___
Removed by mod
Wow! She asks some leading questions! She must have learned from Tucker Carlson. Another note about this video. This is six months old at this point. Not exactly news, but a good point in history to examine.
A bit of background on corruption in Ukraine. Ukraine, like many other former soviet republics inherited many things from the Soviet Union, one of them being rampant corruption. It’s hard to overstate how much corruption there was in the USSR. It could be described as a way of life. This was from The DDR in East Germany to Vladivostok. One can find the turnstiles around soviet factories where they would check for stolen parts that people would sell or melt down again. To give an idea about how it worked, any paperwork could be held up for a fee, speeding tickets, work permits, licenses, there was a government office for it? It could be bribed. Many former SSRs still have this mindset to a degree. Poland has issues with corruption and are constantly battling it. Government offices would arbitrate goods and pocket the profit. Big business opportunity to enrich your family? Pay some money to the head of the program to make sure it comes to your city. That’s one of the reasons why I always take a pinch of salt when it comes to lobbying in the USA. There was still plenty of profit to the lower parts of society. Anecdotally, a building superintendent was angry at his tenants, so he threatened them to make them live only on their salaries and expose their corruption
Vlodimyr Zelensky ran on a platform against corruption (Somewhat similar to the platform they ran in “Servant of the people”) He’s tried passing anti-corruption legislation, but much of it was struck down by the boy’s club they call a court system. One can only wonder if corruption will remain so at large in Ukraine, or if it will become taboo. It might take a generation or two, since after all it’s hard to undo an institution like that. Zelensky probably won’t be the one to do that though.
As for western aid to Ukraine being pilfered? Doubtless that there’s some war profiteering going on. There are some institutions that have been unharmed by the judicial system to go and fire some of the old guard. These aren’t like Stalin’s purges, there’s a lot less blood and NKVD involved, but there’s progress. It’s starting to be taboo to cheat the war effort as to cheat the war effort is to assist the Russians. The rebuilding aid is conditional on judicial reforms and higher transparency of government officials assets.
It’s a challenging situation, (Sill I don’t like the Tucker Carlson-esque newscaster)
I don’t know. There seems to be just as much corruption in the west and capitalist countries. The “corruption” bogeyman that is held up by western media as “look at all their corruption” seems laughable. How about the US’s revolving door between government and private corporations. The CEOs becoming the regulators.
What the region needs is peace. not war.
The scale of corruption in the West is nowhere near what it is there. Nobody is going to hold up applications because someone else paid for it. I understand that there’s a whole bunch of corporate bullshit going on, but the FTC actually has teeth in the US
As for the peace not war part, Ukraine will never have true peace until they have their territory made whole again. It will be another frozen conflict like what is in Georgia or Armenia. Russia will always be able to start the conflict again under their own terms with a reconstituted army. Russia is building an empire and it wants Ukraine to be a vassal state. There’s a reason why the Nordic countries all joined NATO. They don’t want to be the next frozen conflict.
the US is doing its best to escalate tensions in the region, Eg. not supporting the Minsk accords. I can’t get behind the war because I don’t see anything but war for profit and only cold war mentality. you seem to be knowledgeable yet even you don’t want peace you want the war and like what the US is doing, so i don’t really get that. i’m of a generation that wants diplomacy, not bombs.
So, you want Ukraine to capitulate and to reward Russia’s imperialist warmongering.
That’s not a generational thing, that’s a “uncritically accepting Russian propaganda” thing.
This is the fact: There are Russian troops in internationally recognized Ukraine right now. If they leave, then peace is restored to Ukraine. The war continues though.
Zelensky was willing to negotiate. Ask Wagner boss Yevgeny Prighozhin. He said that Ukrainian forces were Nazis who were preparing to attack Russia along with NATO — were lies.
“The Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO bloc,” Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel. The truth, he said, was that “there was nothing extraordinary happening” on February 24, 2022, the day Russian invaded. Instead of launching a war, Prigozhin added, Russia should have negotiated with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy. “He was ready for agreements. All that needed to be done was to get off Mount Olympus and negotiate with him.”
This was said in July right before Wagner went on a thunder run towards Moscow
A little later, he tells the reason why Russia keeps the war going
“What was the war for?” Prigozhin asked. “The war was needed for Shoigu to receive a hero star. … The oligarchic clan that rules Russia needed the war,” he said. “The mentally ill scumbags decided: ‘It’s OK, we’ll throw in a few thousand more Russian men as cannon fodder. They’ll die under artillery fire, but we’ll get what we want.’”
