By: James F. Davis
My mother was Ukrainian as were my first words. I grew up with immigrant Ukrainian aunts and uncles and have met Ukrainians who came to the United States once the USSR disintegrated in 1991 and they were allowed to leave the country. Due to my interest in my heritage and experiences in international affairs, I suspect I have more knowledge of Ukraine than most Americans.
Have you seen anyone in the media explain why it is a very corrupt country? It was explained to me by the first Ukrainian I met after Ukraine became independent. I asked her what she wanted during her stay in the United States. She replied, “A Bible.”
“Why?”
“Because it was forbidden in socialist/communist Ukraine — and we knew that anything forbidden by the government must be good since they lie about everything.”
She further explained, “My husband has an engineering degree. He packs meat in a meat packing plant.”
Astonished, I asked “Why, given his education?”
“Because everyone in the plant leaves work every day with a slab of meat in their pockets.”
Naively, I remarked, “You have meat every night for dinner?”
She rolled her eyes and said, “No, but we can barter the meat for whatever we need. You see in a socialist country, the system requires you break the law to survive.”
The second key thing that seemingly is never mentioned in the media concerning Ukraine is that since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the same Ukrainian communists continued to run the country. The communist bureaucracy, their “Deep State” continues to control the media, the elections apparatus, much of the courts and to whom the most viable government owned industries were sold. Therefore the corruption and looting of the country’s resources continued by the same leadership. They just no longer called themselves communists.
So, before one can understand why the Democrats were in such a hurry to impeach President Trump, even before the contents of his conversation with Ukraine’s newly elected president were known, one needs to know a little about Ukraine and its newly elected President Zelensky. He is a comedic actor and had never been involved in politics. He campaigned on a platform to clean up the political bureaucratic swamp in Ukraine. He appears to be the first real non-communist president there in almost 100 years.
Zelensky has stated that he is for Ukraine joining NATO and the European Union. He has reintroduced criminal liability legislation for past government officials illegal enrichment. He, like President Trump, wants to find out where at least $1 billion in loans from the Obama/Biden administration went after it was sent to the chairman of Burisma’s ‘Private Bank.’
My next installment will explain why so many on both sides of the Atlantic and many Democrats and Republicans do not want any investigations of where the $3 billion in non-military aid given Ukraine by the Obama administration went or what the Ukrainian government interference was in the 2016 presidential campaign.