Some things never change: According to NABU officials, the investigation uncovered a criminal enterprise run by Timur Mindich, (Jewish), a film producer and a former business partner of Zelenskyy.
Originally published, February 2023,
“At the same time, fifty Jewish families own 80% of all wealth. Where do you see the Ukrainian oligarch? I don’t know any. They are all Jews. Their wealth betrays their own bragging rights: Rolls-Royces, planes, castles, hotels, casinos owned in Monte Carlo. Aircraft and yachts under foreign flags. And, of course, they don’t pay taxes. And plants and factories were bought by them not at a real price, but stolen from the entire Ukrainian people.”
Serhiy Ratushniak, Former Mayor of Uzhhorod
With Russia now slowly escalating its ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine on the eve of its first anniversary, I find myself drawn once again to the complex but stark phenomenon of extreme Jewish corruption in the latter nation. While it’s become commonplace to note Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jewishness, and perhaps also that of Volodymyr Groysman, the first Prime Minister to serve under Zelensky, I have yet to read a detailed discussion of the major Jewish players in the ongoing saga of Ukrainian oligarchy and its political affiliates. If anything, the present conflict is a huge distraction from the fact that, for decades, the biggest threat to Ukraine hasn’t been Russia, but financiers and speculators operating with impunity within Ukraine’s borders to exploit ethnic Ukrainians and plunder their resources.
Speaking in general terms, of course, Ukraine is an extremely corrupt country, with the culture of fraud and graft stemming in large part from the Soviet legacy and saturating all levels of society. Crooks of all ethnic backgrounds are ubiquitous in the nation. Bribery is systematic, where it’s accepted as a basic fact of life by ordinary citizens and extends even to such mundane tasks as vehicle inspection. As well as infesting politics, bribery and other forms of corruption remain endemic in the police force, higher education, health care, and the justice system, with the result that Ukraine ranks alongside some of the worst African nations in Transparency International’s assessment of corruption perception. According to 2015 data, politically connected businesses accounting for less than 1 per cent of companies in Ukraine owned more than 25 per cent of all assets and accessed over 20 per cent of debt financing. In the capital-intensive mining, energy and transport sectors, politically connected businesses accounted for over 40 per cent of turnover and 50 per cent of assets.
Far from being the beacon of freedom presented to us now by the mass media, Ukraine is a nation bankrupt in social trust and well-accustomed to the yoke of exploitation. There has been little internal outcry over the massive trafficking of its women for sex, both inside and outside the country, with coastal cities such as Odessa becoming sex tourism hubs for the worst of the Turkish and Israeli middle classes. Ukraine now has the highest adult HIV prevalence outside Africa, with sexual contact outpacing injection drug use as the primary form of transmission since 2008. The National Institute on Drug Abuse points out that substance abuse in Ukraine has been at epidemic proportions for the last 15 years.
Ukraine is on multiple levels a deeply flawed and troubled state, and like any bloody carcass it has attracted its share of hyenas. I believe, however, that Jewish corruption in Ukraine, despite Jews only comprising around 0.5% of the Ukrainian population, is of a character significant enough to merit special attention. In the following essay I want to explore some of the key players and their interconnections, as well as to offer some thoughts on the reasons why anti-Jewish attitudes have not taken hold in Ukraine, and why they are unlikely to do so in the future......