Ukraine oligarchs

Republished from Truthseeker article of 29 June 2014 on RT.

Find out why Ukraine is making the world a scarier place. There are parliamentary moves to quit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; Nazis are making 'regular reconnaissance visits to nuclear power stations'; Billionaire governor, whose Privatbank is top recipient of new IMF bailout has been being placed on international wanted list for 'banned methods of warfare and aggravated murder'. In 'Seek Truth from facts', Daniel Bushell interviews intelligence expert, William Engdahl and reports on Ukraine's oligarch mafia's relations with the United States and interviews economist Professor Michael Hudson; former US intelligence officer Scott Rickard; and the prosecutor who put Yulia Timoshenko's partner behind bars, Martha Boersch.

Below is the transcript of the June 29, 2014 episode of Seek Truth from Facts, minus some introductory material.

Announcer: Ukraine's new coalition calls officially for “pre-emptive nuclear strikes”.
Governors on the international wanted list.
And the sordid past of the new oligarch President.

RT: Pensions halved to $3 a day, heating costs doubled, forced sell-off of the country’s land and resources - all part of IMF “knee-breakers” imposed round the world, now in Ukraine.

In a bombshell announcement ignored by mainstream media, even the IMF itself now admits austerity doesn’t work, cuts and economic slumps are vicious circles.

Let’s speak to leading economist and author Professor Michael Hudson, great to talk to you, so why are Ukraine’s new oligarch leaders doing this?

Prof. Michael Hudson, author of The Bubble and Beyond:There was a Chilean-type military coup d'etat there. The people of Ukraine do not sign off on the IMF IOUs and sign the transfer of property. The coup d'etat leaders in Kiev signed up and what do they want? Their aim is not to help Ukraine, their aim is to get rich for themselves and to move as much of their money into London, New York and other centers as they can.

RT: To run Ukraine, assistant secretary of state Vic Nuland appointed the Fatherland party led by Yulia Timoshenko.

Martha Boersch, trial lawyer and former Federal Prosecutor: Because the money was being siphoned off by Lazarenko and Timoshenko, Ukraine at that time, as they have today, ran up a huge gas debt.

RT: Timoshenko’s business partner Pavel Lazarenko has served six years for stealing huge sums from the public, as the pair ran vast gas transit monopoly United Energy Systems.

Boersch: You could characterize her as an unindicted co-conspirator.

RT: Documentary Stealing Popcorn notes US political protection keeps her clear of those massive criminal charges to this day.

Jason Felch, investigative reporter:So we know that the political interests of the United States Government at the highest level probably didn’t want Yulia Timoshenko drawn into theLazarenko case.

RT: WikiLeaked cables from the US Embassy state “oligarch” Timoshenko has stolen vast sums from Ukraine and “hid” them in London to pretend “she wasn’t involved in business”.

BBC reports she was wanted for alleged involvement in the murders of the Head of Ukraine’s National Bank, Members of Parliament as well as business rivals.

This is her on Interpol’s international most wanted list.

Timoshenko denies the claims and her campaign slogan is “fighting the oligarchs”. Unless she means her alleged hits on rival billionaires, George Washington University reports the slogan causes “epic laughter” and notes Ukrainians shout “vorovka” - Mrs Thief - to her face.

Let's talk to former US intelligence officer Scott Rickard, really great to see you. Is the US still protecting Ukraine’s criminals?

Scott Rickard, former U.S. intelligence officer: Certainly they’re protecting them, and they’re bolstering them, they’re putting them in a position where they can basically control the financial outcome of Ukraine, hiding the money in Isle of Man, hiding in the Cayman Islands and then Cyprus and working with the Western oligarchs to launder money. Poroshenko’s right in bed with the right guys.

RT: Timoshenko’s party has been joined in power by this man as the country’s President, or as the US ambassador to Kiev in a leaked cable admitted “disgraced oligarch”.
“Weapons, prostitutes, drugs, these are the things Poroshenko is associated with” in Ukraine, claims investigative reporter Greg Kolyada, adding Poroshenko’s not “self-made” as claimed by mainstream media. He got rich by “plundering state property with armed gangs” with his convict father, who was jailed for “large-scale theft” of state property.

Indymedia describes Poroshenko as the most corrupt person in Ukraine. In a country branded by a former State Department official as “the global epicenter of badness”, being the most corrupt is some achievement.

But “disgraced oligarchs” can do what they like, writes the SCF Foundation, as long as they carry out White House orders.

Leaked cables reveal secret meetings before the coup with the US ambassador, other top officials, as well as Mrs. Clinton, where among various instructions she told him the quickest ways to steal Ukraine into NATO membership.

If previous administrations made at least some pretense of being for the public, Ukraine is now literally a government “of the oligarchs, by the oligarchs, for the oligarchs”. Eighteen of the country’s 24 regions have had oligarchs and cronies parachuted into power by the new regime.

Igor Kolomoysky, “the head of the Ukrainian mafia” the US put in charge of an extremely sensitive Eastern region. He owns Ukraine banks, metals, resources, food, transport, military and oil industry.

The multibillionaire has a fetish for “gold statues”, notes Ukraine Business Insight, and lives in Switzerland.
“Looting of state property, bribes and murdering rivals” were part and parcel of becoming an oligarch in the “global epicenter of badness”.

Their appointment to actually run the country has now blown everything into the open.

Leaked conversation between governor Kolomoysky and presidential candidate Tsarev:
Kolomoysky: Tomorrow, f***, they will go after all your family, f***. Because we’re gonna hang them right in the town square, f***. And put a contract on your life, f***, big money. One million dollars. For your life. They’ll be looking for you everywhere.

RT: The newly-appointed oligarch was recorded putting an alleged hit on a presidential candidate and his family in Eastern Ukraine.

In another leaked call an official reveals Kolomoysky’s also behind the Odessa massacre, the deadliest attack so far in Ukraine’s civil war, where he paid Nazis from the infamous Right Sektor Party that burnt, slaughtered and strangled dozens of civilians to death, including elderly women.

In a fairly predictable development, handing state power to an oligarch and criminal suspect has turned him “crazy”.

Kolomoysky has his own private army, and set up the Azov Battalion of openly Nazi mercenaries, which London’s Sunday Times admits is behind the bloodshed that has caused revulsion among the population.

He’s now been placed on the international wanted list sent to Interpol in connection with “banned means and methods of warfare, aggravated murder, and abductions in Eastern Ukraine”, all in a few months since he was put in power.

Leading intelligence author William Engdahl’s investigated post-coup Ukraine he finds what’s happened is “so astonishing as almost to defy belief”.

Dr. Engdahl joins us, really great to speak to you, why do you write “US policies have put gangsters and murderers in Ukraine in power”?

William Engdahl, investigative journalist: I’ve already seen reports that the government has signed over the pipeline, the gas pipeline distribution network, they’ve signed that off to Chevron. German companies have grabbed metallurgical assets in Eastern Ukraine and coal assets, extremely prized coal assets there, so they’re already looting the crown jewels of Ukraine and the, I don’t know what you want to call it, the puppet regime that’s sitting in Kiev is doing their bidding. Now you’ve got a chocolate king as president, his opponent was the gas queen Yulia Timoshenko who looted billions from her country, from her fellow countrymen and is associated with figures of organized crime. So you’ve got a bunch of gangsters essentially and Nazi thugs running Ukraine and that is hardly a stable thing for peace in Europe.

Germany wants to go to war to defend a bunch of Nazis in Kiev because they get hot-headed and start creating incidents with Russia? I don’t think so but they better realize that’s the agenda that some people in Washington have. Because they want, not the American people and not the United States, but this tiny power cabal that have so much power in Washington, they want not only a new cold war, they want a new hot war. That’s a pretty dangerous thing to be playing around with. This is an escalation toward a new dimension of horror for mankind.

RT: Timoshenko revealed her real oligarch face in a leaked call pledging to nuke the Eastern part of Ukraine.

Leaked conversation between Deputy Nestor Shufrich and Fatherland leader Yulia Timoshenko:
Shufrich: What shall we do with the eight million Russian(-speakers) in Ukraine?
Timoshenko: Kill them with nuclear weapons.

RT: The openly Nazi Svoboda party, led by Oleg Tyagnibok, was rewarded for its appalling violence during the coup with six major cabinet posts, including Security Chief in charge of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.

Svoboda’s official manifesto calls for building nuclear weapons again in Ukraine, and “pre-emptive nuclear strikes without declaring war”, in other words open and supreme violation of international statutes.

Gunmen from Ukraine’s other big Nazi coalition Right Sektor were caught attempting to break into Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant.

Ukraine: Triumph, Tragedy, or Farce? report: The neo-Nazis are paying regular reconnaissance visits to nuclear power stations, with obvious intent to hold the whole world hostage. They have paid visits to bacteriological laboratories and, according to the people working there, got hold of bacteriological material that can be used for biological warfare. Other terrorists have merely been dreaming of such weapons – Ukrainian ones, with the connivance of or on direct orders from someone in the junta, may actually use them – to Senator McCain’s delight.

RT: Turkey is reportedly in talks with Ukraine’s new rulers to buy the project documentation for one of the world’s most powerful nuclear strategic weapons, the intercontinental ballistic missile NATO calls Satan.

Governments are now voicing concern that Kiev may be violating the international Missile Technology Control treaty, and the Hague Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation.

Having “gangsters and murderers” in charge is unlikely to end well for Ukraine. When that country also has nuclear weapons technology, with plans to use them, it’s an international threat. Seek truth from facts, this is the Truthseeker.