Ukraine: 1990-2022 Timeline
To understand the present one must know the past.
1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would expand "not one inch eastward" after the reunification of Germany and German diplomat Jürgen Chrobog assured the Russians"that we would not expand NATO beyond the Elbe.
1991-A former engineer, Avakov quickly transitioned into a capitalist following the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1991. He made millions while creating a business network that included banks, natural gas fields, supermarket chains and factories.
1994-United States and Russia reached an agreement in 1994, known as the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, by which Ukraine would turn over its nukes in exchange for those security assurances,”
The Washington Post reported. “The agreement is not an official treaty. It is neither legally binding nor does it carry an enforcement mechanism. And while it provides security assurances, they do not include specific promises with regard to a potential invasion.”
1994- Kiev born Semion Mogilevich becomes the primary money launderer for Moscow “super-gang” Solntsevskaya Bratva before forming his own transnational crime ring in 1994 that becomes so powerful that mafia states will refer to him as “the boss of bosses.”
In the early 1990s, the FBI catches a whiff of Mogilevich after he participates in a stock manipulation scheme to fraud thousands of American investors out of $150 million. After a trip to Moscow, FBI Director William Sessions warns the world that Mogilevich is a threat to global stability.
1998, the FBI releases a reportthat Mogilevich operates a criminal enterprise with about 250 members embedded in international banks, stock exchanges, politics, government, and major industries. The report also reveals that his international crime business includes money laundering, arms dealing, trading nuclear material, prostitution, drug trafficking, and oil deals.
Also in 1998, an American newspaper obtainshundreds of previously-classified FBI and Israeli intelligence records that identify Mogilevich as the leader of the Red Mafia, an infamous Russian mob family based in Budapest but whose members hold high positions in New York, Pennsylvania, and Southern California.
He has contract killers on his payroll throughout the United States and Europe. According to one of his associates, Monya Elson, Mogilevich has more power and control than then-president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin.
He has created a global communications network through secure satellite telephones, cellular clone phones, encrypted fax machines, email systems, and state-of-the-art computers, all of which are conducted by a host of Ph.D.’s he employs.
2001-Avakov released the Patriots leader Andriy Biletsky from prison and gave him a role in the Interior Ministry. Biletsky had previously been the leader of the Kharkiv branch of the Tryzub, founded by Dmytro Yarosh. Avakov was the governor in Kharkiv during this period and Biletsky’s volunteer militia had worked closely with the Kharkiv police and security services.
2002, Avakov entered politics as an official in Kharkov’s City Council.
2003-Biletsky opposed the renaming of the SNPU to Svoboda and reformed the Patriots of Ukraine as an independent volunteer militia.
2004-Oleh Tyahnybok was a well known neo-Nazi. In 2004 he was thrown out of then President Viktor Yushchenko’s parliamentary faction after delivering a ranting speech where he called upon Ukrainians to fight the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia:” a racist slur against both Russians and Jews.
He followed this up in 2005 by signing an open letter to the Rada urging the government to tackle the corruption of “organised Jewry.” These are just two examples of his many antisemtic, russophobic and generally racist statements.
https://in-this-together.com/ukraine-war-part-2/
2004 color revolution replaced Yanukovych with Viktor Yushchenko, who favored admitting Ukraine to NATO and adopted an International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment program that benefitted U.S. investors while cutting social programs.
2005-Avakov was appointed governor of the province of Kharkov by President Viktor Yushchenko in after Avakov had supported the US-backed “Orange Revolution” in 2004.
Avakov used his position to enrich himself and his own Bazis Bank by purchasing government assets in Kharkov through the bank.
2007- at the Munich Security Conference Putin said ‘We will not allow the expansion of NATO to a point where NATO is touching our border, specifically, Ukraine and Georgia. We see these as Trojan Horses for NATO’s military power and US influence...”
2008 NATO Bucharest Summit the NATO Council issued a statement where Clause 23 read:
NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.
2009, the FBI adds Mogilevich to their Ten Most Wanted list, along with a statement about his various criminal enterprises including his proven ability to influence entire governments and economies.
2010-Russia openly declared its support for Yanukovich in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election. Its access to the Ukrainian pipelines and retention of its Sevastopol naval base were crucial to its and, to a large extent, the EU’s interests. In exchange for below market, subsidised Russian gas, the Yanukovich government extended Russia’s Sevastopol lease until 2042, resulting in physical fights breaking out in the Verkhovna Rada.
2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller gives a speech alerting the nation that Mogilevich’s crime ring has already infiltrated New York businesses and industries, and he warns that Mogilevich is our biggest threat to national security.
2011- Avakov was forced to flee to Italy after accusations of corruption arose following the election of Avakov’s political enemy, Viktor Yanukovych, as president of Ukraine.
2011 Russia and Germany opened the Nord Stream gas pipeline which runs under the Baltic Sea supplying Russian Gas to Germany. Nord Stream 1 runs from Vyborg to Greifswald and the proposed Nordstream 2 from Ust-Luga. The purpose of Nord Stream was to enable Russia to sell much cheaper gas to the EU, via Germany, while eliminating both the EU’s and Russia’s 80% reliance upon the precarious Ukrainian pipelines. For obvious reasons, this had wide support among other EU members states.
https://in-this-together.com/ukraine-war-part-2/
2012 the U.S. enacted the so-called Magnitsky Act. This was based upon the unverifiable and highly suspicious claims of just one man: the American born British financier Bill Browder.
The Act, which enables the U.S. to seize Russian assets, ban Russians from entry to the U.S. and sanction Russian business as it chooses, is a clear signal to the Russian government that the U.S. represents a distinctly hostile state, committed to undermining its interests.
2012-The world’s largest Jewish community center , the new Menorah Center in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine was built
The seven-towered 538,000 square foot center was spearheaded by philanthropist Gennady Bogolubov, president of the local Jewish community and chairman of the Ukrainian Jewish Congress, and his Privat banking partner Igor Kolomoyskyy.
The site, where more than 90,000 Jewish were buried, was established as a Jewish cemetery by the Yekaterinoslav Jewish community in 1903. It would become the burial ground of victims of the 1905 pogroms and Civil War pogroms, victims of the 1932-1933 famine, and the 1934-1950 NKVD purges. It was also the site where Fascists shot Jews during the Nazi era.
Designed by architect Alexander Sorin, the center will serve as a platform for the ongoing revival of the local Jewish community, which has been headquartered at the historic Golden Rose Synagogue under the direction of Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetzki.
The impressive center was built in one of the childhood hometowns of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory.
Kamenetzki, director of Chabadof Dnepropetrovsk, said that while in the past the city had been associated with suffering and persecution – the Rebbe’s father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, of righteous memory, was arrested and the Rebbe’s brother and tens of thousands of other Jews were shot during a mass slaughter by Nazi forces – the whole world can witness a resurgence of the city’s Jewish life.
https://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/1991671/jewish/Largest-Jewish-Center-Opens.htm
2012 study of Burisma Holdings done in Ukraine by the AntiCorruption Action Centre (ANTAC), an investigative nonprofit co-funded by American billionaire George Soros and the U.S. State Department, found that the true owner of Burisma Holdings was none other than Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky.
The study, which was funded to dig up corruption on the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, instead found that Ihor Kolomoysky “managed to seize the largest reserves of natural gas in Ukraine”
https://greatgameindia.com/hunter-biden-zelensky-neo-nazi/
Burisma Holdings changed owners in 2011 when it was taken over by an off-shore Cyprus enterprise called Brociti Investments Ltd, and subsequently, moved addresses under the same roof as Ukrnaftoburinnya and Esko-Pivnich, two Ukrainian gas companies which happened to be also owned by Kolomoysky through off-shore entities in the British Virgin Islands.
Oleh Kanivets, who worked as CEO of Ukrnaftoburinnya, confirmed Kolomoysky as the owner of Burisma Holding in the 2012 report saying, “The Privat Group is the immediate owner. This company was founded by Mykola Zlochevsky some time ago, but he later sold his shares to the Privat Group.”
In other words, Hunter Biden’s boss and benefactor at Burisma Holdings is the same Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch who also claimed the position of boss and benefactor over Volodymyr Zelensky before he became Ukraine’s president.
The Pandora Papers showed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his TV production partners were beneficiaries of a web of offshore firms created in 2012, the same year Zelensky’s production company entered into a deal with Kolomoysky’s media group, which allegedly received $41 million in funds from Kolomoysky’s Privatbank.
2013-DecemberAssistant Secretary of State for European Affairs “Toria” Nuland’s address to an International Business Conference, sponsored by U.S. oil and gas companies, where she claimed that the U.S. had invested $5 billion over two decades to help Ukraine achieve it’s dream of joining the EU
Its not clear where the money came from but the Pentagon, the home of the U.S. Department of Defense, has never completed a successful audit. In 2020 the black hole in its accounts amounted to $35 trillion. This is more than five times the total “official” amount spent by the federal government in 2021.
2013 Avakov and Biletsky joined with Tryzub to form the Right Sector. During the Euromaidan protests they operated under the leadership of Andriy Parubiy as part of his Maidan Self-Defense.
2013-the U.S. had established so-called TechCamps in Ukraine. Speaking in the Rada on November 20th 2013, the day before the Euromaidan protests began, the pro-Russian MP Oleg Tsaryov alleged that the U.S. TechCamps had been established to ferment revolution.
Tsaryov claimed that the TechCamps schooled activists on how to use information warfare techniques to undermine government institutions. His allegations could perhaps be dismissed as uncorroborated and partisan were it not for the fact that the revolution he predicted happened a couple of months after he delivered his warning.
2013-December Nuland and Pyatt bugged conversation which was leaked on 4th February 2014, more than two weeks before the Maidan square massacre and the formal transition of power.
Pyatt acknowledges that the U.S. had already decided that Vitali Klitschko wouldn’t “be in the government” despite him being a prominent Maidan leader and the proposed Deputy Prime Minister.
Nuland stated, “I think Yats is the guy.” She was referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who, following the coup, was appointed as the Prime Minister of the Maidan government as planned.
Pyatt advised Nuland “the problem is gonna be with Tyahnybok and his guys.” This was a reference to Svoboda, the Right Sector, White Hammer, C14 and the other neo-Nazis.
While Nuland didn’t want Tyahnybok to be in the government, she clearly envisioned the neo-Nazis remaining a powerful political force in Ukraine. In order for the Maidan government to operate as required, Nuland advised Pyatt that the chosen Prime Minister, Yatsenyuk, needed:
Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week.
Nulands husband (and arch-neocon) Robert Kagan had co-founded the Project for the New American Century in 1998 around a demand for “regime change” in Iraq, a project that was accomplished in 2003 with President George W. Bush’s invasion.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/26/robert-parry-the-mess-that-nuland-made/
2013-Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona met with a well-known right-wing nationalist party in Ukraine in
The senator took a trip to Kiev, Ukraine, where he spoke to thousands of protesters gathered in the city’s main square to protest former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to cut trade relations with Europe and instead engage with Russia.
His visit was reportedly to show U.S. support for the protesters, but his trip to Ukraine was notable for another reason. McCain was repeatedly photographed standing next to and meeting with Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the right-wing nationalist Svoboda Party, Business Insider reported.
The Svoboda Party has gained some traction and notoriety in Ukraine, garnering 10 percent of the national vote in the nation’s 2010 parliamentary election. Svoboda has a history of anti-Semitism.
When it was founded in 1995, the party had a logo eerily similar to the Nazi swastika. The party underwent a schism in later years, but still remains true to promoting Ukrainian ethnic identity.
https://dailycaller.com/2017/08/17/flashback-that-time-mccain-met-and-praised-actual-neo-nazis-in-ukraine/
2014-Maidan controlled Verkhovna Rada repealed the 2012 language law that permitted Russian to be an officially recognised language of Ukraine. Fearing what the coup would mean for them and encouraged by the apparent success of the Crimean Self-Defence Force(SDF), a popular uprising followed.
2014-Nazis and far-right-wing groups supported by the US and then-Vice President Biden and Victoria Nuland were active as violent stormtroopers during the Maidan coup in Kiev which in 2014 toppled Ukraine’s democratically elected president Yanukovych. In subsequent “free” elections the political parties which represented eastern Ukraine’s mainly Russian speaking population were banned or criminalized.
Immediately after this, Russian-speaking Ukrainians were targeted by the new government in Kyiv, and Russian-speaking insurgents rose in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region. Russia reacted by taking-over Crimea with a subsequent referendum. Ukrainian far-right movements and neo-Nazis organized private oligarch-financed armies to fight the Russian-speaking insurgents in Donbass, and Russia responded by militarily supporting the Russian-speaking insurgents.
Over the next 8 years shelling of the Donbass by Ukraine killed about 14,000 civilians (estimates vary)
2014-Andriy Parubiy, the new secretary of Ukraine's security council, was a co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), otherwise known as Svoboda. And his deputy, Dmytro Yarosh, is the leader of a party called the Right Sector which, according to historian Timothy Stanley, "flies the old flag of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators at its rallies."
The highest-ranking right-wing extremist is Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych, also a member of Svoboda, who believes that women should "lead the kind of lifestyle to avoid the risk of rape, including refraining from drinking alcohol and being in controversial company."
This is the philosophy underlying one of his "legal initiatives," according to the Kyiv Post, "to ban all abortions, even for pregnancies that occurred during rape."
The Svoboda party has tapped into Nazi symbolism including the "wolf's angel" rune, which resembles a swastika and was worn by members of the Waffen-SS, a panzer division that was declared a criminal organization at Nuremberg.
A report from Tel-Aviv University describes the Svoboda party as "an extremist, right-wing, nationalist organization which emphasizes its identification with the ideology of German National Socialism."
According to a BBC news clip two Svoboda parliamentarians in posed for photos while "brandishing well-known far right numerology," including the numbers 88 -- the eighth letter of the alphabet -- signifying "HH," as in "Heil Hitler."
This all makes Hillary Clinton's recent comments comparing Putin to Hitler appear patently absurd, as Stanley adeptly points out: "After all, in the eyes of many ethnic Russians, it is the Ukrainian nationalists -- not Putin -- who are the Nazis."
Per Anders Rudling from Lund University in Sweden, an expert on Ukrainian extremists, told Britain's Channel 4 News: "A neo-fascist party like Svoboda getting the deputy prime minister position is news in its own right." Well, except in the U.S.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-neo-nazi-question-in_b_4938747
“2014-On May 2nd the streets of Odessa saw pitched battles between the anti-Maidan and pro-Maidan activists and militias. The violence was escalating and the security forces were, at best, unable to cope but some also appeared to collaborate with the Right Sector. Overwhelmed, many of the anti-Maidan protesters, sought refuge in the Trade Unions Building.
Video footage analysis unequivocally shows that the the massacre that ensued was again led by Parubiy’s Right Sector. At least an estimated 40 people were either burned alive, died of smoke inhalation or jumped to their deaths from the Building. The Right Sector torched the building knowing anti-Maidan activists were trapped inside.
https://in-this-together.com/ukraine-war-part-1/
Witness testimony records other murders committed in and around the building. The disgusting beatings to death of those who briefly survived the plunge from the inferno were accompanied with Right Sector cries of “Colorado Beetle,” used to suggest the victims were subhuman and should be crushed underfoot.
Another, practically identical slaughter was carried out in Mariupol just a few days later. The news of which was met with gloating jubilation in Kyiv. TV studio audiences in Kyiv also applauded the news of the Odessa massacre. Though they probably did not fully appreciate what actually happened.
Parubiy visited Odessa, meeting with local militia checkpoints and handing out equipment. This included a filmed meeting with Nikolai Volkov from the Right Sector.
Parubiy was known to have distributed bullet proof vests. Volkov was later filmed shooting at the Trade Unions Building while wearing one. He was clearly among the leaders of the attack. His role has been confirmed through both video footage and witness testimony.
Andriy Parubiy is a common link between the Maidan, Odessa and Mariupol massacres. Parubiy’s Maidan Self-Defence companies were quickly incorporated into the Asov Battalion (regiments) of the Ukrainian National Guard and other “specialist” Ukrainian military units. They would go on to play a major role in the 8 year-long war in the Donbas.
The Right Sector, and the paramilitary arm of Svoboda, are not merely conservatives or people the western, liberal intelligentsia disagree with. They are full-blown neo-Nazis and their beliefs are driven by hate and an unshakeable supremacist ideology. They have received and continue to receive the unwavering support of NATO aligned governments and, in turn, these governments serve a globalist network of public-private partnerships.”
2014 May 22, Novorossiya was declared ,and one month later spokespeople of both republics declared their merger into a confederal "Union of People's Republics".
Within a year, the project was suspended: on 1 January 2015, founding leadership announced the project has been put on hold, and on 20 May the constituent members announced the freezing of the political project.
At present, the two constituent republics of the proposed confederation have only Russian diplomatic recognition, and Ukraine has classified them as terrorist organizations and refers to their territory as the Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone
Dark Green = claimed territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's RepublicsLight Green = the extent of Novorossiyan historical claims.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya_(confederation)
2014-April 17, Novorossiya was mention by Putin during a long Q&A session on Russian TV. The question was about federalization of Ukraine before new government elections in the just regime changed Ukraine.
I would like to remind you that what was called Novorossiya (New Russia) back in the tsarist days – Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Nikolayev and Odessa – were not part of Ukraine back then. These territories were given to Ukraine in the 1920s by the Soviet government. Why? Who knows. They were won by Potyomkin and Catherine the Great in a series of well-known wars. The centre of that territory was Novorossiysk, so the region is called Novorossiya. Russia lost these territories for various reasons, but the people remained.
2014-March, Avakov returned to Ukraine following the US-backed coup against Yanukovych and was appointed Interior Minister in the newly created government.
Through it all, like the rest of Ukraine’s ruling oligarchy, Avakov has maintained his own personal wealth which is reportedly in the hundreds of millions. While Ukraine is Europe’s poorest country, Avakov is known for his love of luxury.
Avakov formed the Special Task Patrol Police to protect “public order” in the Donbas and elsewhere. In May he granted official status to the Patriots as a “specialist” volunteer battalion under the auspices of the MVU. Biletsky took command of the new unit called the Asov Battalion.
In 2016 he formed the National Corps party as a political front for the Asov Battalions.
A number of such specialist militias, such as the Aydar and the Dnepr Battalions, were brought together. They were effectively controlled by oligarchs, such as Avakov and Ihor Kolomoyskyi, rather than the Kyiv government.
Supposedly they received their order from the MVU, although it seems Avakov was personally in charge.
The regular regiments of the Ukrainian army (ZSU) were acting under the direction of the Ukraine Ministry of Defence. The newly formed specialists were not. With money behind them and better training and equipment than the ZSU, the neo-Nazis were an effective fighting force and were used as shock-troops in forward positions almost immediately.
Biletskey, who once wrote that Ukraine should “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade [. . .] against the Semite-led Untermenschen,” led the Asov Battalion as it took Mariupol from the separatists.
Avakov and Andriy Paruby consequently issued the order to establish the Asov Regiment. In October the pair were also behind the regulation of the Asov Regiment as part of the Ukrainian National Guard. Nominally it was under the command of the MVU but, in reality, oligarchs were pulling the strings.
At this point the Asov Regiment was no longer a militant, social and political movement, seeking to revive Nazi ideology. They were armed combatants in a conflict in which they intending to enforce that ideology. Under Avakov’s and Parubiy’s guidance they had progressed from neo-Nazis to outright Nazis.
The original Azov Regiment emblem was constructed from pure Nazi iconography. It shows a wolfsangel standing before Himmler’s quasi-mystical Nazi black sun. The new version has dropped the black sun but retains the wolfsangel.
It needs to be stressed that the Nazis are primarily concentrated in the Asov regiment. Biletsky said:
I am sure, the majority of the lads see themselves as nationalists. The same goes for the Aydar, but they do not have such monolithity as in Azov where 90% of the fighters call themselves, with certainty, Ukrainian nationalists.
It is difficult to know precisely how many Nazis are currently active within Ukrainian forces. While they are concentrated in Asov they are also present, to varying degrees, in the other “specialist” regiments and units such as Aydar, Dnepr, Kyiv-2, etc.
National socialism is unusually popular in Ukraine and there are certainly Nazis dispersed throughout the military. However, it is only in the specialist battalions of National Guard Units (NGU) and MVU police units that sees them act as a united force.
In 2014 the Ukrainian political analyst Mykhaylo Minakov stated that there were 38 such battalions, drawn predominantly from the RS militias, with approximately 13,500 military personnel in total. Of these, not all were hardcore Nazis. Now, as regiments, Nazi strength has increased but it seems unlikely that they account for more than 10 -15,000 of the estimated 260,000 Ukrainian military personnel (across all services.)
2014-Kolomoïsky took advantage of his connections to take power within the European Jewish community, but his co-religionists rebelled and ejected him from international associations. However, he managed to get the head of the Right Sector, Dmytro Yarosh, appointed deputy secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council and to get himself appointed governor of the Dnipropetrovsk oblast.
2014-March-After the Euromaidan coup, Russia completed the so-called “annexation” of Crimea without firing a shot. This caused considerable anger in Ukraine as many viewed their security services as next to useless. When the volunteer battalions of the RS went to the front in the Donbas war, with the assistance of the Ukrainian media, they garnered support as the defenders of the state.
While most Ukrainians remained opposed to the RS they enjoyed increasing support. This emboldened the neo-Nazis further and their 2015 Torchlight march was well attended and received. However, the RS, Svoboda, C14, White Hammer, the National Corps and other neo-Nazi incarnations would not have been able to pull off their power grab without the support of the U.S led NATO alliance.
https://in-this-together.com/ukraine-war-part-2/
2014-It is highly likely that the U.S. administration struck a deal with the neo-Nazis through Tyahnybok. Just as Nuland suggested, he was not given a position in the Yatsenyuk’s Maidan government but the National Socialist Svoboda was handsomely rewarded and Tyahnybok became a king maker.
Prior to the coup Svoboda could not have dreamt of the political power they would achieve. Oleksandr Sych was the Vice Prime Minister, Ihor Tenyukh was made Defence Minister, Ihor Shvaika was appointed as Minister for Food and Agriculture and Andriy Mokhnyk was the Minister for Ecology and Natural Resources
Tyahnybok remained Svoboda leader and Yatsenyuk, with so many Svoboda ultras in his cabinet and other key state positions, had no choice but to consult with Tyahnybok, and other influential far-right leaders, on a regular basis.
The Western backed Euromaidan Coup didn’t create Ukraine’s Nazi problem but the U.S. led NATO alliance, at the very least, exploited their violent fanaticism.
2014-Andriy Parubiy, in another win for the neo-Nazis, was given the role of Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. Together with Yatsenyuk they formed the People’s Front (originally People’s Action) in March 2014.
The People’s Front fully emerged in September 2014 when Arsen Avakov and Andriy Parubiy split from Yatsenyuk and Tuchynov. Yatsenyuk then joined the Petro Poroshenko bloc (subsequently named the European Solidarity party).
The game of musical chairs and the 2014 presidential and parliamentary elections left Poroshenko as the elected President and Yatsenyuk as Prime Minister. Tellingly, it also left Avakov and Parubiy, the “commandant of Euromaidan,” with a firm grip on Ukrainian national security.
2014-As Interior Minister Avakov immediately set about supporting the Patriots of Ukraine. As the former paramilitary wing of the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), the Patriots were co-founded by Andriy Parubiy in 1996 and led by him between 1998 and 2004.
2014, Ukranian born Mogilevich controls over 100 companies in 27 countries operating as fronts for his crime syndicate.
2014, a firm called Metabiota, which specializes in detecting, tracking, and analyzing potential disease outbreaks, signed an $18.4 million federal contract as a subcontractor for Black & Veatch in Georgia and Ukraine.
Metabiota was started with help from U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and his investment firm Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP)
The Hunter Biden firm was the center of a massive scandal in 2020 after it was revealed the wife of the former mayor of Moscow mysteriously wired $3.5 million to the “investment” group.
2014-On 2 March , amidst the pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov appointed Kolomoyskyi Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
Two days later, Russian President Vladimir Putin described Kolomoyskyi as a “unique crook,” and said that the citizens of Dnipropetrovsk were not happy with his appointment as Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
Kolomoisky, who in recent years had been spending most of his time tending to his business empire from a second home near Geneva, Switzerland, immediately returned to his hometown and got to work.
The first stage consisted of providing local police and military forces with the most basic of equipment, including car batteries, fuel and tires for their patrol vehicles, and ensuring their loyalty with a combination of sticks and carrots. To boost their numbers, along with his partners, Kolomoisky drafted thousands of Privat Group employees as auxiliary police officers.
“In days, the demonstrations in Dnipro disappeared,” says one resident. “The city has never been so calm and safe.”
In April 2014 Kolomoyskyi offered a bounty for the capture of Russian-backed militants and incentives for the turning in of weapons.
He also is believed to have spent $10 million to create the Dnipro Battalion and also funded the Aidar, Azov, Dnepr 1, Dnepr 2, and Donbas volunteer battalions.
On 2 July 2014 a Russian District Court authorized [Kolomoyskyi’s] arrest in absentia for “organizing the killing of civilians”.
2015-Kolomoiskyn has also taken a hit due to the decision by the Russian government to temporarily seize the assets of Privat Bank’s Moscow subsidiary. Kolomoisky’s holdings in Russian-annexed Crimea are up for public auction. The seizure was ostensibly to protect Russian depositors, but few have any doubt it was the Kremlin’s political retaliation.
The bank sustained further damage when its branches in separatist-held towns were destroyed or burned down. In cities like Mariupol where the separatists were in control, Privat Bank branches were also defaced with graffiti cursing Kolomoisky.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220228132815/https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-the-most-powerful-jew-in-the-world-1.5315512
2015- The Jewish community in Dnipropetrovsk was thriving, with an estimated 50,000 members. That’s thanks in part to the patronage of the region’s Jewish governor, Ihor Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s richest oligarchs, who was profiled by Israeli newspaper Ha’aretzunder the headline “Is this man the most powerful Jew in the world?”
Kolomoisky co-funded the building of the city’s Jewish community center, said to be either Europe’sor the world’s biggest. It’s built in the shape of—and named for—the menorah, the seven-branched synagogue candelabra. Inside the $70 million building, completed in 2012, are offices, restaurants, a hotel and youth hostel, luxury apartments, an Israeli consulate, a cultural center, and a museum. At its feet is the historic “Golden Rose” synagogue.
https://qz.com/347948/the-ukrainian-city-thats-become-a-haven-for-jews-fleeing-another-european-war/
2015-A June 2015 financial report shows RSTP gave Metabiota $30 million to help “protect the world from the spread of epidemics.
One year before RSTP began funding Metabiota, the disease tracking company partnered with the now-infamous EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) under the USAID’s Predict Project.
[USAID is a CIA Cut-out and a major funder of EHA]
Metabiota is in a working relationship with known CIA front In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel was created by the CIA in 1999 as “the first government-sponsored venture capital firm,”
2015-Minsk 2 agreement
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/05/minsk-conundrum-western-policy-and-russias-war-eastern-ukraine-0/minsk-2-agreement
Nine of the agreement’s 13 points cover conflict management: a ceasefire and the pullback of heavy weaponry from the contact line (articles 1 to 3); an amnesty for those involved in the fighting (article 5); an exchange of hostages and unlawfully detained persons (article 6); humanitarian assistance (article 7); the resumption of socio-economic links between Ukraine and occupied Donbas (article 8); the withdrawal of ‘all foreign armed formations, military equipment and also mercenaries’ from Ukraine, and the disarmament of ‘all illegal groups’ (article 10); and the activities of the TCG (article 13).
Four other sections address political matters:
• Article 4: elections in Donbas. The day after the pullback of heavy weaponry from the contact line, a dialogue on local elections will start in accordance with Ukrainian law and the temporary law on special status adopted in September 2014. No later than 30 days after the signing of the Minsk-2 agreement (i.e. by 14 March), Ukraine’s parliament will adopt a resolution defining the area in which the temporary law on special status will apply (to be based on the delineation line in the memorandum of 19 September 2014).
• Article 9: the process of re-establishing ‘full control’ over the Ukraine/Russia border by the Ukrainian authorities. There is now no reference to Poroshenko’s buffer zone or an OSCE-monitored security zone. Instead, the process of returning the border to Ukraine’s control begins the day after local elections have been held and concludes ‘after’ the ‘comprehensive political settlement’ (i.e. local elections plus constitutional reform providing for decentralization) due by the end of 2015 – but ‘on condition’ that article 11 (next bullet) has been implemented ‘in consultation with and upon agreement by’ the DNR/LNR.52
• Article 11: constitutional reform. A new Ukrainian constitution will enter into force by the end of 2015. Its ‘key element’ will be ‘decentralization’, which will take account of the ‘peculiarities’ of occupied Donbas, as agreed with the DNR/LNR representatives. Ukraine will also adopt ‘permanent legislation’ on special status before the end of 2015. This law will include: an amnesty; ‘the right of linguistic self-determination’; the involvement of the local authorities in the appointment of prosecutors and courts; agreements between Ukraine’s central authorities and the local authorities covering ‘economic, social and cultural development’; state support for the socio-economic development of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts; assistance from the central authorities to support ‘transnational cooperation’ between the occupied regions and regions of the Russian Federation; rights for local parliaments to create ‘people’s militia units’; and no early termination of the powers of local parliaments and elected officials.
• Article 12: elections in Donbas. Election-related questions will be dealt with on the basis of the temporary law on special status adopted in September 2014 and agreed with the DNR/LNR. Elections will be held in accordance with the relevant standards of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
All the 13 pointers mentioned in the agreement are looked at differently by Ukraine and Russia. Despite the draft of the Minsk agreement, ceasefire violations remained common in the separatist regions of Ukraine.
For more than seven years now, the Minsk agreement remained unimplemented.
2015-a powerful Washingtion lobby, with Sen. McCain leading the charge, pressed the Obama administration to send offensive weapons to Ukraine. While NATO senior commandalso advocated lethal military assistance, officially the Obama administration stood firm and would not give “lethal aid” to Ukraine. Instead the U.S. claimed it would only “train” Ukranian troops.
2016, Mogilevich fellow money launderer, Donald J. Trump, gets elected president of the United States of America.
Here’s a chart that shows just some of the ties between Donald Trump and Semion Mogilevich:
https://www.businessinsider.com/semion-mogilevich-2014-1
https://trumpfile.org/semion-mogilevich-the-boss-of-bosses-is-born-in-ukraine/
2015, the Ukrainian parliament passed legislation making two WWII paramilitaries—the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)—heroes of Ukraine, and made it a criminal offense to deny their heroism.
The OUN had collaborated with the Nazis and participated in the Holocaust, while the UPA slaughtered thousands of Jews and 70,000-100,000 Poles on their own volition.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/neo-nazis-far-right-ukraine/
2015 -As of January 31, 2022, 33,346 Security Forces of Ukraine (SFU) candidates have participated in the training provided via 726 course serials spanning all lines of effort since the start of the mission in September 2015. This number includes members of the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU). To date, the CAF has provided training to 1,951 members of the NGU.
2016 Amnesty International accused the Azov battalion of "Enforced Disappearances, Arbitrary Detentions, and Torture".
Since at least 2015 Ukrainian fascists, like members of the Azov battalion, have been trained by the CIA:
As the battle lines hardened in Donbas, a small, select group of veteran CIA paramilitaries made their first secret trips to the frontlines to meet with Ukrainian counterparts there, according to former U.S. officials.
Until now, however, the details of the CIA’s paramilitary training program on Ukraine’s eastern frontlines have never been revealed. This initiative, say former agency officials, has helped battle-hardened Ukrainian special operations forces for the current Russian assault, which has plunged Europe into its worst conflict in decades.
2016, when the Texas-based AirTronic company announced a contract to deliver $5.5 million dollars worth of PSRL-1 rocket propelled grenade launchers to “an Allied European military customer.” In June 2017, photos turned up on Azov’s website showing its fighters testing PSRL-1 grenade launchers in the field. The images raised questions about whether Ukraine was AirTronic’s unnamed “customer.” (Delivery 2017)
Two months later, the pro-Russian military analysis site Southfront published a leaked contract indicating that 100 PSRL-1 Launchers worth $554,575 — about 1/10th of the total deal — had been produced in partnership with a Ukrainian arms company for distribution to the country’s fighting units. (Delivery date April 8, 2017)
In with the US-backed Voice of America, AirTronic Chief Operating Officer Richard Vandiver emphasized that the sale of grenade launchers was authorized through “very close coordination with the U.S. Embassy, with the U.S. State Department, with the U.S. Pentagon and with the Ukrainian government.”
Finally, in January 2018, the transfer of the lethal weapons to Azov was confirmed by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL). Aric Toler, a DFRL researcher, asserted that“the US Embassy did absolutely help facilitate this transfer, and I’m not sure if they were aware that Azov would be the first to train with them.”
The Canadian led Operation Unifier, which brought together trainers from a number of European militaries, began in 2015. A June 2018 meeting between Canadian officals and Asov commanders led to some embarrassment and a “review” of the Operation, but it continued anyway.
2016-on a trip to Kiev in December 2015, Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor (Shokin)
The pressure campaign eventually worked. The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was voted out months later by the Ukrainian Parliament.
The Ukrainian prosecutor had reopened an investigation into Burisma.
Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma prompted concerns among State Department officials at the time that the connection could complicate Vice President Biden’s diplomacy in Ukraine, former officials said.
Biden left Burisma in 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html
2016, EHA president Peter Daszak attended a Rockefeller Foundation forum alongside Metabiota’s chief scientific officer Edward Rubin to discuss The Global Virome Project, which promotes an international database and tracking system “akin to the Human Genome Project.”
2016-President Petro Poroshenko nationalized Kolomoyskyi’s PrivatBank (which was also operated by fellow Jew Gennadiy (Zvi Hirsch) Bogolyubov). Kolomoisky was accused of fraud
A subsequent investigation by Ukraine regulators found a $5.5 billion shortfall in PrivatBank's ledgers from what they called “a large-scale and coordinated fraud” that involved the bank’s major shareholders, Kolomoisky and fellow Ukrainian billionaire Gennadiy Bogolyubov. To keep the bank from collapse, the government tapped into taxpayer funds to plug the hole and to bail it out in 2016.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/world/europe/ukraine-ihor-kolomoisky-russia.html
PrivatBank alleges that Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov oversaw a scheme to fraudulently procure loans from PrivatBank and to launder the loan proceeds through various accounts around the world. According to PrivatBank, the allegedly stolen funds were ultimately invested in U.S.-based assets by Mr. Korf and Mr. Laber.
Mr. Korf and Mr. Laber are lifelong American citizens and leaders in the metallurgical and commercial real estate industries, who have created hundreds of jobs in the Midwestern and Southern United States, including in economically depressed areas in Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia.
They reside in Miami, Florida with their wives and children and are business leaders and highly regarded philanthropists in the Jewish communities in Miami and beyond.
Mr. Korf and Mr. Laber met Mr. Kolomoisky and Mr. Bogolyubov in Ukraine, while on a religious mission in the early 1990s as young Jewish students following the fall of the Soviet Union.
Over the years, they partnered with Mr. Kolomoisky and Mr. Bogolyubov on various investments, first in Ukraine, and later in the United States.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/news-delaware-court-puts-privatbanks-203900095.html
2017-US sent a team of Army officers to meet in the field with Azov commanders in 2017.
2017-Americans got access to research centers of the Ukraine's Ministry of Defense. This was grounded by the Order of the Cabinet of Ministers dated September 20, 2017, No.650-r“About designation of an additional Executive Agent for the implementation of the Agreement between the Ministry of Health of Ukraine and the Department of Defense of the United States of America concerning cooperation in the area of prevention of proliferation of technology, pathogens and expertise that could be used in the development of biological weapons”. Although the agreement was signed in 2005, under the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko. Ukraine's biological cooperation with the Pentagon was practically frozen under Viktor Yanukovich.
Now, when Ukrainian politicians controlled by the U.S. have gained power again, the U.S. Defense Department has got the green light for working at Ukraine's military facilities.
During his visit to Kyiv in November 2017, DTRA international project manager to Ukraine, Kevin Garret, met with the leadership of the Central Sanitary and Epidemiological Department of the Ministry of Defense and highlighted the official aims and tasks of cooperation during a conference.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200324205155/https://cyber-berkut.org/en/
2017-, the United States was one of just two countries (the other being Ukraine) to vote against a UN draft resolution “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism.”
2017 January , Trump lawyer Cohen met with Ukrainian opposition politician Andrey Artemenko and Felix Sater at the Loews Regency in Manhattan to discuss a plan to lift sanctions against Russia.
Felix Sater was Trumps old Bayrock partner and a childhood friend of his lawyer Cohen
The proposed plan would require that Russian forces withdraw from eastern Ukraine and that Ukraine hold a referendum on whether Crimea should be "leased" to Russia for 50 or 100 years. Cohen was given a written proposal in a sealed envelope that he delivered to then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynnin early February.
Who is Felix Sater?
Felix Sater is the son of a reputed Jewish-Russian mobster. Although Trump has denied knowing him, Sater appeared in photos with Trump, and carried a Trump Organization business card with the title “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump.”
Sater reportedly emigrated with his family to the United States in the mid-1970s and settled in “Little Odessa.” During the 1970s and 1980s, the United States expanded its immigration policies, allowing Soviet Jews, with most settling in a southern Brooklyn area known as Brighton Beach (sometimes nicknamed as “Little Odessa”), which is where Russian organized crime began in the US.
Sater had a served time prison for stabbing a man in the face with the stem of a margarita glass and pled guilty in 1998 to one count of racketeering for his role in a $40 million stock fraud scheme involving the Genovese and Bonanno crime families.
Sater’s Bayrock Group was based in Trump Tower. According to a certified US Supreme Court petition, Sater’s FBI handler stated that Sater’s father was a boss for the crime syndicate of Ukrainian Oligarch Simeon Mogilevich
Bayrock and Trump joined forces to pursue deals around the world, from New York, Florida, Arizona and Colorado in the US to Turkey, Poland, Russia and Ukraine. Their best-known collaboration was Trump SoHo, which was featured in Trump’s television show The Apprentice. Jody Kriss, a former Bayrock finance director, has claimed in racketeering lawsuits against his former employer that Bayrock’s backers included “hidden interests in Russia and Kazakhstan.”
Most of the Bayrock-Trump projects either never materialized or were complete failures. SoHo was foreclosed by creditors and resold in 2014 after more than $3 million of customer down payments had to be refunded. Bayrock’s Trump International Hotel & Tower in Fort Lauderdale was foreclosed and resold in 2012, while at least three other Trump-branded properties in the United States, in addition to many other concept projects pursued by Bayrock, from Istanbul and Kiev to Moscow and Warsaw, never happened.
Starting in the mid-late 1990’s Sater also served as a government informant on the mob and on mysterious matters of national security. Sater’s lawyer, Robert S. Wolf, while not addressing Sater’s relationship with Trump, stressed Sater’s work for the government, saying he saved lives, including by providing “significant intelligence with respect to nuclear weapons in a major country openly hostile to the United States.”
Sater worked for the CIA, DIA and the FBI, providing intel on everything from organized crime to North Korea’s drive for nuclear weapons. As reported in Buzzfeed, while he worked in Russia in 1995, Sater was recruited to the DIA for the value of his ability to speak fluent Russian, his business connections, and his access to Russian military officials.
One of Sater’s early operations involved the pursuit in 1998 of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles which the CIA had provided to the Mujahideen.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton authorized Operation Infinite Reach, a bombing strike against al Qaeda in retaliation for the terror attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; Sater supplemented US intelligence by providing the coordinates of al Qaeda camps that the US military ultimately bombed in Khost, Afghanistan.
Sater developed a close bond with an intelligence officer working for the Northern Alliance, the Afghan militia led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. According to a former senior Justice Department official and a former FBI agent with knowledge of Sater’s work, Sater’s source had his own source: Mullah Omar’s personal secretary, who was living inside a cave with bin Laden.
As a result, Sater obtained five of the personal satellite telephone numbers for Osama bin Laden before 9/11.
Sater also provided US intelligence with details about possible assassination threats against former president George W. Bush and secretary of state Colin Powell.
He went undercover in Cyprus and Istanbul to catch Russian and Ukrainian cybercriminals around 2005. Sater still operates as a source for the bureau, according to two current FBI agents.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/anthonycormier/felix-sater-trump-russia-undercover-us-spy
In 2017, Sater agreed to cooperate with investigators into international money laundering schemes.
Now who is‘Andrey Artemenko’, aka Andy Victor Kuchma?
Before the EuroMaidan violent coup in 2014, Artemenko was in the Ukrainian parliament as part of Viktor Yanukovych’s ‘Party of Regions’.
The ‘Party of Regions’ was “pro Russia, pro Kremlin, pro Putin policies” – and according to Wikipedia, was heavily supported by Trump associates Paul Manafort and Rudy Giuliani.
Here’s a direct quote from Wikipedia (that requires further explanation, so we’ll take a closer look below):
“[The] Party of Regions block established by Manafort who, according to the black ledger, was receiving payments from pro Russia, pro Kremlin, pro Putin sources.”
While he was in the Ukrainian parliament, Artemenko apparently started to uncover massive corruption involving former President (and Joe Biden buddy)Petro Petroshenko.
In 2015 Artemenko started:“cooperating with the US investigative authorities in inquiries related to misappropriation of US financial aid to Ukraine by then President Petro Poroshenko.”
He was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship bu Petrodhenko in 2017 and now lives in Washington, DC.
Another quote: “According to The New York Times, he was Putin – Trump back channel.”
He endorsed Zelensky for President in 2019.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrii_Artemenko
Andre Artemenko is one of those ‘missing links’ connecting Trump, Giuliani and Sater to Putin – via Ukraine and the Crimea.
2017-The Trump administration approved a plan to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine, a long-awaited move that deepens America's involvement in the military conflict and may further strain relations with Russia. Moscow responded angrily .
The new arms include American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, U.S. officials said late Friday. Ukraine has long sought to boost its defenses against Russian-backed separatists armed with tanks that have rolled through eastern Ukraine during violence that has killed more than 10,000 since 2014.
Previously, the U.S. has provided Ukraine with support equipment and training, and has let private companies sell some small arms like rifles.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-trump-weapons-ukraine-20171222-story.html
2018-The first sale, which was completed in March 2018, included 210 Javelin missiles and 37 launch units and was intended to "help Ukraine build its long-term defense capacity to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity in order to meet its national defense requirements," according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
2018-Ukraine detained a fishing vessel from Crimea in March. In November, Ukraine sent two gunboats and a tug from the Black Sea port of Odessa to Mariupol in the Sea of Azov. Russia accused Ukraine of illegally entering its territorial waters. Russia said the Ukrainian ships were in its waters illegally because Moscow had temporarily closed an area of water for shipping.
Kiev called Russia's actions a flagrant violation of international law, because the Black Sea is free for shipping, and Crimea belongs to Ukraine.
Ukraine also cited a 2003 Russia-Ukraine treaty on unimpeded access to the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov.
The Ukrainian vessels approached a bridge over the Kerch Strait - the only access to the Sea of Azov. Ukraine said its vessels had been fired on and seized by the Russians. Six Ukrainian crew members were injured. Russia confirmed it had used weapons to force the Ukrainian vessels to stop, saying three Ukrainians were injured
US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, condemned Russian behaviour, after which the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, followed suit. Trump voiced concern but did not blame Moscow
The White House blocked the US state department from issuing a statement condemning Russia for seizing Ukrainian military vessels, according to a state department official
2018- FBI affidavit asserted that Azov “is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States–based white supremacy organizations,” including members of the white supremacist Rise Above Movement, prosecuted for planned assaults on counterprotesters at far-right events, including the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally that Joe Biden later co-opted as a rationale for his presidential campaign.
While it seems the perpetrator of the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre didn’t travel to Ukraine as he claimed, he clearly took inspiration from the far-right movement there, and worea symbol used by Azov members while carrying out the attack.
2018- Congress passed legislation ”forbidding military aid to Azov on the grounds of its white supremacist ideology, but the Trump administration’s authorization of $200 million in offensive weaponry and aid to the Ukrainian military makes it likely new stores of weapons will wind up the extremist regiment’s hands.
When queried by reporters about evidence of American military training of Azov personnel, multiple U.S. army spokespersons admitted there was no mechanism in place to prevent that from happening.
2018-January Azov rolled out its street patrol unit called National Druzhyna to “restore” order in the capital, Kyiv. Instead, the unit carried out pogroms against the Roma community and attacked members of the LGBTQ community.
While the group officially denies any neo-Nazi connections, Azov’s nature has been confirmed by multiple Western outlets: The New York Timescalled the battalion“openly neo-Nazi,” while USA Today, The Daily Beast, The Telegraph, and Haaretz documented group members’ proclivity for swastikas, salutes, and other Nazi symbols, and individual fighters have also acknowledged being neo-Nazis.
2018, Avakov purchased a 26-room villa on the Mediterranean Sea coast of Italy worth more than $900,000.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/07/23/ukra-j23.html
2018-Azov Battalion has become incorporated into Ukraine’s Interior Ministry as a component of the country’s National Guard.
In addition, the group’s founder Andrey Bilitsky, is currently a member of Ukraine’s parliament. Bilitsky once said that “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival.”
Despite the merging of Azov Battalion with the Ukrainian government, the U.S has long continued to support Ukraine’s military with hundreds of millions of dollars in “security, programmatic, and technical assistance,” largely in the name of combatting “Russian aggression.”
When news of the close cooperation caused an outcry in the U.S., the Obama administration shot down congressional efforts to limit arms, training and other assistance to the Azov Battalion. U.S. assistance to the Azov Battalion was only banned earlier this year.
However, Azov Battalion continues to receive arms from U.S. allies such as Israel. As journalist Max Blumenthal has noted in the past, Israel has a “history of working as a kind of proxy for the U.S. to arm forces that are committing human rights abuses, or that are fascistic.”
https://www.mintpressnews.com/fbi-neo-nazi-militia-trained-by-us-military-in-ukraine-now-training-us-white-supremacists/251687/
2018-, Parnas and Fruman began a steep ascent into an inner circle of Trump backers, dining at the White House with Trump and breakfasting in California with his son Donald Trump Jr. Giuliani regularly took the two men to official and unofficial events, including political gatherings, sporting events and the December 2018 funeral of former president George H.W. Bush.
At the same time, Parnas and Fruman began touting their close ties to Giuliani as they pursued their own business interests.
Giuliani was paid $500,000 by company founded by arrested associate
They also invoked Firtash’s name as they sought business for a new liquefied natural gas company that they had founded in 2018, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
At an energy conference in Houston in March, the two made a pitch to Ukrainian state oil and gas giant Naftogaz, approaching a top official at the company, Andrew Favorov, according to a colleague of Favorov.
During a series of meetings, Parnas and Fruman proposed selling gas to the company, said Dale W. Perry, a former Favorov partner whom the Ukrainian briefed shortly after the meetings.
Parnas and Fruman told Favorov that they hoped to see new leadership at Naftogaz soon that would be receptive to their proposal and the ouster of then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, whom they perceived as opposed to their plans. By May, she had been removed from her post on Trump’s orders.
In an interview, Perry said Parnas and Fruman’s grand plan included one other element that Favorov found puzzling at the time: They said Naftogaz should put aside financial disputes with Firtash, a decision that could provide a windfall of more than $1 billion for the tycoon.
Geography explains the importance of Naftogaz and the reasons why Ukraine has been a focal point of U.S. international energy policy. Ukraine sits right between Russia and the European Union and plays a key role moving Russian natural gas to eastern Europe where it is used for electricity, heating and other purposes. In total, the EU receives 40% of its natural gas from Russia (though not all of it comes via Ukraine).
That supply comes with strings. Russia has used the energy source as a political weapon, occasionally shutting off the gas to threaten and intimidate Ukraine and EU countries. The state-owned Russian firm Gazprom has also targeted Naftogaz directly, withholding billions of dollars in payment in defiance of court rulings.
2019-Kolomoyskyi threw his influence Volodymyr Zelenskyy presidential bid in 2019
Zelenskyy’s was the actor and head of Studio Kvartal 95, who played the president in the series Servant of the People and won in real life. Their shows and programs are hits on the channel owned by Igor Kolomoisky
In the series, Zelenskyy’s character was a high-school history teacher in his 30s who won the presidential election after a viral video showed him ranting against government corruption in Ukraine. In retrospect, the show was a masterwork of social engineering and life imitating art.
Elected on a platform of anti-corruption and de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Seems strange Kolomoisky would back a candidate running on such a platform.
Despite his anti-corruption platform The Pandora Papers exposed Zelensky and members of his inner circle.
According to the Pandora Papers, millions from Kolomoisky went to the accounts of Ukrainian companies close to Zelensky and his associates. The money also went where there was warm weather and lower taxes. The year when Kvartal began to cooperate with the oligarch, key people of the company registered several companies on distant islands. The network was assisted by the offshore registrar Fidelity and Ukrainian lawyer Yurii Azarov, whose signature is on all key documents.
At the heart of the network is the previously unknown company Maltex Multicapital. It is allegedly divided between the companies of Volodymyr Zelensky, brothers Serhii and Borys Shefirs and Andrii Yakovlev. The trust declaration was signed by the current head of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov. His company was the nominal owner of Maltex. The names of the real owners were safely hidden in the vault.
If we take a closer look at how the Kvartal business is structured, we will see that the products are created and shown mainly in Ukraine. At the same time, transactions are made through foreign companies. Accordingly, taxes on these transactions do not go to the Ukrainian budget.
A little later, the co-owner of Kvartal 95, Serhii Shafir, stated that Zelensky had left the business.
On March 13, 2019, amid the presidential race, a lawyer working for the firms of Zelensky and his partners, Yurii Azarov, signed the document. It is a transfer of shares to Maltex, which is equally divided between the offshore leaders of Kvartal 95.
The firm of Serhii Shafir, the future chief aide to the president, received a quarter of Maltex's ownership free of charge from Zelensky's firm in Belize. The day after the inauguration, Zelensky appointed Serhii Shafir as chief aide to the president of Ukraine.
On April 25, 2019, a few weeks after the transfer of Zelenskyy's share to Serhii Shafir, the same lawyer Yurii Azarov signed another document stating that Maltex intends to pay dividends to Zelensky's offshore company. Surprisingly, his offshore company no longer owned a stake in this firm.
Cases involving high-ranking civil servants are being investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. NABU detectives are also investigating crimes related to money laundering.
2019 In spring , Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani embarked on a mission to press Zelensky to assist Trump by opening politically charged investigations into former vice president Joe Biden and his son, Giuliani’s associates met with Kolomoisky to request that Giuliani get a sit-down with the rising Ukrainian politician.
At one point, Giuliani complained that Zelensky was being advised by “Kolomoisky’s representatives and enemies of President Trump.”
A lawyer for Kolomoisky told The Post that during the Tel Aviv meeting, Parnas and Fruman claimed that they could get top U.S. officials, including Vice President Pence and then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry, to travel to Ukraine around the time of Zelensky’s May 2019 inauguration — if Kolomoisky paid them several hundred thousand dollars.
Kolomoisky did not pay the money, instead throwing the two men out of his office, his lawyer has said.
The attorney, Bruce Marks, told The Post that Kolomoisky had predicted to friends at the time: “This is going to end up in a bad scandal.”
Parnas allegedly paid Giuliani $500k to investigate Joe Biden’s dealings in the Ukraine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211016200548/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-whistleblower-giuliani-excl-idUSKBN1WU07Z
2019-In September, one month before Lev Parnas was indicted on campaign finance charges, his wife received wire transfers from a bank account in Russia.
The sum was $1 million, and the source was a lawyer for Dmytro Firtash, according to a court filing by U.S. prosecutors.
Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch who made a fortune in the natural gas trade, is perhaps the most enigmatic figure in the scandal that has played a key role in President Donald Trump's impeachment.
A billionaire with alleged ties to the Russian mob kingpin Semion Mogilevich , is facing bribery-related charges in the U.S. and fighting extradition from Vienna. He once attempted to buy and redevelop the famous Drake Hotel in New York with the now-incarcerated Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's former campaign chairman.
And he's seen by Ukrainian anti-corruption activists and Western governments as a corrupt instrument of Russia.
Exactly why the money was sent to the wife of Parnas — the former Trump donor and Rudy Giuliani associate who has since turned on the president — is unclear. But Firtash provided key documents that Giuliani used to further his discredited claim that former Vice President Joe Biden engaged in wrongdoing in Ukraine.
Firtash, who federal prosecutors have alleged has ties to Russian organized crime, has remained a powerful figure in Ukraine despite living in exile in Austria. He denies ties to organized crime and any wrongdoing in the Chicago case.
In a 2017 court filing, U.S. federal prosecutors alleged that Firtash had ties to the “upper echelons” of Russian organized crime. The gas tycoon has been linked in a U.S. diplomatic cable to Semion Mogilevich, a Ukrainian indicted in Pennsylvania in 2003 on more than 40 counts of racketeering, fraud and money laundering and now living in Moscow.
The FBI has alleged that Mogilevich, nicknamed the “boss of bosses,” is also involved with “weapons trafficking, contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking, and prostitution on an international scale.”
In 2010, WikiLeaks published an internal U.S. diplomatic cable from years earlier in which then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. wrote that Firtash had “acknowledged ties” to Mogilevich in a private meeting. Taylor wrote that Firtash had denied breaking the law but said “he needed Mogilevich’s approval to get into business in the first place.”
2019- RAND brief “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”
“Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in U.S. military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages.”
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html
2019- After Event 201 in late 2019 they did a War Game simulating a Russia Invasion of Ukraine with NATO getting sucked in. 1 billion dead.
https://www.eutimes.net/2022/03/nato-nuclear-war-simulation-says-1-billion-would-die-total-irradiation-of-the-planet-forever/
2019-The day after the signature of NATO’s membership protocol with North Macedonia as its 30th member, Ukraine did something without precedent: it included in its Constitution the engagement to enter officially into NATO and the European Union at the same time.
On 7 February, on a proposition by President Petro Poroshenko – the oligarch who made himself rich by plundering public properties, and who is once again a candidate for the presidency – the Kiev parliament, approved these amendments to the Constitution.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-nato-constitution/5668435
2019-October, 40 members of the US Congress led by Representative Max Rose signed a letter unsuccessfully calling for the US State Department to designate Azov as a “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO).
2019 parliamentary elections the people overwhelmingly voted for Servant of the People (SN) and the Opposition Platform (OP) parties.
SN are a centrist party in Ukrainian politics and, on the surface, appear to be similar to other European neoliberal, progressive parties.
The pro-Russian OP formed the official opposition in the Verkhovna Rada. The far-right was practically wiped out in the election. Svoboda retained just one seat.
https://in-this-together.com/ukraine-war-part-2/
2019-Ukrainians were sending some of the best Special Forces troops for training at the elite Israeli Military Industries Academy for Advanced Security and Anti-Terror Training
https://sofrep.com/specialoperations/ukrainian-special-forces-getting-western-help-training/
2020 June 12-the North Atlantic Council recognised Ukraine as an Enhanced Opportunities Partner. This status is part of NATO’s Partnership Interoperability Initiative, which aims to maintain and deepen cooperation between Allies and partners that have made significant contributions to NATO-led operations and missions
As a NATO partner, Ukraine has provided troops to Allied operations, including in Afghanistan and Kosovo, as well as to the NATO Response Force and NATO exercises. Allies highly value these significant contributions, which demonstrate Ukraine’s commitment to Euro-Atlantic security.
As an Enhanced Opportunities Partner, Ukraine will benefit from tailor-made opportunities to help sustain such contributions. This includes enhanced access to interoperability programmes and exercises, and more sharing of information, including lessons learned.
“This decision recognises Ukraine’s strong contributions to NATO missions, and demonstrates the Alliance’s continued commitment to its partnerships despite the COVID-19 pandemic,” said NATO Spokesperson Oana Lungescu.
Ukraine is now one of six Enhanced Opportunities Partners, alongside Australia, Finland, Georgia, Jordan and Sweden. Each of the partners has a tailor-made relationship with NATO, based on areas of mutual interest.
https://archive.ph/aPv1w
2021-Novemeber Dymitro Yarosh announced that he had accepted a position as advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.This move epitomised Ukraine’s real Nazi problem.
Senior positions within the Ukrainian political establishment are held by committed Nazis. They have, to a large extent, captured pivotal government roles despite having virtually no electoral mandate.
Zelenskyy’s SA government cannot function without their approval.
Despite their relatively small numbers they are also the best trained, best equipped and most highly motivated ground troops in the Ukrainian armed forces. Its military could not operate without them either.
They are not supporters of the Kyiv government. They are Ukrainian ultranationalists, loyal to private backers, whose dream is an ethnically pure Ukraine.
In short, they have the Ukrainian state over a barrel. What’s worse, as evidenced by the comments of Karas and others, they have global ambitions and, as we shall see, have already been assisted to form a global network.
2021-Undersecretary of State Nuland resurrected Dmitro Yarosh and imposed him on President Zelinsky, a television actor protected by Ihor Kolomoysky. On November 2, 2021, he appointed him special advisor to the head of the army, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
The latter, a true democrat, rebelled at first and finally accepted. When questioned by the press about this astonishing duo, he refused to answer and mentioned a question of national security.
Yarosh gave his full support to the “white führer”, Colonel Andrey Biletsky, and his Azov Battalion. This copy of the SS Das Reich division has been staffed since the summer of 2021 by American mercenaries formerly from Blackwater
Right Sector has close connections with Trident (Tryzub) and Patriot of Ukraine. All three groups are right-wing nationalist, neo-Nazi, paramilitary movements as well as political parties. Yarosh was the leader of Tryzub starting in 2005. Tryzub led to the formation of the Right Sector, to which Yarosh was also leader of between 2013-2015 and continues to have a great deal of influence on all these groupings.
2021 April , Newsweek Reported on “Vladimir Putin’s Adviser Says U.S. Is Developing Biological Weapons Near Russia”
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-china-nikolai-patrushev-vladimir-putin-biological-weapons-1581896
The U.S. Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program collaborates with partner countries to counter the threat of outbreaks (deliberate, accidental, or natural) of the world’s most dangerous infectious diseases. The program accomplishes its bio-threat reduction mission through development of a bio-risk management culture; international research partnerships; and partner capacity for enhanced bio-security, bio-safety, and bio-surveillance measures.
The Biological Threat Reduction Program’s priorities in Ukraine are to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats.”
Interestingly, the Biological Threat Reduction Program’s (BTRP) has a direct connection the EcoHealth Alliance. That’s the same EcoHealth Alliance connected to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
https://www.israelunwired.com/faucis-friends-bioweapons-ukraine/
March 2021, the Biden administration barred Kolomoisky and members of his family from traveling to the United States because of “involvement in significant acts of corruption.”
It is highly unlikely Kolomoisky would have returned to the United States considering the Justice Department had already begun seizing his properties the year before and he had reportedly been traveling between Switzerland, Israel, and Ukraine in fear of being extradited to the United States.
2021, thanks to Joe Biden, the USAID once again sought the help of EcoHealth Alliance and Metabiota for a taxpayer-funded investigation into what may cause the next pandemic”
October 2021 it was revealed via the Pandora Papers that Zelenskyy, who constantly denied that he was a “puppet” of the oligarch, and his associates had received $40 million into offshore accounts from funds linked to Kolomoyskyi.
December 2021, Zelensky would be seen delivering a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascistic Right Sector in a ceremony in Ukraine’s parliament.
2021 June,-Ukraine, the United States and other allies held a naval exercise, Sea Breeze, in the Black Sea and southern Ukraine, despite Russian calls for the drills to be cancelled.
Israels IDF military took part in the Sea Breeze-2021 exercises
2021 June-A military ship and fighter jet fired warning shots at a British Royal Navy destroyer after it entered Russian waters in the Black Sea, Russia’s defense ministry said in a statement Wednesday.
The HMS Defender was “warned in advance that weapons would be used” if it crossed Russia’s border, the statement said. “It disregarded the warning,” it added.
A border patrol ship “fired warning shots,” shortly after midday local time (7 a.m. ET), the statement said, adding that an Su-24M fighter jet “performed a warning bombing,” on the British ship’s course, dropping four high explosive fragmentation bombs.
The incident took place in the northwestern Black Sea.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-says-it-fired-warning-shots-british-warship-black-sea-n1272095
July, 2021-Ukraine, the United States, Poland and Lithuania held another drill involving more than 1,200 troops
July 2021-An undisclosed number of US forces are present in Ukraine as part of a training mission and routine special operations forces exercises, Defense Department spokesperson Anton Semelroth said on Tuesday.
“The Florida National Guard’s 53rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, known as Task Force Gator, took over the [Ukraine training] mission when it rotated with the Washington National Guard’s 81st Stryker Brigade Combat Team,” Semelroth said on Tuesday. “In addition, Special Operations Command Europe plays a large role in the development of Ukrainian Special Operations Forces… Due to operational security concerns, we cannot disclose the specific number of personnel.”
The training mission, known as the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine (JMTG-U), supports the long-term US policy of supporting the professional development and defensive capacity of Ukrainian forces, Semelroth said.
https://sputniknews.com/20211207/pentagon-confirms-presence-of-us-forces-in-ukraine-declines-to-disclose-number-1091333875.html
September, 2021 joint Ukrainian/NATO military exercises
The U.S. military said in a statement the drill involved a brigade combat team of the Washington National Guard, deployed in Ukraine since April as part of a multi-national training force. Troops from 12 countries in total would be involved, "to enhance interoperability among allied and partner nations" and demonstrate readiness.
The exercise comes on the heels of huge war games staged by Moscow near NATO and EU borders of Russia and Belarus in recent weeks, which Russia says involved 200,000 troops. Kyiv and NATO also accuse Russia of having deployed extra troops this year near Ukraine's frontiers.
20 Russian warships began large-scale live fire exercises in the Black Sea.
2021 -BRUSSELS, Oct 21 (Reuters) - NATO defence ministers agreed to a new master plan on Thursday to defend against any potential Russian attack on multiple fronts, reaffirming the alliance's core goal of deterring Moscow despite a growing focus on China.
The confidential strategy aims to prepare for any simultaneous attack in the Baltic and Black Sea regions that could include nuclear weapons, hacking of computer networks and assaults from space.
"We continue to strengthen our alliance with better and modernised plans," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said after the meeting, which also agreed a $1 billion fund to provide seed financing to develop new digital technologies.
....diplomats say the "Concept for Deterrence and Defence in the Euro-Atlantic Area" - and its strategic implementation plan - is needed as Russia develops advanced weapon systems and deploys troops and equipment closer to the allies' borders.
In May, Russia amassed some 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine, the highest number since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014, Western officials say. In September, Russia used new combat robots in large military drills with its ex-Soviet ally Belarus that have alarmed Baltic allies.
Russia is upgrading or replacing Soviet military space systems to potentially attack satellites in orbit, developing artificial intelligence-based technologies to disrupt allied command systems, and also developing "super weapons".
Unveiled in 2018, they include nuclear-capable hypersonic cruise missiles that could evade early-warning systems.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/nato-agree-master-plan-deter-growing-russian-threat-diplomats-say-2021-10-21/
2021-On 15 July, by a majority of 291 votes, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada dismissed Interior Minister Arsen Avakov from his post, acceding to a motion he had submitted two days earlier. His successor will be Denys Monastyrsky, chairman of the parliamentary committee on law enforcement, which deals with issues of the reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. His candidacy was put forward by President Volodymyr Zelensky who was supported in this by his parliamentary grouping. Avakov has served as head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs continuously since 2014
Denys Monastyrskyi came to politics from the Institute of the Future, which was co-founded by Avakov's deputy and one of his closest associates, Anton Herashchenko. However, Monastyrskyi absolutely denies any proximity to the Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Although there are certain doubts about this, considering that it was Monastyrskyi who gave a positive review on the notorious dissertation of People's Deputy Illia Kyva, another Arsen Avakov's "chick."
"We all understand that his successor isn't the most distant person from him. To a certain extent, Avakov will retain his influence. It's difficult to imagine how he could leave more gracefully," political expert Maksym Stepanenko believes.
2021-Nov. 10, - the U.S. and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership, which asserted America’s support for Kyiv’s right to pursue membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization."
https://www.state.gov/u-s-ukraine-charter-on-strategic-partnership/
December 17,2021
Russia on Friday published draft security pacts demanding NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet countries and to roll back its military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe— bold demands that the United States and its allies already have rejected.
The documents, which were submitted to the U.S and its allies , also call for a ban on sending U.S. and Russian warships and aircraft to areas from where they can strike each other’s territory and demand a rollback on alliance drills near Russia.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-ukraine-putin-nato-invasion-demands-
2021-The naval bases in Ochakov and Berdyansk are planned as modern infrastructure facilities capable of receiving ships of all types, equipped according to NATO standards and built with the money of the alliance countries,’ the Ukrainian press openly reported about them a year ago. ‘In three years we will be able to strike at Russian ships in the Black Sea with our mosquito fleet. And if we combine with Georgia and Turkey, the Russian Federation will be blocked,’ Ukrainian military experts have boasted.
http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO9Mar2022.php
December 20, 2021, Petro Poroshenko was charged with high treason in the case of the supply of coal from the part of Donbass not controlled by Kiev in 2014-2015.
If Poroshenko actually goes on trial, then FOR SURE more of his links with US President Joe Biden will start to be made public
January 2022-Dilyana Gaytandzhieva obtained documents detailing “US Pentagon biological experiments with a potentially lethal outcome on 4,400 soldiers in Ukraine and 1,000 soldiers in Georgia. According to the leaked documents, all volunteer deaths should be reported within 24 h (in Ukraine) and 48 h (in Georgia).” She details the human experiments, which include testing for antibodies against some 14 pathogens including Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Borrelia species (Lyme disease) and others.
According to the documents the labs in Ukraine and Georgia are part of a Pentagon “$2.5 billion Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Biological engagement program which includes research on bio agents, deadly viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”
http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO9Mar2022.php
January, 2022 unprecedented airlift of hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons and ammunition began arriving in Ukraine
January , 2022-The CIA’s Ground Branch paramilitaries also began traveling to the front line in the east of the country to advise troops there from 2015, a handful of ex-officials said. One source familiar with the training scheme accused the US of “training an insurgency,” and that it has taught Ukrainian fighters how “to kill Russians.”
In the context of recent claims that Moscow could order an incursion of its neighbor, the former senior intelligence official hinted that the Ukrainians who participated in the course could play a key role. “We’ve been training these guys now for eight years. They’re really good fighters. That’s where the agency’s program could have a serious impact.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/cia-trained-ukrainian-paramilitaries-may-take-central-role-if-russia-invades/ar-AASKKvF
2022-January-FEARS of a US invasion of Ukraine’s breakaway Donbass region have been raised amid allegations that the controversial Blackwater private security company — since renamed Academi — is training mercenaries for the task.
Deputy chief-of-staff of the Donetsk People’s Republic militia Eduard Basurin said US instructors had been spotted in a far-right training camp in the Sumy region of north-eastern Ukraine over the weekend.
“The Sumy branch of the National Corps radical organisation has embarked on training its mercenaries under the supervision of nationalists who have combat experience in the 2014 Donbass punitive operation.
“We also have information on US instructors of private military companies taking part in the training process, such as Forward Observations Group and Academi,” he said.
The National Corps party was formerly known as the Patriots of Ukraine. Its core base of support comes from the neonazi Azov battalion, which has since been integrated into the Ukrainian army.
Kiev has also mobilised a number of brigades to the contact line separating Ukraine from Donetsk — the eastern region declared independence in 2014 following the US and EU-backed fascist-led Maidan coup — including the 80th Airborne Assault Brigade and the 10th Mountain Assault Brigade, according to Mr Basurin.
“The 80th brigade finalised refresher training at the Starichi training centre of the Lvov region, which functions under the guise of an international peacekeeping and security centre.
“British instructors of Operation Orbital [Britain’s deployment in Ukraine] were responsible for training this brigade,” he said.
The military leader said there is a high possibility these units would be used as part of assault teams targeting major cities in the Donbass region as tensions continue to escalate.
Mr Basurin said preparations are under way for an invasion under US supervision, with a date for the offensive yet to be approved.
Blackwater was rebranded Academi in 2011 after it was acquired by a group of private investors. In 2014 it merged with rival security company Triple Canopy to form Constellis Group.
Constellis was bought for $1 billion (about £750 million) by investment company Apollo Group in 2016.
In September 2020 Apollo Group entered a $5.5 billion real-estate investment partnership with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), one of the world’s largest oil companies and a major exporter of liquefied natural gas.
In December 2021 Adnoc was invited to enter a joint venture to create an oil and gas terminal in the Ukrainian port of Odessa for transportation to western countries.
The announcement came a month after chief executive of the Ukrainian state energy company Naftogaz Yuriy Vitrenko told an Abu Dhabi energy conference that he hoped the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline into Europe, which bypasses Ukraine, would not be approved.
He said that Ukraine stood to lose $2 billion per year — about 1.5 per cent of its GDP — if the Russian pipeline was operational, claiming that Nord Stream 2 “is actually putting the whole continent and global security at risk.”
January 26 article in the Moscow-based journal New Eastern Outlook, for example, asks whether the United States is going to start a biological war in Europe. It cites a former Ukranian official who is very worried about US biolabs in Ukraine.
https://thebulletin.org/2022/02/russian-media-spreading-disinformation-about-us-bioweapons-as-troops-mass-near-ukraine/
February 4, After Putin met with Xi in Beijing for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, Russia and China released a joint statement saying, “The sides emphasize that domestic and foreign bioweapons activities by the United States and its allies raise serious concerns and questions for the international community regarding their compliance with [the international ban on biological weapons].”
http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO9Mar2022.php
February 16, 2022
In spring 2021 Zelensky announced that the Ukraine would retake Crimea by force. Russia then held large military maneuvers and Zelensky backed down. By November 2021 the Ukraine again made noise and said it would be retaking Donbas by force. Russia again held military maneuvers as a show of force but this time the situation deteriorated further.
Starting February 16 the OSCE observers around Donbas noted in their daily reports a strong increase in ceasefire violation and explosions.
Most of the violations came from the Ukrainian site and the explosions of the fired shells and missile happened on Donbas held grounds
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/03/zelensky-and-the-fascists-he-will-hang-on-some-tree-on-khreshchatyk.html#more
Feb 19,2022--Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to suggest late last week that his country could pursue nuclear weapons as a way to defend itself from Russian aggression
When the Cold War ended, Ukraine took possession of approximately 5,000 nuclear weapons from the collapsed Soviet Union
Zelensky said at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday:
“I want to believe that the North Atlantic Treaty and Article 5 will be more effective than the Budapest Memorandum.
Ukraine has received security guarantees for abandoning the world’s third nuclear capability. We don’t have that weapon. We also have no security. We also do not have part of the territory of our state that is larger in area than Switzerland, the Netherlands or Belgium. And most importantly – we don’t have millions of our citizens. We don’t have all this.
Therefore, we have something. The right to demand a shift from a policy of appeasement to ensuring security and peace guarantees.
Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three times without success. Today Ukraine will do it for the fourth time. I, as President, will do this for the first time. But both Ukraine and I are doing this for the last time.
I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.
Putin responded to the suggestion that Ukraine could pursue nuclear weapons by saying that “this is not just bragging.”
“Ukraine has the nuclear technologies created back in the Soviet times and delivery vehicles for such weapons, including aircraft, as well as the Soviet-designed Tochka-U precision tactical missiles with a range of over 100 kilometers. But they can do more; it is only a matter of time. They have had the groundwork for this since the Soviet era,” Putin said. “In other words, acquiring tactical nuclear weapons will be much easier for Ukraine than for some other states I am not going to mention here, which are conducting such research, especially if Kiev receives foreign technological support. We cannot rule this out either.”
“If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction, the situation in the world and in Europe will drastically change, especially for us, for Russia,” Putin continued.
“We cannot but react to this real danger, all the more so since, let me repeat, Ukraine’s Western patrons may help it acquire these weapons to create yet another threat to our country”
https://clarion.causeaction.com/2022/02/23/president-zelensky-suggests-ukraine-may-pursue-nuclear-weapons-to-counter-russia-putin-responds/
https://kyivindependent.com/national/zelenskys-full-speech-at-munich-security-conference/
February 19, 2022, US Vice President Kamala Harris accused Russia of spreading lies and disinformation before threatening "unprecedented sanctions" if they "further" invade Ukraine, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz berated Putin and the Russiansfor their aggressive actions and dismissed claims of genocide against the Russian-speaking people of the Donbas as "ridiculous, to put it bluntly"
President Joe Biden reiterated that the U.S. will not be sending its forces into Ukraine to fight Russia, choosing instead to take aim at Moscow's messaging, and provide the Ukrainian people with military and diplomatic support.
Feb 21, 2022-Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that Moscow will recognize the two self-declared breakaway Donbass republics in Ukraine’s east as sovereign nations, as a military standoff across the contact line continues to escalate.
Speaking as part of a televised address to the nation on Monday evening, Putin signed the decree, saying that “I deem it necessary to make a decision that should have been made a long time ago to immediately recognize the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) People’s Republics.” Lawmakers will now be asked to consider statements of friendship and support with the two regions.
He explicitly referenced Zelenskyy’s Munich nuclear weapons pledge: “This is not empty bravado,” Putin stressed in his speech.
March 6 Moscow state news agency, RAI Novosti, quoted a senior Russian SVR foreign intelligence source with details on a secret Ukraine project, reportedly with vital covert Western support, to build a Ukrainian nuclear missile capability and a Ukrainian atom bomb in brazen violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
According to the report, Ukrainian nuclear scientists were disguising the developments by locating them near the high-radiation levels of Chernobyl nuclear reactor site, an explanation for the swift Russian moves to secure Chernobyl. “It was there, judging by the available information, that work was underway both on the manufacture of a “dirty” bomb and on the separation of plutonium,” RIA Novosti quotes the source.
The primary bomb research facility was located at the National Scientific Center, “Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology.” As of this writing reports of fierce fighting underway between Russian forces and neo-nazi Ukrainian Azov fighters who reportedly are planning to blow up the research reactor site and blame iton Russia. The battle for control of the large Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is also apparently part of the attempt to conceal the illegal Ukraine bomb project.
http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO9Mar2022.php
March 2022-the US Pentagon had no less than eight, perhaps as many as 30 top-secret bioweapons research labs across Ukraine testing DNA of some 4,000 military volunteers. Once Russian soldiers moved to secure the evidence, the US Embassy in Kiev deleted previous mention of the sites from its website, and Ukrainians reportedly moved to destroy the lab evidence. Ukrainian labs in Kharkiv and elsewhere were operating in cooperation with the United States. Stocks of such weapons were being secretly stored in direct violation of international conventions.
http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO9Mar2022.php
March 6, in a statement to the official RAI Novosti in Moscow, Major General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, stated they had received documents, “from employees of Ukrainian biological laboratories confirming that components of biological weapons were being developed in Ukraine, in close proximity to Russian territory.” He noted, “In the course of a special military operation, the facts of an emergency cleansing by the Kiev regime of traces of a military biological program being implemented in Ukraine, funded by the US Department of Defense, were uncovered.”
http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO9Mar2022.php