standing concern that arming Ukraine would provoke Moscow into a further escalation that could drag Washington into a proxy war.”

When Donald Trump entered office in 2017, he attempted to hold the line on Obama’s policy, but was soon branded a Russian puppet by the Washington press corps and Democratic Party for refusing to send Raytheon’s Javelin missiles to the Ukrainian military.

Trump’s reluctance to send the Javelins became part of the basis for his impeachment. He unsurprisingly relented.

As the US-made offensive weaponry began to reach the front lines of the Donbas, the collective West exploited the Minsk Accords to “give Ukraine time” to arm up, as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel put it.

[...]

Indeed, military cemeteries in Ukraine are expanding almost as rapidly as the Northern Virginia McMansions and beachfront estates of executives from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and assorted Beltway contractors benefitting from the second highest level of military spending since World War Two.

These are the real winners of the Ukraine proxy war. Not average Ukrainians or Americans. Or Russians or even Western Europeans.

The winners are people like Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who spent his time between the Obama and Biden administrations launching a consulting firm called WestExec advisors which secured lucrative government contracts for intelligence firms and the arms industry. Blinken’s former partners at WestExec advisors include Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, CIA deputy director David Cohen, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, and almost a dozen current and former members of Biden’s national security team.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, for his part, is a former and possibly future board member of Raytheon, and ex-partner of the Pine Island Capital investment firm that collaborates with WestExec and which Blinken has advised.

Meanwhile, the current US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas Greenfield, is listed as a senior counsel at the Albright Stonebridge Group, a self-described “commercial diplomacy firm” that also finesses contracts for the intelligence sector and arms industry.

This firm was founded by the late Madeleine Albright, who infamously declared that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children under the US sanctions regime was “worth it.”" Read more at https://thegrayzone.com/2023/06/29/nuclear-annihilation-max-blumenthal-security-council/ and https://thegrayzone.com/2023/06/27/gravy-train-independent-audit-ukraine/

United States' 'response' to Max Blumenthal's testimony to the UN Security Council

The response by Robert A. Wood, whose job title is "Alternate Representative of the United States of America for Special Political Affairs in the United Nations, with the rank of Ambassador," is included below so that those reading this article can judge it for themselves.

Wood's speech contains two substantive points, neither of which address any of the points made by Blumenthal:

1. That the relationship between the Wagner Private Military Company and the Russian Army is ambiguous; and
2. tactical nuclear weapons have been installed in Belarus (which borders US-occupied Poland, Lithuania Latvia and Estonia as well as Ukraine).

Not one of the specific claims made by Max Blumenthal, in the embedded video above, was disputed by Wood. He only repeats, without any sources, the familiar narrative that Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

Remarks at a UN Security Council Meeting Called by Russia on Threats to International Peace and Security

Ambassador Robert Wood
Alternative Representative for Special Political Affairs
New York, New York
June 29, 2023

AS DELIVERED

Thank you, Madam President, and I thank High Representative Nakamitsu for her briefing today. Her continued leadership to counter weapons diversion has been indispensable.

As we have repeatedly stated in this Council, it is categorically false for Russia to allege that the international support for Ukraine’s legitimate self-defense – support provided by over 50 countries – somehow constitutes a threat to international peace and security. This is a transparent and clumsy attempt by Russia to rewrite the very plain facts of this conflict.

Let’s be clear: it is Russia’s full-scale war of aggression, its invasion of a sovereign neighbor in violation of the UN Charter, that poses the threat to international peace and security. And it is from Russia’s full-scale war of aggression that Ukraine is defending itself. Russia’s familiar effort to try to divert our attention through false, everchanging allegations and disinformation is painfully obvious.

Just consider as one example the issue of Russia’s support for the Wagner Group. For years now, this Council has heard the Russian representative repeatedly deny any connection between the Russian state and the Wagner Group. On Tuesday, the Russian delegate insisted to the press outside of this Chamber that the Wagner Group is just a private military company and “detached from the government.”

But this week, President Putin finally, nakedly admitted that the Russian government fully finances the Wagner Group, providing almost $2 billion from state coffers in the past year alone. Putin said “I want to point out, and I want everyone to know about it. The maintenance of the entire Wagner Group was fully provided for by the state, from the ministry of defense, from the state budget, we fully financed this group.”

Russia has demonstrated time and time again its willingness to abuse its position on the Security Council to purposefully promote falsehoods and disinformation. We regret that Russia continues to deliberately misguide the international community, including through this meeting today. Just remember that in the lead up to its further invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia’s leadership denied it had any plans to send troops into Ukraine, even while it amassed forces on Ukraine’s borders.

It is Russia’s ongoing brutality against Ukraine’s people and its campaign to destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure that has rallied the international community to Ukraine’s aid, both in support of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and in respect for international law.

It is Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric, and its planned stationing of tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus, which is complicit in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, that risk further aggravating an already dangerous situation.

The overwhelming majority of UN Member States have repeatedly made these positions clear. The United States and more than 50 Member States have answered Ukraine’s call to support its self-defense against Russia’s aggression. And we will continue to do so for as long as it takes.

These weapons are not prolonging the conflict – the Kremlin bears that responsibility alone. These arms are preventing further brutalization of Ukraine’s citizens amidst the Kremlin’s onslaught. Please don’t forget this point.

Russia’s unrelenting and ruthless attacks on Ukraine and its people, and the all-too-familiar stream of false allegations to which Russia subjects us, are just further demonstrations that President Putin has no interest in meaningful diplomacy.

Just two weeks ago, leaders from several African nations, members of a peace mission bound for Kyiv and Moscow, were forced to shelter in bunkers during their visit to Kyiv as Putin rained missiles on Kyiv. What clearer indication could we be given of the Kremlin’s utter disinterest in peace or a diplomatic resolution to Putin’s war of choice?

No one wants this war to end more than Ukraine and its people. But as overwhelmingly articulated by members of the UN General Assembly, the conditions for a just and lasting peace must be rooted in international law. This includes Russia demonstrating a meaningful interest in ending this war and upholding the principles of the UN Charter – through action, and not just empty words.

It is Russia, in violation of Security Council Resolution 2231, that has procured hundreds of drones from Iran, and then deployed them in attacks killing civilians in Ukraine. If Russia had any genuine desire for de-escalation, it would simply withdraw its troops from Ukrainian territory and end its invasion. Instead, we see increased hostilities and brutality, waves of missiles wreaking havoc across Ukraine, and dangerous nuclear rhetoric.

We are committed to ensuring Ukraine has the ability to exercise its right to self-defense against Russia’s illegal and brutal war, while working with Ukraine to maintain the highest safeguards to ensure the weapons its partners provide are not diverted into unintended hands.

We will continue to stress accountability, as we have from the beginning of this conflict, and continue to ensure robust processes to counter attempts at illicit diversion. Throughout this conflict, Ukraine has been a transparent and willing partner in these efforts.

By helping Ukraine and neighboring states account for and safeguard arms and ammunition during transfer, in storage, and when deployed, strengthening border management and security in Ukraine and neighboring states, and building the capacity of relevant government agencies to deter, detect, and interdict illicit trafficking of certain weapons, we are taking concrete steps to address threats posed by the potential diversion of weapons.

As we have said on many occasions since the beginning of this crisis, if Russia is serious about bringing an end to this conflict, it can simply withdraw its troops from Ukraine and end its illegal war of aggression. We once again call on Russia to do so, and to do so now.

Thank you, Madam President.