Can Ukraine avoid its path into oblivion?

• Zelensky is slowly reaching his political expiration date

By Arnaud Develay | 21st Century Wire

The US Congress just passed the 95 billion Dollar aid package, including 61 Billion Dollars to Ukraine which President Biden promptly signed into law. This marked the end of a six-month-long standoff opposing the Establishment against a handful of MAGA Republicans bent on making the adoption of the supplemental contingent on solving the problem at the southern border.

Speaker Mike Johnson had been expected to hold the line and prevent the continued pilfering of US taxpayer’s monies by the Kyiv Regime, but he eventually succumbed to intense pressure while declaring that he “wanted to be on the right side of history.”

This complete reversal came on the heels of the renewal by the House of a very controversial bill aiming at turning the FISA Act’s infamous Section 702 into a tool “which allows the U.S. to capture texts, cellphone calls, emails and other electronic communications of foreigners in foreign countries, though sometimes Americans’ data get scooped up when they converse with foreign targets.”

Without any monies being allocated to the border, MAGA Republicans promptly expressed dismay at Johnson’s betrayal.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Green called for Johnson to be vacated deeming the Republican Speaker as nothing more than “a lame duck.”

As a result of her staunch opposition to the continued financing of the Zelensky regime, Taylor-Green was promptly criticized, earning the nickname “Moscow Marjorie.”

Meanwhile, the House Impeachment Inquiry tasked with tying Joe Biden to corruption in Ukraine and elsewhere is seemingly going nowhere.

With the Uniparty reinvigorated by the defeat of the rebel wing of the GOP, it appears increasingly likely that the incumbent president won’t even be impeached, let alone convicted at a trial in the US Senate.

It almost seems as if Jim Comer and colleagues are content with going through the motions even though they could easily gain access to crucial evidence needed to implicate Biden directly in the context of activities carried out through Burisma, the mining and gas company at the centre of the conclusions recently made public by the Russian Investigative Committee following the March 22 terrorist attacks at the Crocus City Center.

With so much evidence of Biden-Ukraine corruption on the table, how is it that no moves have been made by federal law enforcement and the Department of Justice to pursue a case?

The Good Samaritan Curse

In an interview granted last January to the noted attorney and journalist Simona Mangiante, former Ukrainian MP Andrei Derkach revealed that the leaking of the infamous recordings of conversations between then vice president Biden and Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko had been made public by none other than Volodymir Zelensky’s office.

Weeks before the Crocus City Hall terror attacks followed by the subsequent findings of the Russian investigative committee, Derkach had unequivocally tied the financing of terrorist operations by Ukraine to a slush fund created by Burisma. These allegations could in turn potentially make erstwhile board members Hunter Biden, former Polish president Aleksandr Kwasnieski and veteran CIA counter-terrorism Chief Cofer Black, criminally liable.

Publishing on his Telegram channel, Derkach described how in the wake of last year’s failed counter-offensive the Kyiv regime had opted to engage in a policy of state terror: a “strategy” he alleges is to this day being carefully managed by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan who visited Kyiv “a few days before Crocus.”

Derkach added that in the context of such a visit, the concept of “controlled nuclear insecurity” was also discussed and it should be noted that two weeks later, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant located in Zaporizhzhia, and under the control of the Russian Federation, was subjected to the “worst attack since November 2022.” By all measures, this is a frightening escalation on the part of Kyiv and should give pause to those (particularly in Washington and London) who have blindly supported the expansion of the ‘asymmetric warfare’ campaign against numerous Russian targets.

This prompted IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to express his concerns to the IAEA Board of Directors that “the most recent attacks … have shifted us into an acutely consequential juncture in this war.”

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To complete the picture, it was revealed that while the focus was on the adoption of the aid package, the Biden administration shipped ATACMS to Kyiv which promptly led to two of these being used against targets in Crimea and Berdiansk.

In addition, this also raises the spectre of a dirty bomb scenario and all of the nuclear blackmail implications that come with it.

Will sober US officials act to avoid the unthinkable?

Mexican Standoff

With the Ukraine Project looking increasingly compromised, tensions are rising. This is particularly true in Kyiv where rumors of an impending coup against Zelensky have been circulating for years.

The last twelve months have been particularly rife with rumours of grumbling in the ranks of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. It all came to a head when Commander-in-Chief of the UAF Valerii Zaluzhnyi got axed for expressing differing views on the conduct of the failed counter-offensive (supposedly, he was concerned about the lives of the men under his Command and refused to have them hold on desperately in the face of superior Russian firepower).

Following rumors that he had accepted to relocate to London along with former Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov who had himself been sacked following said counter-offensive, it was revealed that Zaluzhnyi had remained in the country under house arrest pending his appointment as Ukraine’s Ambassador to the UK.

Another sign that all is not well in Kyiv was a report circulating in the collective West that Zelensky had been the target of a foiled assassination plot at the hand of a Polish man allegedly working with the Russian Federation.

This incident was promptly ridiculed by former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev who instead suggested that Zelensky be looking over his shoulder in case his Western handlers decide to replace him.

To be sure, Zelensky is mindful of the way America tends to treat its friends and allies.

Despite enjoying dithyrambic media coverage these last two years, Zelensky is slowly reaching his political expiration date. War fatigue is rampant and reports about endemic Ukrainian corruption cannot be slipped under the rug anymore. In short, the country (or what is left of it) is a basket case.

For the time being, it is, however, considered of the utmost importance in Washington that Ukraine does not collapse before next November’s US Presidential election. Maintaining a semblance of stability in Ukraine thus precludes the US from moving against the former TV comedian.

But Zelensky knows that he’s running out of time and that the time to make his move is between now and the election. It is all about survival for him. He must thus edge his bets and secure certain guarantees within the calendar imposed by his imperial masters.

Shokin and Dubinsky: Zelensky’s Deadman Switch

Viktor Shokin came to prominence as the top Ukrainian official in that country’s Ministry of Justice tasked with investigating Burisma’s CEO Mykola Zlocheski.

He likely stumbled on evidence of foul play for this led VP Biden who by then had assumed the Ukraine portfolio to urge then president Petro Poroshenko to replace him with “someone with whom we can work.”

Likewise, Oleksandr Dubinsky had stood alongside Derkach during a press conference where it was alleged not only that criminal cases against Burisma had been dropped owing to interference by US officials working out of the US embassy in Kyiv but also that Ukraine and not Russia had attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

There’s a reason why the House investigative committee never issued subpoenas to these two individuals and it is not a coincidence if Shokin and Dubinsky are essentially barred from leaving Ukraine. Dubinsky is currently detained in solitary confinement following a beating while in detention on charges of treason.

To somewhat underline how much Shokin and Dubinsky (alongside Andrei Derkach and Konstantin Kulik) are considered dangerous to the entire “democorruption” scheme characterizing American external management of post-Maidan Ukraine, Derkach’s interview to Mangiante is once again revealing of the lengths through which the Biden administration is willing to go to “resolve the issue with Derkach.”

Mindful of the scope of his own complicity in the pillaging and depopulating of Ukraine, Zelensky also senses that with his term as president officially expiring next month, his own legitimacy is rapidly evaporating thus turning him into a liability for Washington. Ironically, he could envision escaping judgment and snatching a victory of sorts out of the jaws of certain defeat – were he to reach out to Moscow and make a deal. Not sure he would survive more than a day following such an announcement, but as things currently stand, idleness is not an option.

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Author Arnaud Develay was trained as an attorney specializing in humanitarian and international criminal law. As a member of both the Paris and Washington state bar, he started his career under former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark’s mentorship before moving to represent Ilitch Ramirez Sanchez aka ‘Carlos’, senior representative of the Yellow Vest Movement, and Moldova’s former Vice-Prime Minister, Iurie Rosca. He now works as a political consultant and is the author of the critically-acclaimed “Foreign Entanglements: Biden, Ukraine and the Fracturing of the American Political Consensus.”