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This broadcast was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: Continuing and deepening analysis of the profound Ukrainian fascist connection to the “Russia-Gate” disinformation inundating the American political and journalistic landscapes, this program highlights circumstances surrounding the sniper shootings at the Maidan demonstrations.
CORRECTION: Snipers highlighted in the story, such as Skillt, became members of the Azov Battalion. The unit had not formally coalesced as of the time of the Maidan demonstrations.
Those sniper shootings were the key circumstance generating international outrage against the Yanukovich regime and precipitating the rise of the OUN/B Ukrainain fascist successor organizations. Recorded the day after former Yanukovuch adviser and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was indicted by [VERY] special prosecutor Robert Mueller, this program supplements discussion from FTR #981.
Distilling information concerning the sniper attacks, we review the possibility that Manafort might have played an advisory role in the sniper shootings, that the shootings might have been a provocation and examine the role of the Nazi Azov battalion and its proponents and component figures in connection with the Maidan shootings and the “Russia-Gate” propaganda.
We wonder if recent attacks in Ukraine might be elements of a “sanitization” operation, aimed at eliminating participants in the Maidan shootings (provocation?), while blaming the violence (of course) on Russia.
Major considerations in the Azov Battalion/Maidan sniper/Manafort imbroglio include:
- Alleged “Russian agent” Paul Manafort–identified in FTR #919 as a probable “advance man” for regimes targeted for destabilization–may well have been the person who recommended to his “client” Yanukovich to fire on the Maidan demonstrators. It was that gunfire that signalled the end of Yanukovich’s government. This reinforces Mr. Emory’s take on Manafort. ” . . . . The lawyer’s demands for explanation spring from the hacking earlier this year of the iPhone of Mr Manafort’s daughter, [since confirmed as genuine, at least in part–D.E.] Andrea, with around 300,000 messages published in the dark web. One of the texts sent to her sister Jessica said: ‘Don’t fool yourself. That money we have is blood money.’ It continued ‘You know he has killed people in Ukraine? Knowingly, as a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remember when there were all those deaths taking place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that, to send those people get them slaughtered.’ . . . .”
- Reinforcing the hypothesis that the Maidan shootings were a provocation is the disclosure by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor that the rifles allegedly used to fire on the Maidan demonstrators were recovered by an alleged Yanukovich operative and leader of the snipers who was one of the demonstrators on the Maidan! “ . . . Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko says that the man who helped the so-called “black hundred” of police task force Berkut, who had been shooting at protesters during the Revolution of Dignity, flee Kyiv and deliberately drowned their weapons to conceal evidence, was himself one of the participants of the Maidan protests. ‘With the help of military counterintelligence, we have found weapons of the ‘black hundred,’ including a sniper rifle, which the entire country saw on footage showing the shooting at the protesters from outside the October Palace,” he told the 112 Ukraine TV channel. . . . ‘We found it with a large number of automatic rifles on the bottom of one of Kiev’s lakes. They were cut and drowned in one batch by a single group, whose leader is one of the targets of our investigation. Unfortunately, this man who, according to our version, upon the orders of [former Interior Minister Vitaliy] Zakharchenko helped the ‘black hundred’ flee Kyiv, destroyed and drowned their weapons, he, himself, was with us on the Maidan,’ Lutsenko said. . . . ”
- The journalistic viewpoint on a Ukrainian hacker allegedly used by “Russian hackers” against the U.S. comes from Anton Gerashchenko, part of the same milieu as Pravy Sektor, Azov, etc. Gerashchenko is, in fact, an apologist for Azov, as discussed in FTR #‘s 803, 804, 808, 818: ” . . . . Security experts were initially left scratching their heads when the Department of Homeland Security on Dec. 29 released technical evidence of Russian hacking that seemed to point not to Russia, but rather to Ukraine. . . A member of Ukraine’s Parliament with close ties to the security services, Anton Gerashchenko, said that the interaction was online or by phone and that the Ukrainian programmer had been paid to write customized malware without knowing its purpose, only later learning it was used in Russian hacking. . . . It is not clear whether the specific malware the programmer created was used to hack the D.N.C. servers. . . .”
- Exemplifying the Ukrainian fascists at the epicenter of “Russia-Gate” are a group of Ukrainian hackers, working in tandem with fascist politicians like the aforementioned Anton Gerashchenko. (This is discussed in FTR #981.) The hacker/Ukrainian fascist link spawned the “PropOrNot” list of “Russian/Kremlin/Putin” dupes in the U.S. media: This list was compiled by the Ukrainian intelligence service, interior ministry and–ahem–hackers: “. . . . One of the more frightening policies enacted by the current oligarch-nationalist regime in Kiev is an online blacklist [42] of journalists accused of collaborating with pro-Russian ‘terrorists.’ [43] The website, ‘Myrotvorets’ [43] or ‘Peacemaker’—was set up by Ukrainian hackers working with state intelligence and police, all of which tend to share the same ultranationalist ideologies as Parubiy and the newly-appointed neo-Nazi chief of the National Police. . . . The website is designed to frighten and muzzle journalists from reporting anything but the pro-nationalist party line, and it has the backing of government officials, spies and police—including the SBU (Ukraine’s successor to the KGB), the powerful Interior Minister Avakov and his notorious far-right deputy, Anton Geraschenko. Ukraine’s journalist blacklist website—operated by Ukrainian hackers working with state intelligence—led to a rash of death threats against the doxxed journalists, whose email addresses, phone numbers and other private information was posted anonymously to the website. . . .”
- Anton Geraschenko is also a primary associate and defender of the Azov Battalion and the Nazi Social National Assembly that helped spawn it and overlaps its operations: ” . . . . The Azov Battalion was formed and armed by Ukraine’s interior ministry. A ministerial adviser, Anton Gerashchenko [who is networking with Ukrainian hackers looming large in the “Russia-Gate” investigation–D.E.], got angry when I asked him if the battalion had any neo-Nazi links through the Social National Assembly. ‘The Social National Assembly is not a neo-Nazi organisation,’ he said. ‘It is a party of Ukrainian patriots who are giving their lives while the rich Europeans are only talking about supporting Ukraine. When, may I ask, will English people come here and help us fight terrorists sent by Russia’s President [Vladimir] Putin, instead of lecturing us on our moral values or people’s political affiliations?’ Mr Gerashchenko was adamant, however, that there were no foreign citizens fighting in the Azov Battalion. ‘There are foreign journalists, from Sweden, Spain and Italy, who have come to report on the heroic achievements of the fighters in their struggle against terrorism,’ he said. . . .”
- Mikael Skillt (whom we discussed in FTR #803), alleges that he spoke to two apparent members of the unit contained at two snipers, some of whom were present during the Maidan protests and appeared to have fired at Ukrainian police units. This reinforces the view that the violence that led to the ouster of Yanukovych was the outgrowth of a provocation. Note that the Azov’s number two man–Ihor Mosiychuk–was sentenced to prison for a planned bombing in January 2014. His supporters demonstrated on his behalf on the Maidan, helping to create the turmoil that led to Yanukovich’s overthrow. Might this have been part of the same gambit as the Maidan sniper attacks? ” . . . . He [Swedish army sniper Mikael Skillt] admits, however, to having spoken to at least two snipers, who, during the Maidan protests had shot at police from the Trade Union House in Kiev — at the time, the headquarters of the protestors. ‘Their mission was to take out Berkut’s snipers,’ explained Skillt.[7] The deadly shots from the Maidan, which in Western propaganda had been used to legitimize the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, have never been investigated by the putsch regime, and Berlin has never applied pressure for an investigation. . . . [On] January 10, 2014, Mosiychuk and two other fascists had been found guilty and sentenced to several years in prison for a planned August 2011 bombing attack. On the evening of January 10, ultra-right-wingers staged demonstrations protesting the sentence. The demonstrations degenerated into violent confrontations with the police. These confrontations, in turn, were then used by Berlin, Brussels and Washington to accuse Yanukovych of excessive use of force on the ‘movement fighting for democracy.’ . . .”
- The assassination of a Chechyan sniper fighting in Ukraine suggests the possibility that the Maidan sniper dynamic may be in the process of being sanitized, after Mr. Manafort’s indictment, yesterday. Are the assassination of Ukrainian sniper Amina Okuyeva and the bombing attack on Ihor Mosiychuk linked? (Mosiychuk was Azov’s second in command, for whom Okuyeve worked as an advisor.) Was a previous alleged attempt on the live of Okuyeva and her husband by an assassin pretending to be a “foreign journalist” linked? Might the “foreign journalist” have been connected to the Azov Battalion? ” . . . . A Ukrainian veteran sniper was killed, and her husband, who allegedly tried to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, was wounded in a shooting on Monday near Kyiv. . . . Amina Okuyeva and Adam Osmayev were riding in a car past a railroad crossing in the village of Hlevakha when their vehicle came under heavy fire from someone in the bushes on the side of the road. . . . Osmayev, who was also shot in the leg, has since blamed Russia for the attack and said that it was connected to a car-bombing last week that wounded Ukrainian lawmaker Ihor Mosiychuk . . . Okuyeva had once worked for Mosiychuk as an adviser, according to Reuters. . . . This wasn’t the first assassination attempt the couple had faced. On June 1, Osmayev and Okuyeva were in a car with a man, Artur Denisultanov-Kurmakayev, masquerading as a French journalist named Alex Werner. [Was this one of the “foreign journalists” Anton Gerashchenko claimed were coming to Ukraine?–D.E.] At one point, Denisultanov-Kurmakayev asked them to pull the car over so that he could give them a gift from his editors. ‘When he opened it I spotted a Glock pistol,‘Okuyeva told RFERL after the June attack. ‘He immediately grabbed it and started shooting at Adam.’ . . . ”
Program and Written Description Highlights Include:
- Review of Ukraine’s lustration laws–the three-sided statute targeted corruption, enhanced “anti-Communism” and–most importantly–criminalized any critical commentary on the OUN/B and UPA’s collaboration with the Third Reich.
- The efforts by Ukrainian fascists of the Pravy Sektor milieu to oust Petro Poroshenko by reporting corruption to U.S. authorities.
- Review of the Ukrainian intelligence service’s collaboration with CIA on the Manafort investigation.
- The role of OUN/B devotee Valentyn Nalyvaichenko in governing the SBU (the Ukrainian intelligence service.)
- Review of the operational links between the Ukrainian UNO-UNSA (the latest iteration of the UPA) and anti-Russian Chechen Islamists.
- Review of Jaroslav Stetsko’s personal secretary–Roman Svarych–as spokesman for the Azov Battalion.
1. Alleged “Russian agent” Paul Manafort–identified in FTR #919 as a probable “advance man” for regimes targeted for destabilization–may well have been the person who recommended to his “client” Yanukovich to fire on the Maidan demonstrators. It was that gunfire that signalled the end of Yanukovich’s government. This reinforces Mr. Emory’s take on Manafort. ” . . . . The lawyer’s demands for explanation spring from the hacking earlier this year of the iPhone of Mr Manafort’s daughter, [since confirmed as being genuine, at least in part–D.E.] Andrea, with around 300,000 messages published in the dark web. One of the texts sent to her sister Jessica said: ‘Don’t fool yourself. That money we have is blood money.’ It continued ‘You know he has killed people in Ukraine? Knowingly, as a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remember when there were all those deaths taking place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that, to send those people get them slaughtered.’ . . . .”
. . . . Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Bureau, set up under Western supervision, has allegedly discovered secret accounts, the so-called “black ledger”, supposedly showing that in a period of five years, between 2007 and 2012, when Mr Manafort received $12.7m from Mr Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. Officials hold that the money was part of an illegal clandestine system which had been used to pay off a number of figures. Mr Manafort has insisted that he had not received the money.
Human rights groups in Ukraine also want to question Mr Manafort about killings during the Maidan protests in Kiev in 2014. Eugenia Zakrevska, a lawyer representing families of victims, is part of a team seeking information on who was complicit in President Yanukovych’s ordering security forces to open fire on demonstrators.
The lawyer’s demands for explanation spring from the hacking earlier this year of the iPhone of Mr Manafort’s daughter, Andrea, with around 300,000 messages published in the dark web. One of the texts sent to her sister Jessica said: “Don’t fool yourself. That money we have is blood money.” It continued “You know he has killed people in Ukraine? Knowingly, as a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remember when there were all those deaths taking place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that, to send those people get them slaughtered.” . . .
2. It’s worth noting that Paul Manafort has confirmed that some of the hacked texts are real. As the following article also notes, Andrea Manafort was actually with her dad in Florida during the sniper attacks. Might he have shared details of his behavior visa
. . . . Manafort would not confirm whether the texts were genuine, but in a Politico story last month on the texts, he indicated that some of them were.
The texts suggest that Manafort and his daughter were together in Florida on the day of the worst violence in Kiev on February 20th, when close to 50 people died. . . .
3. Reinforcing the hypothesis that the Maidan shootings were a provocation is the disclosure by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor that the rifles allegedly used to fire on the Maidan demonstrators were recovered by an alleged Yanukovich operative and leader of the snipers who was one of the demonstrators on the Maidan! “ . . . Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko says that the man who helped the so-called “black hundred” of police task force Berkut, who had been shooting at protesters during the Revolution of Dignity, flee Kyiv and deliberately drowned their weapons to conceal evidence, was himself one of the participants of the Maidan protests. ‘With the help of military counterintelligence, we have found weapons of the ‘black hundred,’ including a sniper rifle, which the entire country saw on footage showing the shooting at the protesters from outside the October Palace,” he told the 112 Ukraine TV channel. . . . ‘We found it with a large number of automatic rifles on the bottom of one of Kiev’s lakes. They were cut and drowned in one batch by a single group, whose leader is one of the targets of our investigation. Unfortunately, this man who, according to our version, upon the orders of [former Interior Minister Vitaliy] Zakharchenko helped the ‘black hundred’ flee Kyiv, destroyed and drowned their weapons, he, himself, was with us on the Maidan,’ Lutsenko said. . . . ”
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko says that the man who helped so-called “black hundred” of police task force Berkut, who had been shooting at protesters during the Revolution of Dignity, flee Kyiv and deliberately drowned their weapons to conceal evidence, was himself one of the participants of the Maidan protests.
“With the help of military counterintelligence, we have found weapons of the “black hundred,” including a sniper rifle, which the entire country saw on footage showing the shooting at the protesters from outside the October Palace,” he told the 112 Ukraine TV channel.
“We found it with a large number of automatic rifles on the bottom of one of Kiev’s lakes. They were cut and drowned in one batch by a single group, whose leader is one of the targets of our investigation. Unfortunately, this man who, according to our version, upon the orders of [former Interior Minister Vitaliy] Zakharchenko helped the “black hundred” flee Kyiv, destroyed and drowned their weapons, he, himself, was with us on the Maidan,” Lutsenko said. . . .
. . . . Earlier, Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoliy Matios said: “When public learns who is involved in this, people will be very surprised.” According to him, information to be published may cause rejection, “but the truth is the truth.” . . . .
4a. Note the Ukrainian intelligence services’ apparent role in the “investigation” into Russia-Gate. Note the CIA’s role in this concatenation. (CIA is also deeply connected to Felix Sater, Trump’s point man for his dealings with Russia. ” . . . . . . . . While still politically influenced, Ukrainian law enforcement is no longer a swamp of incompetence and corruption. It has been able to monitor Mr. Manafort’s former business associates and turn up evidence of Russian hacking in the 2016 United States election, in part owing to American support. . . . [The “evidence” comes from Ukrainian security services–D.E.]”
. . . . While still politically influenced, Ukrainian law enforcement is no longer a swamp of incompetence and corruption. It has been able to monitor Mr. Manafort’s former business associates and turn up evidence of Russian hacking in the 2016 United States election, in part owing to American support.
The C.I.A. tore out a Russian-provided cellphone surveillance system, and put in American-supplied computers, said Viktoria Gorbuz, a former head of liaison at the S.B.U.
Ms. Gorbuz’s department translated telephone intercepts from the new system and forwarded them to the Americans.
It is unclear whether any phone intercepts relevant to the election meddling investigation have gone to the American authorities. But a Ukrainian law enforcement official has given journalists partial phone records of former associates of Mr. Manafiort. . . .
4b. Next, we review an article about foreign neo-Nazis in the ranks of the Ukrainian military formations. The neo-Nazi Azov Battalion was formed and armed by the interior ministry. The battalion leader–Andrei Biletsky is also the leader of the “Social National Assembly.” The number two man in Azov is Ihor Mosiychuk, now in Ukraine’s parliament. Swedish army veteran, sniper and Nazi Mikael Skillt serves with Azov. Note Anton Geraschchenko’s relationship with Azov, as well as his statement that “foreign journalists” are serving with Azov. ” . . . . Mikael Skillt is a Swedish sniper, with seven years’ experience in the Swedish Army and the Swedish National Guard. He is currently fighting with the Azov Battalion, a pro-Ukrainian volunteer armed group in eastern Ukraine. . . . The key figures in the Azov Battalion are its commander, Andriy Biletsky, and his deputy, Ihor Mosiychuk. . . . Andriy Biletsky is also the leader of a Ukrainian organization called the Social National Assembly. . . . The Azov Battalion was formed and armed by Ukraine’s interior ministry. A ministerial adviser, Anton Gerashchenko [who is networking with Ukrainian hackers looming large in the ‘Russia-Gate’ investigation–D.E.], got angry when I asked him if the battalion had any neo-Nazi links through the Social National Assembly. ‘The Social National Assembly is not a neo-Nazi organization,’ he said. . . . Mr Gerashchenko was adamant, however, that there were no foreign citizens fighting in the Azov Battalion. ‘There are foreign journalists, from Sweden, Spain and Italy, who have come to report on the heroic achievements of the fighters in their struggle against terrorism,’ he said. . . .”
“Ukraine Conflict: ‘White power’ Warrior from Sweden” by Dina Newman; BBC News; 7/16/2014.
The appearance of far-right activists, both foreign and home-grown, among the Ukrainian volunteers fighting in east Ukraine is causing unease.
Mikael Skillt is a Swedish sniper, with seven years’ experience in the Swedish Army and the Swedish National Guard. He is currently fighting with the Azov Battalion, a pro-Ukrainian volunteer armed group in eastern Ukraine. He is known to be dangerous to the rebels: reportedly there is a bounty of nearly $7,000 (£4,090; 5,150 euros) on his head.
In a telephone conversation from an undisclosed location, Mr Skillt told me more about his duties: “I have at least three purposes in the Azov Battalion: I am a commander of a small reconnaissance unit, I am also a sniper, and sometimes I work as a special coordinator for clearing houses and going into civilian areas.” . . . .
As to his political views, Mr Skillt prefers to call himself a nationalist, but in fact his views are typical of a neo-Nazi.
“It’s all about how you see it,” he says. “I would be an idiot if I said I did not want to see survival of white people. After World War Two, the victors wrote their history. They decided that it’s always a bad thing to say I am white and I am proud.”
‘One stray liberal’
Mr Skillt believes races should not mix. He says the Jews are not white and should not mix with white people. . . .
. . . . The key figures in the Azov Battalion are its commander, Andriy Biletsky, and his deputy, Ihor Mosiychuk.
Andriy Biletsky is also the leader of a Ukrainian organisation called the Social National Assembly. Its aims are stated in one of their online publications:
* “to prepare Ukraine for further expansion and to struggle for the liberation of the entire White Race from the domination of the internationalist speculative capital”
* “to punish severely sexual perversions and any interracial contacts that lead to the extinction of the white man”
This, according to experts, is a typical neo-Nazi narrative.
‘Foreign journalists’
The Azov Battalion was formed and armed by Ukraine’s interior ministry. A ministerial adviser, Anton Gerashchenko [who is networking with Ukrainian hackers looming large in the “Russia-Gate” investigation–D.E.], got angry when I asked him if the battalion had any neo-Nazi links through the Social National Assembly.
“The Social National Assembly is not a neo-Nazi organisation,” he said.
“It is a party of Ukrainian patriots who are giving their lives while the rich Europeans are only talking about supporting Ukraine. When, may I ask, will English people come here and help us fight terrorists sent by Russia’s President [Vladimir] Putin, instead of lecturing us on our moral values or people’s political affiliations?”
Mr Gerashchenko was adamant, however, that there were no foreign citizens fighting in the Azov Battalion.
“There are foreign journalists, from Sweden, Spain and Italy, who have come to report on the heroic achievements of the fighters in their struggle against terrorism,” he said.
He insisted he had never heard of Mikael Skillt, the Swedish sniper. . . .
5. In numerous programs, we have highlighted the Azov Battalion, one of many Nazi/fascist combatant militias fighting as part of the Ukrainian military. Another useful post from german-foreign-policy.com highlights the fact that the Azov Battalion was formed by Oleh Lyashko, who also heads the Radical Party.
Mikael Skillt (whom we discussed in FTR #803), alleges that he spoke to two aparent members of the unit contained at two snipers, some of whom were present during the Maidan protests and appeared to have fired at Ukrainian police units. This reinforces the view that the violence that led to the ouster of Yanukovych was the outgrowth of a provocation.
Note that the Azov’s number two man–Ihor Mosiychuk–was sentenced to prison for a planned bombing in January 2014. His supporters demonstrated on his behalf on the Maidan, helping to create the turmoil that led to Yanukovich’s overthrow.
” . . . . He [Swedish army sniper Mikael Skillt] admits, however, to having spoken to at least two snipers, who, during the Maidan protests had shot at police from the Trade Union House in Kiev — at the time, the headquarters of the protestors. ‘Their mission was to take out Berkut’s snipers,’ explained Skillt.[7] The deadly shots from the Maidan, which in Western propaganda had been used to legitimize the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, have never been investigated by the putsch regime, and Berlin has never applied pressure for an investigation. . . . [On] January 10, 2014, Mosiychuk and two other fascists had been found guilty and sentenced to several years in prison for a planned August 2011 bombing attack. On the evening of January 10, ultra-right-wingers staged demonstrations protesting the sentence. The demonstrations degenerated into violent confrontations with the police. These confrontations, in turn, were then used by Berlin, Brussels and Washington to accuse Yanukovych of excessive use of force on the ‘movement fighting for democracy.’ . . .”
“Ukrainian Patriots”; german-foreign-policy.com; 7/30/2014.
. . . . He [Oleh Lyashko] is also co-founder and supporter of the Azov Battalion, a militia of over one hundred — mainly fascist — combatants, including a Swedish Neo-Nazi sniper. He has reported that other snipers had already been in action for the opposition during the Maidan protests.It has never been revealed, who fired the fatal shots on February 20. In this highly charged atmosphere, the Ukrainian government is taking steps that indicate a political cultural development even further to the right. It is planning to censure films and books from Russia or to restrict their sales. . . .
. . . . The Swedish neo-Nazi Mikael Skillt is a member of the Azov Battalion. Skillt, a member of the fascist Svenskarnas Parti (Party of the Swedes), says that he has “at least” three purposes in the unit: commander of “a small reconnaissance unit,” a “sniper” and sometimes he works “as a special coordinator for clearing houses and going into civilian areas.” The person, who is rumored to have been captured by East Ukrainian insurgents, had been a sniper for six years in the Swedish military. He says, he has only been engaged in the Ukrainian conflict since March. He admits, however, to having spoken to at least two snipers, who, during the Maidan protests had shot at police from the Trade Union House in Kiev — at the time, the headquarters of the protestors. “Their mission was to take out Berkut’s snipers,” explained Skillt.[7] The deadly shots from the Maidan, which in Western propaganda had been used to legitimize the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, have never been investigated by the putsch regime, and Berlin has never applied pressure for an investigation.
Political Prisoners
The Azov Battalion has close ties to Oleh Lyashko, whose “Radical Party,” would currently be able to poll a fourth of the votes if elections were held. Lyashko is considered to be one of the Azov’s founders. For internet videos, he allows himself to be filmed at joint actions with Asov combatants. The Azov Battalion’s second in command, Ihor Mosiychuk, had been elected to Kiev’s Municipal Council on the electoral list of Lyashko’s Radical Party. This was not the first time Lyashko had intervened on his behalf. January 10, 2014, Mosiychuk and two other fascists had been found guilty and sentenced to several years in prison for a planned August 2011 bombing attack. On the evening of January 10, ultra-right-wingers staged demonstrations protesting the sentence. The demonstrations degenerated into violent confrontations with the police. These confrontations, in turn, were then used by Berlin, Brussels and Washington to accuse Yanukovych of excessive use of force on the “movement fighting for democracy.” The protests were unsuccessful. However, immediately after the Kiev coup, Mosiychuk and his accomplices profited from the amnesty, the pro-western Ukrainian parliament granted on February 24, 2014 to “political prisoners”. Due to Lyashko’s decisive engagement, Mosiychuk profited from the amnesty, was liberated from prison and could participate in the organization the Azov Battalion. . . .
. . . . . [1] Jakov Devcic: Jazenjuks Rücktrittsversuch. www.kas.de 29.07.2014.
[2] Ukraine will russische Kultur zurückdrängen. www.n‑tv.de 29.07.2014.
[3] S. dazu Termin beim Botschafter.
[4] Dina Newman: Ukraine conflict: “White power” warrior from Sweden. www.bbc.co.uk 16.07.2014.
[5] Daniel McLaughlin: Foreigners join far-right militias in Ukraine’s fight against rebels. www.irishtimes.com 17.07.2014.
[6] Hal Foster: A special-forces unit, started from scratch, wins a key battle in Ukraine. en.tengrinews.kz 21.06.2014.
[7] Swede Patrols Ukraine’s Streets with Right-wing Paramilitaries. www.friatider.se 26.03.2014.
6. Illustrating the direct line of institutional evolution from the OUN/B to the present, Pravy Sektor is the political arm of the UNA-UNSO, the latest iteration of the OUN/B’s military cadre, the UPA. It elected Yuriy Shukheyvch as its head. Shukheyvch is the son of OUN/B commander Roman Shukhevych, declared a “Hero of Ukraine” by the Yuschenko government. Roman also headed the Nachtigall Battalion in their liquidation of the Lvov Ghetto in 1941.
In FTR #967, we noted that the city of Lviv (Lvov) has initiated a festival in honor of Shukhevych on the anniversary of Nachtigall Battalion’s liquidation of the Lvov ghetto!
Note that the UNA/UNSO organization–the political parent of Pravy Sektor–has apparently been active in Chechnya as well. This is a precursor to the Chechnyan participation in the Ukraine conflict, discussed in–among other programs–FTR #862.
“The Durability of Ukrainian Fascism” by Peter Lee; Strategic Culture; 6/9/2014.
. . . . One of Bandera’s lieutenants was Roman Shukhevych. In February 1945, Shukhevych issued an order stating, “In view of the success of the Soviet forces it is necessary to speed up the liquidation of the Poles, they must be totally wiped out, their villages burned … only the Polish population must be destroyed.”
As a matter of additional embarrassment, Shukhevych was also a commander in the Nachtigall (Nightingale) battalion organized by the Wehrmacht.
Today, a major preoccupation of Ukrainian nationalist historical scholarship is beating back rather convincing allegations by Russian, Polish, and Jewish historians that Nachtigall was an important and active participant in the massacre of Lviv Jews orchestrated by the German army upon its arrival in June 1941. . . .
. . . . Yuriy Shukhevych’s role in modern Ukrainian fascism is not simply that of an inspirational figurehead and reminder of his father’s anti-Soviet heroics for proud Ukrainian nationalists. He is a core figure in the emergence of the key Ukrainian fascist formation, Pravy Sektor and its paramilitary.
And Pravy Sektor’s paramilitary, the UNA-UNSO, is not an “unruly” collection of weekend-warrior-wannabes, as Mr. Higgins might believe.
UNA-UNSO was formed during the turmoil of the early 1990s, largely by ethnic Ukrainian veterans of the Soviet Union’s bitter war in Afghanistan. From the first, the UNA-UNSO has shown a taste for foreign adventures, sending detachments to Moscow in 1990 to oppose the Communist coup against Yeltsin, and to Lithuania in 1991. With apparently very good reason, the Russians have also accused UNA-UNSO fighters of participating on the anti-Russian side in Georgia and Chechnya.
After formal Ukrainian independence, the militia elected Yuriy Shukhevych—the son of OUN‑B commander Roman Shukhevych– as its leader and set up a political arm, which later became Pravy Sektor. . . .
7. An interesting assassination of a Chechyan sniper fighting in Ukraine suggests the possibility that the Maidan sniper dynamic may be in the process of being sanitized, after Mr. Manafort’s indictment, yesterday. Are the assassination of Ukrainian sniper Amina Okuyeva and the bombing attack on Ihor Mosiychuk linked? (Mosiychuk was Azov’s second in command, for whom Okuyeve worked as an advisor.) Was a previous alleged attempt on the live of Okuyeva and her husband by an assassin pretending to be a “foreign journalist” linked? Might the “foreign journalist” have been connected to the Azov Battalion? ” . . . . A Ukrainian veteran sniper was killed, and her husband, who allegedly tried to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, was wounded in a shooting on Monday near Kyiv. . . . Amina Okuyeva and Adam Osmayev were riding in a car past a railroad crossing in the village of Hlevakha when their vehicle came under heavy fire from someone in the bushes on the side of the road. . . . Osmayev, who was also shot in the leg, has since blamed Russia for the attack and said that it was connected to a car-bombing last week that wounded Ukrainian lawmaker Ihor Mosiychuk . . . Okuyeva had once worked for Mosiychuk as an adviser, according to Reuters. . . . This wasn’t the first assassination attempt the couple had faced. On June 1, Osmayev and Okuyeva were in a car with a man, Artur Denisultanov-Kurmakayev, masquerading as a French journalist named Alex Werner. [Was this one of the “foreign journalists” Anton Gerashchenko claimed were coming to Ukraine?–D.E.] At one point, Denisultanov-Kurmakayev asked them to pull the car over so that he could give them a gift from his editors. ‘When he opened it I spotted a Glock pistol,‘Okuyeva told RFERL after the June attack. ‘He immediately grabbed it and started shooting at Adam.’ . . . ”
- A Ukrainian veteran sniper was shot dead, and her husband, who allegedly tried to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2012, was wounded near Kyiv.
- The Chechen couple had both fought against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas and were considered heroes in Ukraine.
- The incident is the latest of more than a dozen assassinations or attempted assassinations in Ukraine since 2014.
A Ukrainian veteran sniper was killed, and her husband, who allegedly tried to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, was wounded in a shooting on Monday near Kyiv.
Amina Okuyeva and Adam Osmayev were riding in a car past a railroad crossing in the village of Hlevakha when their vehicle came under heavy fire from someone in the bushes on the side of the road.
“She was shot in the head. I drove as much as I could until the car stopped, I don’t know, the engine was also hit. I tried to give her first aid, but she was shot in the head,” Osmayev told Lb.ua, a Ukrainian media outlet.
Osmayev, who was also shot in the leg, has since blamed Russia for the attack and said that it was connected to a car-bombing last week that wounded Ukrainian lawmaker Ihor Mosiychuk, who routinely insulted Russian politicians and once posted a video on YouTube threatening to kill Ramzan Kadyrov, Putin’s hand-picked leader of Chechnya.
Okuyeva had once worked for Mosiychuk as an adviser, according to Reuters.
This wasn’t the first assassination attempt the couple had faced. On June 1, Osmayev and Okuyeva were in a car with a man, Artur Denisultanov-Kurmakayev, masquerading as a French journalist named Alex Werner.
At one point, Denisultanov-Kurmakayev asked them to pull the car over so that he could give them a gift from his editors.
“When he opened it I spotted a Glock pistol,” Okuyeva told RFERL after the June attack. “He immediately grabbed it and started shooting at Adam.”
Okuyeva then pulled out her own gun and shot the would-be assassin three times before, as she told RFERL, “I pounced on him with my bare hands and he gave up the gun.”
Osmayev was shot in the chest, but his wife treated “Adam’s wound immediately” and he survived that attack as well. Ukraine has since blamed Russia for orchestrating the hit.
In 2012, Osmayev was accused by Moscow of plotting to kill Putin. He was arrested in Kyiv in February 2012 for possession of illegal explosives and was even charged with the plot by Ukrainian authorities at the behest of Russia.
But Kyiv refused to extradite Osmayev, and the charges were eventually dropped. He was released from custody in November 2014 — just months after former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich had fled to Russia and fighting started in the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine.
Okuyeva and Osmayev — both Muslims and ethnic Chechens — have been celebrated in Ukraine as heroes, having served in Chechen volunteer battalions fighting against Russian-backed separatist in the Donbas.
Okuyeva, who reportedly wore her hijab in battle and fought for equality among men and women in the military, was a paramedic and sniper. Osmayev became commander of the volunteer Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion in 2015.
“I declare a war on the Russian Empire,” Okuyeva told Politico in 2014. “If Russian forces continue to fight in Ukraine, thousands of Chechen immigrants living in Europe, who had been ousted of their land during the two Chechen wars, will come to Ukraine to fight a war to defend this country.”
8a. Andrei Artemenko wasn’t the only Ukrainian politician to approach the Trump administration with a peace plan in early 2017. Yulia Tymoshenko did the same thing in February, saying Trump promised her that he would “not abandon Ukraine.”
Additionally, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the former head of the Security Service of Ukraine and a political ally of Tymoshenko, claims he traveled to the US in December and January and delivered to the U.S. Department of Justice proof of “political corruption by (Ukraine’s) top officials.” And he apparently gave the same material to Artemenko in 2015. And while Nalyvaichenko says he doesn’t back Artemenko’s peace plan, he did admit to submit a peace plan of his own to the US government.
Nalyvaichenko is a direct heir to the OUN/B, having run Ukrainian intelligence (the SBU) along the lines of the OUN/B. Nalyvaichenko is very close to Pravy Sektor and Dimitry Yarosh.
Peace proposals by anti-Russian figues include one by Viktor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch who also a member of the anti-Russian Atlantic Council.
Of paramount significance, here, are the lustration law–a triple-faced entity. The law is “anti-corruption,” anti-Communist, and also criminalizes telling the truth about the collaboration between the OUN/B, its military wing the UPA and the Third Reich.
Elements of the Ukrainian fascist milieu have been attempting to oust Poroshenko in favor of elevating a fellow fascist to head of the government. The lustration law looms large in this context, as does the fact that Poroshenko was Yanukovych’s finance minister and, as such, undoubtedly involved with Mr. Manafort and whatever he did, or did not do in that benighted country.
. . . . But Artemenko is not the only Ukrainian politician to reach out to the White House behind President Petro Poroshenko’s back.
Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister and leader of Batkivshchyna Party, had a brief meeting with U.S. President Donald J. Trump before the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Feb. 3, during which Trump reportedly promised her that he would “not abandon Ukraine.”
And Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the former head of the Security Service of Ukraine and a political ally of Tymoshenko, says he visited the U.S. in December and January.
Nalyvaichenko told the Kyiv Post he met there with former Republican Senator Jim DeMint, a Trump advisor and president of the conservative the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and Bob Corker, a Republican senator from Tennessee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman.
Nalyvaichenko said he delivered to the U.S. Department of Justice proof of “political corruption by (Ukraine’s) top officials.” He said also delivered to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office materials about alleged money laundering and the illegal use of offshore companies by Poroshenko’s business partner and lawmaker Ihor Kononenko.
Back in 2015, Nalyvaichenko gave the compromising materials on Poroshenko to Artemenko, which he claimed to also give to the U.S. authorities. . . .
8b. Pravy Sektor associate Valentyn Nalyvaichenko had been the head of the SBU (Ukrainian intelligence service) since the Maidan Coup, up until his ouster in June of 2015. Not surprisingly, he had operated the organization along the lines of the OUN/B.
Previously, he had served in that same capacity under Viktor Yuschenko, seeing the outfit as a vehicle for rewriting Ukraine’s history in accordance with the historical revisionism favored by the OUN/B.
Very close to Pravy Sektor head Dymitro Yarosh, Nalyvaichenko employed Yarosh while serving in the Ukrainian parliament. Yarosh claims that the two collaborated on “anti-terrorist” operations conducted against ethnic Russians.
Bear in mind that the SBU has been the “cognitive window” through which the events in Ukraine have been processed.
. . . A reconstructed historical memory is created as ‘true memory’ and then contrasted with ‘false Soviet history’ ”(Jilge, 2007:104–105). Thus, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, SBU director under Yushchenko, described the task of his agency as being to disseminate “the historical truth of the past of the Ukrainian people,” to “liberate Ukrainian history from lies and falsifications and to work with truthful documents only” (Jilge, 2008:179). Ignoring the OUN’s antisemitism, denying its participation in anti- Jewish violence, and overlooking its fascist ideology, Nalyvaichenko and his agency presented the OUN as democrats, pluralists, even righteous rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. . . .
8c. Nalyvaichenko’s SBU has manifested a fundamentally revisionist stance with regard to the OUN/B’s World War II genocidal attacks on ethnic Poles in Ukraine–a bloody campaign that claimed up to 100,000 lives.
“Poland Stretches Out Its Hands to the Freedom Fighters” by Rob Slane; The Blogmire; 4/11/2015.
. . . . Unfortunately, the Ukrainian authorities show no signs whatsoever that they are about to abandon their admiration of those responsible for these horrific crimes. To the contrary, they seem to be intent on admiring them all the more, as the SBU head Valentyn Nalyvaichenko’s recent words indicate: “SBU does not need to invent anything extra — it is important to build on the traditions and approaches of the OUN-UPA security service. It [the OUN-UPA security service] worked against the aggressor during the temporary occupation of the territory, it had a patriotic upbringing, used a counterintelligence unit, and had relied on the peaceful Ukrainian population using its support.” . . . .
8d. Very close to Pravy Sektor head Dymitro Yarosh, Nalyvaichenko employed Yarosh while serving in the Ukrainian parliament. Yarosh claims that the two collaborated on “anti-terrorist” operations conducted against ethnic Russians.
Bear in mind that the SBU has been the “cognitive window” through which the events in Ukraine have been processed.
“Yarosh Comments on Dismissal of His ‘Friend’ Nalyvaichenko;” EurAsia Daily; 6/25/2015.
The leader of the Right Sector extremist group Dmytro Yarosh believes that the dismissal of Chief of the Security Service Valentyn Nalyvaichenko was illogical and untimely. He writes in Facebook that Nalyvaichenko is his friend, who has raised the Security Service from zero and has neutralized lots of terrorist threats all over the country. “I know what I am talking about as my Right Sector was involved in many of his special operations against Russian terrorists,” Yarosh said. . . . . . In the past Yarosh was Nalyvaichenko’s advisor.
8e. Exemplary of the Nazification of Ukraine is the elevation of Pravy Sektor’s Yarosh to being an advisor to the chief of the Ukrainian general staff.
” . . . . Yarosh is now a member of parliament and an advisor to the chief of general staff of the Ukrainian army. In other words, Yarosh has been legitimized by the political establishment. . . .”
“Switching Spymasters Amid War Is Risky” by Brian Mefford; Atlantic Council; 6/18/2015.
Valentin Nalyvaichenko, head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), is in trouble again. On June 15, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he was “unsatisfied” with Nalyvaichenko’s work. Three days later, Ukraine’s parliament dismissed him. . . . . . . . Poroshenko Bloc MP Serhiy Leshchenko released a document confirming old rumors that Right Sector’s Dmitro Yarosh worked for Nalyvaichenko when he was a member of parliament from 2012 to 2014. While the connection between the two raises some questions about the events of Euromaidan and the origins of Right Sector, this attack alone wasn’t enough to discredit Nalyvychenko. Yarosh is now a member of parliament and an advisor to the chief of general staff of the Ukrainian army. In other words, Yarosh has been legitimized by the political establishment.. . .
8f. It is not surprising that Kristofer Harrison (the author of an apologia for the Nazi Azov Battalion in Ukraine) is a former Defense Department and State Department advisor to George W. Bush. Noteworthy in his propaganda piece dismissing Representative John Conyers (D‑MI) as “the Kremlin’s Man in Congress” and discounting anyone else discussing the ascension of the OUN/B fascists in Ukraine in a similar vein, is the identity of his source for assurances that Azov is not a Nazi unit.
The Azov’s spokesman is Roman Zvarych, the personal secretary to Jaroslav Stetsko in the 1980’s. Stetsko was the head of the World War II OUN/B government that collaborated with the Nazis!
After emigrating to Ukraine in the early ’90’s Zvarych and forming the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists with Slava Stetsko (Jaroslav’s widow) Zvarych became: Justice Minister (the equivalent of Attorney General of the United States) under the governments of Viktor Yuschenko and both Yulia Timoshenko governments. He has been serving as an adviser to president Poroshenko.
“Putin’s Man in Congress” by Kristofer Harrison; The Huffington Post; 8/7/2015.
. . . .The Azov’s spokesman, Roman Zvarych, told me that the battalion has a selective screening program that accepts only 50 out of almost 300 recruits each month. He says they have a thorough background check and reject members for various reasons, including having fascist leanings. . . .
. . . . Rep. Conyers played an important role in helping the Russian Nazi meme evolve from the stuff of conspiracy theorists, kooks and fellow-travelers into something the mainstream press happily prints. Rep. Conyers took to the floor of the House to submit his amendment and label the unit, “The repulsive Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.” From there, the Daily Beast ran a story titled “Is America Training Neonazis in Ukraine?” using Conyers’ bill as factual support. The day after the amendment’s passage, Leonoid Bershidsky ran a Bloomberg View article titled “Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis Won’t Get U.S. Money.” Even the Canadians have been affected. On June 16th, the National Post ran a story titled “Fears that Canadian Mission in Ukraine May Unintentionally Help Neonazi Groups.”. . . .
Here’s something worth noting about the charges against Paul Manafort issued in the Mueller investigation related to Ukrainian money-laundering along with the lingering questions over whether or not Manafort played a role in Maidan sniper attacks. As expected, many in Ukraine are thrilled to see Manafort prosecuted given his public ties to the Yanukovych government. Less expected is the Russian government line on Manafort’s troubles which appears to be amusement seeing the US prosecute someone Moscow views as a CIA agent.
It represents what could be a fascinating new chapter in the Adventures of Paul Manafort: The race to disown Manafort and prove he’s working for the other team. And given how the evidence that Manafort really did play a role in the sniper shootings suggests that he was trying to ensure the Maidan revolution succeeded, this could end up being a very interesting phase of the Manafort’s adventures:
“In March this year The Daily Beast reported that Yevgenia Zakrevskaya, an attorney in the Ukrainian capital, and one of the strongest liberal voices in the country, focused attention on Manafort after text messages between his daughters were hacked and released in February. One of them, from Andrea Manafort to her sister, read “Don’t fool yourself. The money we have is blood money.””
A lot of eyes in Ukraine are keenly interested in Andrea Manafort’s hacked texts. And the keen interest in Ukraine is extremely understandable given the nature of those texts and all the people gunned down in that sniper attack.
But let’s not forget that those texts indicated that Manafort pushed for people to be killed in Ukraine (around the time of the Maidan protests) in order to bring international attention to the situation which did not make sense unless Manafort really was working for the CIA or some other third party (not necessarily US) who wanted to see the Maidan revolution succeed.
And let’s also not forget that Manafort was an advisor-for-hire and it’s pretty apparent from his history that he might be the kind of guy that could be secretly hired to work against his current clients. After all, he apparently pushed to have people killed for political effect. That seems like the kind of person who might work for Yanukovych while simultaneously working for someone trying to get Yanukovych overthrown which is a big reason why the spin from Moscow might end up being a lot more than just spin:
That’s all part of what could make the Manafort-disownership phase of this nightmare so fascinating: He really might have been working for all sides. He may have legitimately been advising Yanokovych for years while secretly working with the forces behind the Maidan movement, especially the far-right forces who represent the prime suspects for actually carrying out the sniper attacks for every effective political effect. And who knows who else may have secretly bought him out at that point because that appears to be the kind of guy Manafort is: a guy for hire to advice in the dark arts of politics. The kind of dark arts that might involve killing people for political effect if Andrea Manafort’s hacked texts are to be believed. That’s the kind of kind of guy who could be working for all sorts of sides simultaneously which is what’s going to make the unfolding of Manafort’s story so fascinating.
And if Russia really has felt Manafort was CIA all alone it would raise the question of what Manafort’s presences at the June 9th, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with the Russian delegation. Given that Manafort joined the Trump campaign on March 29th, right around when George Papadopoulos was engaged in his Russian outreach with Joseph Mifsud the Maltese Professor. So Manafort’s presence overlapped heavily with the period when the Trump campaign was playing footsie with Russians. If the Kremlin really did view Manafort as a US/EU agent that would presumably alter the behavior of Russian government cutouts when it comes to Manafort. Perhaps the outreach to Don Jr. by Rob Goldstone was an attempt to get around Manafort and straight to the Trump family? encouraging them to reach o. It’s an example of why the question of who Manafort was working, or at least who the Russians thought he worked for, is actually a pretty important question.
Who will end up holding the Manafort hot potato once this is all over? Given the range of clients one could reasonably imagine court someone like Manafort he had to be getting courted by all sorts of intelligence agencies during his years working for Yanukovych — the answer to the question of who Manafort may have been working for isn’t entirely obvious because he was probably a hot commodity. A very corrupt American advisor in Ukraine with ties to the Party of Regions. He was definitely working for the Party of Regions on some level. And eventually Trump. But who else? The CIA? EU intelligence agencies? Organized crime? European fascists? Ukrainian neo-Nazis? All of the above? It’s not like Manafort is choosy with his clients so it’s hard to rule anyone out. But we’re going to have to find out more about Manafort and who he was working for in Ukraine and elsewhere because we can’t really understand #TrumpRussia until we understand Paul Manafort.
And given the hints from Ukrainian prosecutors last year that someone working with the Maidan protestors helped the snipers escape from Kiev, it seems like much of the final verdict on Manafort will depend on the resolution of what role he may or may not have case and what role he may have played. And it’s a mystery that can’t be solved without investigating the meaning of those hacked text messages and which deaths in Ukraine were the ‘blood’ in Andrea Manafort’s ‘blood money’ texts and more information about what is else known about the sniper attacks. Part of what made attribution of those attacks so difficult was that it made no sense for Yanukovych to do it, and two years later then we get hacked texts from Andrew Manafort about her dad being involved with what sounds like those attacks. It’s kind of amazing but here we are: the mystery of who was behind the Maidan sniper attacks, and who Paul Manafort may have been working for if he ended up playing a role, are now part important points in recent history for understanding #TrumpRussia.
He probably wasn’t the best pick for campaign manager.
Great information, especially regarding WACL. The lustration laws have their roots in the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church and have a semi-religious character. It has an older history with the Ancient Romans, who, for example, used a lustration ritual to “purify” the followers of the Druids under their occupation. Their word ‘lustratio’ meant “purification (or a city or community) by ritual sacrifice”.
Here’s a look at the growing number of obstacles Ukraine’s government is facing in its investigations of Paul Manafort over corruption charges. Investigations that go back to 2014 in some cases: First, there’s the obstacle of the US not actually cooperating with those investigations in Manafort:
“Serhii Horbatiuk, head of special investigations at the general prosecutor’s office, told Reuters Ukraine had sent requests in 2014 and 2015 to question representatives of a law firm and Manafort.”
So the head of special investigations at Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office, Serhii Horbatiuk, sent requests to question Manafort back in 2014 and 2015, but to no avail:
And keep in mind that the “black ledger” scandal that abruptly ended Manafort’s role as Donald Trump’s campaign chairman didn’t happen until 2016. So the 2014 and 2015 requests to question Manafort were presumably over payments to Manafort’s lawfirm to produce a report used to justify the jailling of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko:
Also note that the Associated Press confirmed this year that $1.2 million in “black ledger” payments to Manafort’s firm really did happen. So putting aside the serious potential mega-crime of Manafort’s involvement in the Maidan sniper attacks, the other more mundane corruption charges against Manafort appear to have teeth. And, obviously, it’s entirely possible that evidence related to the sniper attacks could be uncovered in either of these other investigations, so when they other investigations get blocked that’s effectively like blocking the investigation into Manafort’s potential role in the sniper attacks.
So that’s one of the obstacles facing Ukraine’s investigation in Manafort. Here’s another one: when the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) got up and running in late 2015, the NABU wasn’t going to be be responsible for investigations that preceded its creation. But that all just changed thanks to new legislation that was passed that will transfer 3,500 corruption cases from the prosecutor’s office to the NABU. And as Serhii Horbatiuk of the prosecutor’s office warns, this move could effectively kill a large number of those investigations simply due to the NABU not having the staff required to carry out these investigations. The NABU itself also requested that this transfer not happen over manpower concerns. And the investigations that are getting transferred include the investigations into Manafort:
“From Monday, 3,500 cases that were registered before December 2015 will be transferred from the prosecutor’s office to NABU, which include for example investigations that may pertain to former Donald Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort.”
Yep, those investigations into Manafort that the general prosecutor’s office has been trying and failing to get US help on are now about to be shifted over to the NABU. Even those the NABU says it can’t handle all these new cases:
“In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, NABU spokeswoman Svitlana Olifira said there was a risk that “all current investigations by (NABU) detectives may be blocked””
There’s a risk that “all current investigations by (NABU) detectives may be blocked”. And that’s according to the NABU spokeswoman. And it’s a sentiment Serhii Horbatiuk, head of special investigations at the general prosecutor’s office, clearly agrees with:
And note that while Serhii Horbatiuk was previously complaining about a lack of US help on two investigations into Manafort that involve financial corruption, don’t forget that the general prosecutor’s office is also the office that’s been investigating the sniper attacks. For instance, he’s an article from 2016 about the discovery of the weapons used in the sniper attack. It’s special investigations department at the prosecutor general’s office who found those weapons:
“Representatives of the Special Investigations Department at the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine have found the remains of a sniper rifle, used by officers of the Berkut riot police force against the Euromaidan activists.”
So it raises the question of whether or not the sniper attack investigation is also getting transferred to the NABU. But, again, even if that’s not the case and it’s only the financial investigations into Manafort that are getting transferred to the NABU, those financial investigations could still provide key evidence in terms of who Manafort may have been secretly working with in the lead up to the 2014 Maidan protests.
But there’s one more twist to all this: The NABU just launched an investigation into the prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko:
“The case against Lutsenko was opened by the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) on October 30, after it was presented with an order from the Solomyansky District Court of Kyiv, NABU spokeswoman Svitlana Olifira told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service on November 17.”
So on top of the 3,500 new cases transferred from the prosecutor general’s office to the NABU, the NABU is also going to be investigating the prosecutor general. It’s quite a twist. And while the NABU is saying that there’s no person in particular who got this probe launched against Lutsenko, the former Ukrainian deputy prosecutor-general under Viktor Yanukovych is claiming that he is actually the person who spurred this into action:
So the investigation into Lutsenko was prompted by a guy who fled to Russia in 2014?! Wow, now that’s a twist. Adding to the twist is that that Renat Kuzmin was actually the person in charge of the case against former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the same case that Paul Manafort’s firm is charged with fueling by producing a report justifying Tymoshenko’s jailing.
But perhaps it’s not much of a twist. According the NABU, Renat Kuzmin frequently makes requests for investigations and the NABU is obligated to open an investigation or Kuzmin will take them to court:
“Former Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin writes on his Facebook that the investigation started after his inquiry. The NABU told INSIDER that Kuzmin submits tons of such inquiries, and when the Bureau doesn’t grant them, he goes to court, which makes the Bureau start an investigation.”
So based on the comments from the NABU it sounds like this might just be routine investigation they are obligated to conduct. Although it would be interesting to know if this was the fist time since Kuzmin fled the country that he was able to successfully get one of his requests turned into an actual probe.
Also keep in mind that it was Lutsenko who made the ominous public warning to the Ukrainian public about the sniper attack and the discovery of the weapons in the lake: “We found it with a large number of automatic rifles on the bottom of one of Kiev’s lakes. They were cut and drowned in one batch by a single group, whose leader is one of the targets of our investigation. Unfortunately, this man who, according to our version, upon the orders of [former Interior Minister Vitaliy] Zakharchenko helped the “black hundred” flee Kyiv, destroyed and drowned their weapons, he, himself, was with us on the Maidan.” So Lutsenko has already demonstrated a willingness to ‘go there’ and hint to the public that his investigators have discover something very shocking in relation to the sniper attacks.
Given that, and given the broader context of a larger move by the Ukrainian legislature to move a large number of investigations out of the prosecutor general’s office to the NABU where these cases are expected to die from a lack of manpower, you have to wonder if we’re about to see a lot of Ukrainian corruption cases suddenly fade away. Including the various investigations into Paul Manafort.
Another indictment, another twist. That’s how the Mueller probe has been operating of late. And in the latest indictment we get the kind of twist that actually helps clarify one of the key points of the whole situation in Ukraine that’s been largely ignored in the years since the conflict broke out.
So what was the twist? There’s actually a lot of twists. The initial twist is that Paul Manafort reportedly hired two lobbying firms to pay former European leaders to lobbying foreign governments on behalf of Ukraine regarding the negotiations between Ukraine and the EU over the proposed trade union. It was the collapse of those talks that precipitated the Maidan protests and downfall of the Yanukovych government in 2014 and the subsequent outbreak of civil war.
The group of former European leaders hired by Manafort was secretly paid $2.5 million via various
One of the lobbying firms was a political strategy firm Mercury Public Affairs. The second firm was the Podesta Group. And, yes, the Podesta Group’s Tony Podesta is indeed the brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta whose emails were hacked and released. And, like Manafort, Tony Podesta had also long had the Yanukovych government as a client.
Additionally, the Podesta Group admitted that it had “arranged meetings and media opportunities” for visiting European leaders regarding Ukraine, starting in 2012, including for Mr. Gusenbauer, Mr. Prodi and two former presidents, Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland and Viktor A. Yushchenko of Ukraine. So this was the kind of diplomatic outreach effort that involved Viktor Yushchenko, meaning it was an effort with trans-partisan support in Ukraine.
According to the Mueller indictment, the lobbying effort was led by “Politican A”. That’s now confirmed to be Alfred Gusenbauer, who was Austria’s chancellor in 2007 and 2008. Romano Prodi, Italy’s prime minister between 1996 and 1998, and again from 2006 to 2008, was also part of the effort. Along with Aleksander Kwasniewski, president of Poland from 1995 to 2005, and Patrick Cox of Ireland who is a former president of the European Parliament. A theme with this group is that they had relatively friendly relations with the Kremlin and were left-leaning. And apparently hired by right-wing ‘fixer’ Paul Manafort working with the Podesta Group. So it was a diplomatic effort that wasn’t just trans-partisan with respect to the Ukrainian elements involved.
And it makes sense that it would be left-leaning European politicians selected for this operation since they come for a political orientation that historically had friendlier relations with the Soviet Union. But as we’ll see, they met with groups like Republicans in the US Congress. And that raises the question of the extent to which this group was acting as negotiators between decision-makers in the West and the Kremlin. In other words, did this group represent a sort of middle-man between Russia and the West in terms of negotiating the future of Ukraine?
And who was it that was sponsoring the efforts of Paul Manafort’s lobbing firm and the Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs, and the delegation of politicians? We don’t know quite yet. But one hint might be found in the nickname for the group of European ex-politician lobbyists: the “Hapsburg Group”. It’s assumed that the “Hapsburg” name is a reference to Gusenbauer and Austria’s history with the Habsburg empire. But as we’ll see, there’s probably more that name since Germany’s Martin Schulz — leader of the center-left SPD — appears to have a role in all of this too. While he was president of the European Parliament.
So, to summarize, the Mueller indictment is asserting that Manafort hired Mercury Public Affairs and the Podesta Group to hire these former politicians to lobby on behalf of the government of Ukraine. Specifically, to lobby in relation to the negotiations over the EU-Ukraine trade union. That’s the understanding from the Mueller indictment. Except all of the politicians totally deny it. Although their denials vary:
* Gusenbauer said that he had been “remunerated” for his work on behalf of Ukraine, but he did not say by whom. But he did assert that he had never worked for Mr. Yanukovych and that he had only met Mr. Manafort two or three times. But he did not deny that he had received money from an “American or English company.”
* Prodi claimed to have been paid by Gusenbauer, but it was a result of the “normal private relations I had with him,” according to Prodi, but “not any money from external sources.” Prodi added: “I tell you I have never been paid from any lobby group in America.”
* Kwasniewski said, “I did meet Manafort two or three times during our mission in Ukraine in 2012 and 2013, but that’s it. At the time, he was an adviser to President Yanukovych, whom I also met, and it was only natural that our paths had to cross a couple of times.” He added: “The last time I saw Manafort was probably around the fall of 2013. He never paid us. I never had any financial relationship with him, and I never heard of the Hapsburg Group.”
* Cox said that he had never heard of the Hapsburg Group, had never been paid by anyone for his efforts in Ukraine, and had had no dealings with Mr. Manafort.
So all four of these former politicians reportedly secretly hired by Paul Manafort insist that, no, they either have never met Manafort or met him a few times but had nothing to do with him otherwise.
But there was an additional part of their explanation that adds a potentially significant new twist that could reveal an important context for who Paul Manafort was actually working for during his period of consulting the Yankovych government: According to both Andrew Kwasniewski and Patrick Cox, they were engaged in these diplomatic endeavors, without pay, to try to secure the release of the Ukrainian political detainees that the EU demanded be released as part of the terms of the proposed EU-Ukraine trade pact. And the man who invited them to do this was Martin Schultz, head of Germany’s SPD and the head of the European parliament at the time.
So we have a mysterious diplomatic initiative designed to convince governments that Ukraine deserves to be allowed into a trade pact with the EU. The four diplomats vehemently deny Paul Manafort had anything to do with it, but two of them assert that it was Martin Schulz, then president of the EU parliament, who invited them to do it.
This is potentially quite significant in regards to Manafort because let’s not forget that one of the biggest mysteries swirling around Manafort at this point is why his daughter’s hacked text messages indicated that he was somehow behind the Maidan sniper massacre. And that sniper massacre was critical in forcing Yanukovych, Manafort’s client, from power. So why would Paul Manafort have played a role in those sniper attacks unless he was ultimately working for a client who wanted to see Yankovych out of power? That’s been a significant question surrounding Manafort ever since those hacked texts were released and now we learn that a secret lobbying crew, the “Hapsburg Group”, was possibly financed by Manafort and conducting negotiations with the blessing of the head of the SPD who was also the head of the European Parliament at the time. This doesn’t mean Manafort arranged the sniper massacre at the behest of EU interests, but it makes such a scenario fit the known facts better. Which is pretty chilling.
And this doesn’t mean the European parliament itself was behind the approval Schulz was granting. It could have been some other power faction who Schulz is also associated with. Perhaps a predominantly German faction? Perhaps a few Habsburgs were involved? Who knows. But it would help explain the “Hapsburg Group” name if Schulz represented a German power faction that was very interested in getting Ukraine into that trade agreement. Nicknaming this the “Hapsburg Group” never made a lot of sense if it was simply a reference to Gusenbauer being from Austria.
So who was Manafort actually working for when those Maidan sniper attacks took place? Yanukovych or the forces behind the Hapsburg Group? That’s now an open question in this situation now that we are getting hints that Manafort had other EU clients that wanted to get Ukraine into the EU. And that’s why this Hapsburg Group revelation is quite a twist regarding Manafort and the sniper attacks. Manafort is a multifaceted mercenary selling out to multiple sides and that could turn out to be a critical fact in this investigation.
Now why was all of this part of a Mueller indictment? Well, one of the governments lobbied by the Hapsburg Group was the US. Specifically, a collection of Republican congressmen involved with foreign affairs. But they were never told that these former European leaders were lobbyists hired by Manafort. Instead, they were portrayed as independent voices who were independently assessing how far Ukraine had come in meeting the various obligations the EU had laid down in order to let Ukraine form a trade union with the EU. That appears to be where the Mueller indictment comes in: Manafort was arranging gatherings that involved this fundamental misrepresentation of fact while lobbying the US government. In other words, Mueller’s indictment describes the Hapsburg group’s activities as deceptive lobbying conspiracy against the US.
According to the Mueller indictment against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, “Foreign Politician A” (Gusenbauer) led a group that “lobbied United States Members of Congress, officials in the executive branch, and their staffs” in coordination with Manafort and Gates in 2013. And Gusenbauer has indeed confirmed that he had met with American politicians around that time But he also claims to have been unaware of any links to Manafort. Gusenbauer did say he had met Manafort previously — once in Europe and once in the United States — but it was “just for a coffee.”
Records also show Romano Prodi did indeed meet with a delegation of Republican congressmen in 2013, but Prodi insists that he did not believe he had been paid by Manafort and that he had “never been paid from any lobby group in America.”
So we appear to have a collection of strong denials along with non-denial denials from the figures at the heart of this indictment.
Additionally, Gusenbauer asserts that he was part of a “noble” effort to bring Ukraine closer to the European Union. As Gusenbauer puts it. “I was not employed by Mr. Yanukovych’s government...I was, in the European, and American and general interest, working for an association agreement between Ukraine and Europe.” And that appears to be the general take on the situation from all four of the hired politicians: they were doing this in the interest of Europe. And, from the perspective of those who wanted this trade pact wit Ukraine, that was indeed the case. They were lobbying to get Ukraine into a trade pact with the EU. It’s one of the key facts that all sides can agree on. And Paul Manafort apparently helped financed this. So now that we learn that Paul Manafort may have been working for multiple clients during his time in Ukraine, who was he really working for? That’s a big new question raised by the Hapsburg Group indictment:
“The indictment, released on Friday by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election in the United States, did not name the former officials, but it set off furious speculation about who they might be.”
Yes, the speculation of the identities of these unnamed former European officials was indeed furious. And short-lived, because it was pretty clear who these people worth within a day after Romano Prodi, the former prime minister of Italy, admitted in an interview that he and Alfred Gusenbauer, were indeed working on exactly the kind of diplomatic initiative described in the indictment:
And this speculation was butressed by official documents. Mercury Public Affairs, a political strategy group hired by Manafort, filed last year that it sent Mr. Gusenbauer to meet several members of Congress in mid 2013. And Prodi admitted to recalling such a meeting. Although he claimed to know nothing about Mercury:
And a second lobbying firm, the Podesta Group, also filed last year that it “arranged meetings and media opportunities” for visiting European leaders starting in 2012. And this included Gusenbauer, Prodi, Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland and Viktor A. Yushchenko of Ukraine:
Keep in mind that Viktor A. Yushchenko is an arch rival of Viktor Yanukovych was a leader of the political forces in Ukraine that led the Maidan protests and Yanukovych’s eventual overthrow. So to learn that Yushchenko was part of this effort is an important fact for establishing that this diplomatic effort Manafort was leading had broad support within Ukraine’s political establishment.
So these meetings in 2012 and 2013 by two lobbying firms hired by Manafort are part of the public record.
But the speculation has shifted to who knew what when. Because all of these former officials are denying they had anything to do with Paul Manafort, and certainly weren’t paid by him for their efforts. Instead, they argue, this was a good faith effort to bring Ukraine into the EU because they felt that was in Europe’s interest:
“In an interview on Saturday with the Austrian Press Agency, Mr. Gusenbauer said that he had been “remunerated” for his work on behalf of Ukraine, but he did not say by whom. He added that he had never worked for Mr. Yanukovych and that he had only met Mr. Manafort two or three times.”
Note that Gusenbauer did admit to be paid by “an American or English company”.
So we have documents that make it clear these meetings with US congressmen happened involving these individuals. And Gusenbauer admits to being paid by “an American or English” firm. But he’s sticking to the idea that Manafort had nothing to do with this. And Prodi acknowledges the diplomatic effort, but claims that he thought Gusenbauer was leading it, and also that he never heard of the nickname “the Hapsburg Group”.
And then there’s the explanations from Andrew Kwasniewski of Poland and Patrick Cox of Ireland. They appeared to be more focused on the issue of getting several political prisoners released since they was one of the EU demands for the trade agreement. And they both assert that they were doing this work for free and at the behest of Martin Schulz, then the president of the EU parliament. The way Cox puts it, he and Kwasniewski and Schulz were basically lobbying Yanukovych to release jailed political prisoners. So based on that characterization the Hapsburg Group sounds much more like a European lobbying effort lobbying both the US and Ukraine and trying to make sure the deal happens:
Cox goes on to make it clear that he would never lobby on behalf of the Yanukovych government:
So Cox is making it clear: he felt he was lobbying on behalf of European interests. And at the behest of Martin Schulz. Not for Paul Manafort and not for the Yanukovych government.
And while Mr. Kwasniewski of Poland admits to meeting Manafort in Ukraine in 2012 and 2013, he assert that he was never paid by Manafort and he has never heard of the Hapsburg Group:
And according to the Mueller indictment, when this lobbying effort came to the US, it was under the guise of these former European politicians being unbiased validators of Mr. Yanukovych’s efforts to meet the EU demands over the trade union. The plan, according to the indictment, was for the group to “appear to be providing their independent assessments of Government of Ukraine actions, when in fact they were paid lobbyists for Ukraine.”:
So that’s what we know so far about the Hapsburg Group chapter of this #TrumpRussia investigation. And, again, it’s a chapter that raises a significant question when it comes to Paul Manafort and his work in Ukraine: who was he actually working for? Was he quietly hired by a group associated with Martin Schulz to effectively lobby Yanukovych? If so, was that group the EU — with Schulz acting as president of the EU parliament — or might Schulz have been representing a smaller group of interests? German interests perhaps? Habsburg dynasty interests in concert with other powerful European private interests perhaps?
But there’s another key aspect of the entire saga around the conflict in Ukraine that this Hapsburg Group affair does an excellent job highlighting: the Viktor Yanukovych government was heavily in favor of joining the EU trade agreement until the very last minute when he backed out. That’s why Paul Manafort was hired to lead this secret diplomatic initiative. Yes, there’s a question as to whether or not Manafort was also hired by or secretly working with EU elements during this period, but it’s clear that the Ukrainian government really was trying to make this trade pact a reality until the last minute reversal.
And as the following article from December of 2013 — a month after the deal collapsed — makes clear, there were a number of reasons for the collapse of the deal and those reasons did NOT include a lack of desire on Yanukovych’s part to make the deal happen. The Kremlin clearly played a significant role in that last minute reversal with a carrot and stick approach. And the demands for the release of Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister of Ukraine Yanukovych had jailed, was another key sticking point. Yanukovych reportedly fears her intensely.
But the article focuses on another key under-recognized factor that led to Yanukovych’s pull out of the deal and it’s a factor that actually indicates he would have preferred to fulfill the deal eventually: the EU and IMF gave Ukraine a crappy really deal. Part of the agreement was that the Ukraine get its economy up to EU standards which would have been wildly expensive. And the only help the EU was offering was loans. Inadequate loans. Some from the IMF. It was a deal that was quite possibly going to lead to the kind of austerity nightmare that the EU and IMF is now known to enforce with glee.
Also note that the need to negotiate with the IMF over this deal would be one of the reasons why the Hapsburg Group would have needed to meet with US congressmen. The IMF is largely a US-directed institution. But such negotiations, if they happened, clearly didn’t persuade the IMF to offer the kind of assurances needed to gain Yanukovych’s confidence. And without such assurances it’s not hard to see why he wouldn’t have had much confidence in the deal. The EU was in full-on mean-mode in 2013.
So if the EU and IMF would have simply offered Ukraine a better deal, one that didn’t likely involve intense austerity for Ukraine, Ukraine would have probably accepted the deal and this current nightmare in Ukraine may have been avoided. It’s a reminder that brutal austerity isn’t just a bad look for the EU. It’s bad policy:
“Public and private arm-twisting by Putin, including threats to Ukraine’s economy and Yanukovich’s political future, played a significant part. But the unwillingness of the EU and International Monetary Fund to be flexible in their demands of Ukraine also had an effect, making them less attractive partners.”
Yep, don’t forget that in 2012–2013, the EU was in the middle of his austerity-spree. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain were getting the screws turned on them in a massive way. That was the public face of the EU that Ukraine was trying to snuggle up to. So you can understand why assurances that Ukraine wouldn’t be forced to undergo a similar nightmare regime would have been seen as crucial for these negotiations. But those assurances never happened, making it a massive gamble for Yanukovych go proceed ahead with the deal.
And yet, despite the clear and present risks of entering into such an arrangement with the EU, Yanukovich was apparently quite keen on finding a way to make the deal happen. That’s how interested he was in moving Ukraine closer to the EU. And that’s what the Hapsburg Group initiative was apparently all about. Making this deal a reality. It’s a major fact that complicates the narrative that Manafort, or even Yanukovych, are merely ‘Putin puppets’. Despite friendly ties with the Kremlin, Yanukovych was still a creature of Ukraine’s power structure and that power structure has multiple power orientations. Some Ukrainian oligarchs are clearly focused on good relations with Russia. But by no means all, and that included a number of figures in Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. Including, most notably, Yanukovych himself. At least Yanukovych appeared to be in favor of the EU deal up until the last minute. Hence Manafort’s diplomatic campaign with the Hapsburg Group:
“We will pursue integration with Europe.” That was reportedly Yanukovych in September of 2013. And all indications, including the Hapsburg Group affair, point towards that being a genuine desire.
But as the negotiations deadline neared, Yanukovych flipped. And it wasn’t like a surprise flip. It was a flip that followed the refusal of the EU and IMF and make assurances that he wasn’t about to throw his country into economic tumult with the deal. The EU and IMF, as expected, engaged in their typical Troikan inflexibility on these matters. And, not unreasonably, that was something Yanukovych saw as an undesirable trait in the super-power Ukraine was trying to integrate with. Again, brutal austerity isn’t just a bad look. It’s bad policy. In part because it’s such a bad look:
So while it’s widely assumed that Yanukovych was just blindly taking Putin’s orders, when we look back the actual reporting at the time we find that Yanukovych appeared to be very eager to work out a deal, and only reversed when the costs of the deal spiked after the EU and IMF got cheap. Imagine if the EU and IMF hadn’t been so cheap. Imagine how different the situation might be today. Again, brutal austerity isn’t just a bad look. It’s horrible policy that’s erodes the future. In so many ways.
But while Yanukovych may not have been taking Putin’s personal orders when he called off the trade union, to some extent these negotiations over covering the costs of upgrading Ukraine to EU standards were taken personally by Yanukovych according to the article. He was personally dismayed that the EU was being so unreasonable when it came to the costs Ukraine was going to have to pay. And when you look at what the EU was offering, he had every reason to be dismayed: Yanukovych was arguing that Ukraine needed $160 billion over three years to deal with the loss of trade with Russia combined with the costs of upgrading its economy and society to EU standards. $160 billion was presumably an overestimate. But look what the EU offered: $839 million. And apparently there was $19 billion in loans over seven years on the table but the Ukrainian negotiators reportedly never heard this offer. And those woefully inadequate offers by the EU are a big reason why we can’t just assume that Yanukovych never really intended on this deal. The deal really did turn out to be potentially hazardous for Ukraine when the final negotiations unfolded and the EU refused to budge:
“An EU source said Ukraine could have been in line to receive at least 19 billion euros in EU loans and grants over the next seven years if it had signed a trade and cooperation agreement and reached a deal with the IMF. But that sum was not mentioned to Ukraine officials during negotiations, said the source.”
Note that the 19 bilion euros in EU loans and grants over the next seven years that the EU reportedly offered would still have likely been a tiny fraction of what Ukraine is needed (Yanukovich was estimating Ukrained needed $160 billion over three years). And that kind of skimpy offer is completely consistent with the approach the EU has been taking with virtually all of the EU nations that have been searching for help since the 2008 financial crisis grew into the eurozone crisis. So while the EU source might be trying to act like there was actually a decent secret offer being made, 19 billion isn’t actually enough and all recent history indicates that the offer was likely very inadequate because those were the only kinds of offer the EU was offering in 2013. Very inadequate offers. It’s a crucial context for understanding this period of history leading up to Ukraine’s conflict.
And the IMF wasn’t making a decent offer either. Which is also completely consistent with the IMF:
All that said, it’s also seems undeniable that the demand to release Yulia Tymoshenko factored in significantly into Yanukovych’s calculus. It wasn’t just that Yanukovych hated and feared her. His supporters overwhelmingly wanted to ‘lock her up’ too:
And in the midst of these fateful negotiations, where Ukraine would make a historic lurch away from Russia and towards Europe, Ukraine still wasn’t offered a firm prospect of full EU membership. Now, on the one hand, that could have been part of the diplomacy required to ease the strains with the Kremlin. But on the other hand, not offering assurances of full EU membership is fully consistent with the EU model of brutal austerity that was on full display in 2013. And Yanukovych’s big fear, and very sane fear, was intense austerity as a result of this deal. So not even getting a guarantee of EU membership is a big let down. Lots of austerity was going to be demanded on the path to EU membership, and even more austerity is possible if that membership isn’t assured. Because, once again, austerity isn’t just a bad policy. It’s a horrible look, especially during your other negotiations. And horrible looks are generally bad policy during negotiations:
So that was all part of the maelstrom of tension leading up to the sniper attacks of February 20th, 2014. And part of what needs to be factored into speculation about who Paul Manafort was actually working for in 2013–2014. And especially during the sniper attacks of February 2014. Because after this Hapsburg Group indictment from Mueller it seems pretty clear that Paul Manafort was, at a minimum, working in concert with EU interests who also wanted to see Ukraine join this trade union. So when the Yanukovych government reversed course on November 21st, 2013, who was Manafort really working for at that point? The Yanukovych government or the EU forces behind the Hapsburg Group?
Or how about private interest that would stand to profit immensely from the trade deal? Was Manafort working for private interests at the same time he was on Yanukovych’s payroll? Don’t forget that Romano Prodi speculated that it was more likely that the money for the Hapsburg Group came from European businessmen interested in keeping Europe and Ukraine close. Well, was that the case? Did Manafort manage to acquire European clients who started off wanting the same goal as the Yanukovych government but then came into sharp conflict after the reversal?
And if some kind of situation like that happened, which side did Manafort choose after the trade deal collapsed? These are the kinds of questions that the Hapsburg Group revelation just inserted into the mystery of the Maidan sniper attacks.
@Pterrafractyl–
Note that the Habsburgs are once again active in Ukraine, with Galicia (Western Ukraine) having been part of their empire for a long time.
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-833-shooting-ourselves-in-the-foot-in-ukraine-habsburg-redux/
Best,
Dave
Here’s another story related to Mueller probe’s investigation of Paul Manafort’s work in Ukraine filled with no shortage of twists. And it directly relates to the recent “Hapsburg Group” revelation about the diplomatic initiative apparently financed by Manafort’s consulting firm that sent former European officials to lobby governments, including the US, to get Ukraine’s bid to join an EU trade union accepted. And it also relates to the mysterious communications between a server over by Alfa Bank and a Trump organization server that has fueled speculation that Alfa’s server was being used as a secret communications channel between the Trump team and the Kremlin:
Dutch lawyer Alex van der Zwaan plead guilty to lying to the Mueller investigation. Van der Zwaan worked for the respected law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which worked with Manafort in Ukraine. Van der Zwaan is also the son-in-law of Alfa bank founder German Khan (a Ukrainian). Recall the mysterious Alfa bank server and its odd communications with a Trump Organization server that was revealed in late October of 2016 (covered in FTR#930). The FBI was continuing to investigate that mystery as of March of 2017, and there have been no indications since that the investigation into that Alfa server mystery was closed. So learning about an Alfa founder’s son-in-law pleading guilty in those investigation is potentially a pretty big deal.
So what did van der Zwaan lie about? He lied about when he last communicated with Paul Manafort’s long-time consulting partner Rick Gates. Specifically, Mueller’s prosecutors alleged that van der Zwaan falsely told federal investigators that he last communicated with Gates in mid-August 2016 and that last communication was just an innocuous text message. Instead, prosecutors say, van der Zwaan spoke to Gates and another unnamed person in September 2016 using encrypted communications. And he recorded these conversations. The unnamed person wasn’t identified other than to they were a longtime business associate of Manafort who was principally based in Ukraine at the time and spoke to van der Zwaan in Russian.
Mueller’s prosecutors also said van der Zwaan deleted emails rather than turning them over to Skadden, which was gathering documents for the special counsel. And one document he deleted was the email to Gates requesting that they use encrypted communications.
So it sounds like van der Zwaan deleted the emails requesting the encrypted communications...but he didn’t delete the encrypted communications. It’s a reminder that it’s going to be a lot harder to do investigations like this when end-to-end strong encryption is the norm and there’s no need to send the “hey, let’s use encrypted communications”-email. And those future investigations will be even harder when the encrypted communications are actually deleted.
Adding to the conspicuous nature of the mid-August 2016 request for encrypted communications, the request came shortly after Manafort resigned from Trump’s campaign in the wake of a New York Times report that alleged Manafort had accepted off-the-books cash payments for his work in Ukraine. Those off-the-books cash payments to Manafort are particularly sensitive for van der Zwaan because circumstantial evidence suggests that van der Zwaan himself may have been a recipient of off-the-books payments of some sort for the work he did for Manafort while Manafort was consulting the Yanukovych government.
And, in particular, it’s the work van der Zwaan did for Manafort that was directly related to the “Hapsburg Group” initiative that appears to be at the center of those suspected off-the-books cash payments from Manafort to van der Zwaan. The Ukrainian government claimed to have paid only $12,000 for the work van der Zwaan did, an amount that put it just below the limit that would have required competitive bidding for the project under Ukrainian law. Prosecutors are alleging that Manafort and Gates used an offshore account to secretly pay $4 million for the report.
So what did Alex van der Zwaan do for Manafort as part of the “Hapsburg Group” diplomatic push? He wrote a report for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom that made the case that the jailing of Yulia Tymoshenko was legally just and that Ukraine deserved to be allowed into the trade union without releasing Tymoshenko.
And that’s a pretty big twist. Because recall one of the biggest twists in the hole “Hapsburg Group” case: that Manafort arranged this “Hapsburg Group” to lobby the case that Ukraine deserved to be allowed into a trade pact with the EU. Given the widespread assumption that Manafort and the Yanukovych government were exclusively operating under the direction of the Kremlin it was a pretty big twist to learn that Manafort was paying for a diplomatic push to get Ukraine past the barriers preventing it from joining a trade union with the EU.
And that’s all why it’s also a big twist to learn that Alex van der Zwann is the son-in-law of one of the founder of Alfa Group, German Khan. Because both Alfa and German Khan are generally characterized as being close to Putin and the Kremlin. But as was laid out in FTR #530 and FTR #573, Alfa Group’s relationship with power is by no means limited to the Kremlin. And that range of relationships — from South American criminal cartels, to European money-laundering networks, to even the networks that trafficked some of the 9/11 hijackers where Nazis-meet-Islamists — is part of what makes this new twist about the son-in-law of one of Alfa’s founders such a big twist: the range of feasible implications of this twist is vast because Alfa is connected to so many shady networks beyond their obvious Kremlin ties. It is a globally shady entity.
Finally, the subject of the September 2016 recorded encrypted phone call between van der Zwaan, Gates, one the unnamed person was indeed that 2012 report on Tymoshenko’s jailing prepared by van der Zwaan’s law firm.
So let’s quickly review what was learned with the guilty plea of Alex van der Zwaan:
1. Alex van der Zwaan, the son-in-law of one of Alfa’s co-founders, German Khan, created a report justifying the jailing of Yulia Tymoshenko so Ukraine could enter the EU trade pact in 2012.
2. Van der Zwaan was officially only paid $12,000 for the report, an amount just below the limit that would have required competitive bidding for the work under Ukrainian law.
3. Van der Zwaan claimed to Mueller probe that his last contact with with Rick Gates, who served as a top official on President Trump’s campaign and a longtime business partner of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, was in mid August of 2016, right around the time Manafort resigned from the campaign over stories that he accepted off-the-books cash payments for his work in Ukraine.
4. Van der Zwaan actually deleted some of his emails to Gates, including one requesting that they use encrypted communications. This email was not turned over to the Mueller probe when requested but was instead deleted.
5. Van der Zwaan apparently kept recorded one of the encrypted calls he had with Gates and another unnamed individual in September of 2016. That call was about the 2012 report.
6. Prosecutors allege that Manafort and Gates used an offshore account to secretly pay $4 million for the report.
So it looks like Mueller is alleging that Manafort secretly paid big money to the son-in-law of Alfa Group to write up a report that would make it easier for Ukraine to join a trade union with the EU. It’s one helluva twist:
“In a two-page charging document, prosecutors alleged that van der Zwaan falsely told federal investigators that he last communicated with Gates in mid-August 2016 through an innocuous text message.”
Lying to prosecutors. That’s at the heart of the charges Alex van der Zwaan plead guilty to. It’s an unsurprising prosecutorial theme for an investigation of this nature. But van der Zwaan isn’t just some random lawyer. He’s the son-in-law of German Khan, cofounder and an owner of Alfa Group:
And the particular lie he told was about when he last communicated with Rick Gates. And there evidence of this lie is apparently in the form of an encrypted phone call with Gates and one unnamed person that van der Zwaan recorded:
And this move to encrypted communications happened short after Manafort had to resign from Trump’s campaign following the revelation that he took off-the-books cash payments during his work in Ukraine:
And the subject of the encrypted phone call that took place in September 2016 was, not surprisngly, about the work van der Zwaan did in 2012 creating a report justifying the jailing of Yulia Tymoshenko. A report that van der Zwaan’s firm was secretly paid $4 million for, according to prosecutors:
So that’s all one big piece of circumstantial evidence that the Yanukovych government really did want Ukraine to join this trade union with the EU.
Now, did van der Zwaan’s report direct relate to the Hapsburg Group’s lobbying efforts? Yes, according to a recent interview of Patrick Cox, the Irish politician and former head of the EU parliament who was part of the Hapsburg Group.
First, recall that Cox claimed he was never paid by Manafort, and basically nothing to do with Manafort other than meeting him a few times, and was actually doing his diplomatic work pro-bono under the recommendation of SPD leader Martin Schulz, who was at that point President of the EU parliament. And that much of his work was lobbying to get the Ukrainian government to release the political prisoners the EU demanded be released as part of the terms of the trade union. In other words, Cox asserts that his work with the ‘Hapsburg Group’ was really work on behalf of the EU during these negotiations between Ukraine and the EU over the trade union and that work mostly involved trying to get Ukraine to release those prisoners, most notably Yulia Tymoshenko.
So how did van der Zwaan’s report factor into this? Well, according to Cox, it was that report report that Viktor Yanukovych gave to him in 2012 as a way of arguing that the release of Tymoshenko was unnecessary because it was done properly and followed due process. And it’s not surprising that the report was used in this manner. That was the point of writing it. But it’s notable that we have one of the figures for the ‘Hapsburg Group’ receiving this same report that Manafort apparently paid a lot of money to have created because it gives us an idea of how much money and effort Manafort was putting into this effort to get Ukraine into the EU’s orbit:
“At one meeting with Mr Yanukovych, Mr Cox said that the then Ukrainian president pushed across the table “with a bit of a smirk on his face” a report by US law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meager & Flom.”
Yeah, Yanukovych probably had at least a bit of smirk on his face when he handed Cox that report in 2012. Especially if Cox was, wittingly or unwittingly, working as part of a Manafort-orchestrated “Hapsburg Group” operation.
And as expected, this report asserting that Tymoshenko’s jailing was justified and followed due process:
So that all adds a new context for the “Hapsburg Group” revelation. Now we know that the Yanukovych government apparently paid big money for report by a respected law firm that would allow Yanukovych to keep Tymoshenko in jail while still allowing the EU-Ukraine trade union to become reality.
And don’t forget, the “Hapsburg Group” operation apparently involved another $2 million in secret financing:
So, assuming that $2 million wasn’t part of the $4 million reportedly paid to Zwaan’s law firm, that would put the price tag of these lobbying efforts at $6 million. And that’s just what we know of. In other words, the people paying Manafort and his team during this period really, really, really wanted Ukraine to snuggle up to the EU.
There appears to be a fight on the Ukrainian far-right breaking out that will definitely be worth watching: Nadia Savchenko, the Ukrainian lawmaker who was formerly a fighter pilot who become a national hero after getting shot down over Eastern Ukraine and spending 22 months in Russian captivity, was just charged by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko with planning a terrorist attack on parliament intended to kill Petro Poroshenko and other high-level Ukrainian government officials. Keep in mind that Savchenko called for a “military-style” government last year, and suggested that she would be a good person to lead that.
Savchenko replied with her own charge, although that charge changed somewhat after she met with the SBU: Savchenko first asserted that she witnessed Andriy Parubiy, the neo-Nazi speaker of the parliament, with direct involvement in the Maidan sniper attacks. She made this charge to journalists in front of the SBU headquarters where she was called to answer questions as a witness regarding the alleged terror plot. After she met with the SBU, however, Savchenko changed her accusation and said it was actually Serhiy Pashinskyy (Sergei Pashinsky), a different lawmaker from Yulia Tymoshenko’s party who was also a leader of the Maidan protests, who Savchenko saw facilitating the sniper attacks. And it was just “a slip of the tongue” when she initially accused Parubiy.
“Savchenko, a former military aviator who spent 22 months in Russian prisons after being detained by separatists in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine, claimed on March 15 that lawmaker Serhiy Pashinskyy played a prominent role in a deadly crackdown on pro-European demonstrators during antigovernment Maidan protests that toppled Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.”
Serhiy Pashinskyy played a prominent role in the sniper attacks: That was Savchenko’s claim. After she initially claimed that she actually saw Parubiy “leading snipers into the Hotel Ukraine,” which looms over the Maidan. “I saw a blue minibus and armed people coming out of it, I have said earlier [to investigators] who those people were. Those people are now lawmakers.” But that was just a “slip of the tongue”, and it was actually Serhiy Pashinskyy who she saw leading snipers into the hotel:
And this is all in the context of charges that Savchenko planned an attack on the parliament using grenades, mortars and automatic weapons. According to Lutsenko, there is “irrefutable proof that Nadia Savchenko...personally planned, personally recruited, and personally gave instructions about how to commit a terrorist act here, in this chamber”:
And these accusations against Savchenko came after she arrived at the SBU headquarters to answer questions about Volodymyr Ruban, a key negotiator in prisoner exchanges with the Russia-backed separatists who was arrested last week after he was detained while crossing into government-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine — allegedly with large amounts of weapons and ammunition hidden in a shipment of furniture — and charged with plotting to kill Poroshenko and other top officials at their residences:
Note that Savchenko was charged with plotting an attack on the parliament while Ruban was charged with plotting attacks on the residences of top officials. So if these were coordinated attacks that really would have been a remarkable coup attempt if it was carried out.
It’s worth noting that this is not the first time such accusations have been hurdled towards Parubiy and Pashinskyy. For instance, there were news reports on Ukraine’s channel 112 back in 2014 that appeared to show Savchenko at the protests with a sniper rifle in the trunk of his car that led to speculation of his role. And as we can see from this January 2015 article, just days before the February 20, 2014, sniper attacks, there was concern about reports of large caches of weapons being stolen by anti-government protestors in Lviv. When Western officials met with Parubiy and told him to keep the Lviv guns away from Kiev. And while Parubiy denies that those guns ever made it to Kiev, he did admit to telling them that “if Western governments did not take firmer action against Yanukovych, the whole process could gain a very threatening dimension”. In this same article, Pashinskyy acknowledges leading large numbers of panicked Ukrainian security forces safely out of Kiev during period when the Yanukovych government was collapsing and the security services feared being attacked by angry mobs:
“Security forces were also thrown into a panic by rumors, fanned by the protesters themselves, about the whereabouts of hundreds of guns seized on the night of Feb. 18 in Lviv, a bastion of pro-European fervor 300 miles west of Kiev near the Polish border. The weapons were said to be on their way to Kiev to add to an already growing arsenal of hunting rifles, pistols, Molotov cocktails and metal clubs.”
So on February 18th, 2014, hundreds of guns were seized in Lviv and were rumored to be on their way to Kiev. Western envoys met with Andriy Parubiy, then the chief of the protesters’ security forces, and told him to keep the Lviv guns away from Kiev. And while Parubiy asserts that those guns never reached Kiev, he did admit that the prospect of those guns reaching Kiev acted as a powerful lever. He also admits, “I warned them that if Western governments did not take firmer action against Yanukovych, the whole process could gain a very threatening dimension”:
And the whole process did indeed gain a very threatening dimension, just as Parubiy warned.
And then there were these admissions from Serhiy Pashinskyy (Sergey Pashinsky) that he helped escort members of the security services out of Kiev as the situation deteriorated:
And that admission is particularly interesting given the prior claims by Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko that the Ukrainian public will be shocked when they learn that the man who helped so-called “black hundred” of police task force Berkut flee Kyiv and deliberately drowned their weapons to conceal evidence was part of the Maidan protests.
So that’s all why this emerging story of terror charges against Nadia Savchenko, and her counter-charges, is going to be something to watch unfold.
It sounds like the Ukrainian government has officially halted any cooperation with the Mueller investigations into Paul Manafort’s activities in Ukraine. Specifically, the Ukrainian investigations into Paul Manafort ties to the “Black Ledger”, the book that prompted Manafort’s removal as Donald Trump’s campaign manager after it was discovered in 2016 allegedly containing the payouts by the Yanukovych government to various people including Manafort, have been frozen. Additionally, Manafort’s long-time partner in Ukraine, Konstantin Kilimnik, has been allowed to leave Ukraine and is presumed to be residing in Russia.
These moves are being characterized by people in the Ukrainian government as being done purely out of a desire to not piss off the Trump administration so the US will provide Ukraine with aid, in particular the recently approved Javelin missiles.
And as we’re going to see in the second article excerpt, the investigation into Paul Manafort and the Black Ledger actually increases the potential threat the ledger poses to dozens of those other Ukrainian officials whose names also showed up in the ledger. How so? Well, the authenticity of the ledger has been in dispute. Only one Ukrainian official had had their signature found in the ledger confirmed to be authentic. But then, last year, financial records found by the new tenants in Manfort’s old office in Kiev last year appeared to demonstrated that Manafort’s firm did indeed receive at least $1.2 million of the payments listed to his name (out of $12.5 million in total to Manafort in the ledger), lending credibility to the rest of the ledger. This was in April of 2017.
And as we’ll see in the third article below, the official government investigation into the Black Ledger appeared to have already ground to halt by June of 2017 after getting transferred from the ostensibly non-political anti-corruption prosecutor’s office to the Special Investigations Department of the Prosecutor General’s office. As the article also notes, the “Black Ledger” implicated dozens of Ukrainian officials, including many of those in the current government. Not just former members of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. In other words, the Black Ledger likely includes payouts to people across Ukraine’s political spectrum.
So that’s all some of the context to keep in mind as we learn that Ukraine has halted its cooperation with the Mueller probe and is publicly talking about how appeasing Trump was their primary motivation:
“The cases are just too sensitive for a government deeply reliant on United States financial and military aid, and keenly aware of Mr. Trump’s distaste for the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into possible collusion between Russia and his campaign, some lawmakers say.”
The investigations into Paul Manafort are “too sensitive” for the Ukrainian government to pursue at this point. That appears to be the official line coming from the Ukrainian government.
And while it’s not surprising that the government took such a line, it is rather remarkable that openly talking about the halting of these investigations into Manafort over concerns of pissing off Trump isn’t, itself, deemed to be ‘too sensitive’ too. It’s like engaging in corruption to please someone and then telling the world about it.
That’s part of why it’s important to keep in mind that Ukrainian politicians have another massive reason to see an end to the investigations into Manafort: those investigations in Manafort overlap with investigations into dozens of Ukrainian politicians including many of those in power today. And that motive might explain so many Ukrainians are so willing to openly talking about how they’re killing the investigations into Manafort to avoid angering Trump.
The timing of this open talk by Ukrainian officials of a kind of quid pro quo with the Trump administration is also pretty interesting: The State Department issued an export license for the missiles on Dec. 22, the Pentagon announced final approval on March 2nd, and the Ukrainian government officially orders a halt investigations into Manafort in April. It’s like going out of their way to be corrupt in order to placate Trump:
And that official public discussion of the orders to not freeze the investigations into Manafort include special prosecutor Serhiy Horbatyuk who openly said in an interview, “We have no authority to continue our investigation”:
And note how the Black Ledger is described as an “evidential linchpin for investigating corruption in the former government,” underscoring the stakes involved with the Black Ledger. Because that corruption isn’t limited to the former government:
And for Manafort alone in the Black Ledger alleges a total $12.5 million in under-the-table payments. And one of the four Black Ledger investigations into Manafort involves the a former chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s foreign relations committee:
And that investigation involving the former chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s foreign relations committee is an important fun fact to keep in mind regarding Manafort and his work with the “Hapsburg Group”, a group of former European loeaders hired to lobby the US and EU governments in favor of allowing Ukraine into a trade union with the EU and address lingering concerns over the jailing of Yulia Tymoshenko, because that “Hapsburg Group” initiative was a major foreign government lobbying initiative being secretly handled by Manafort.
Plus, when we read that the two other cases involved Skadden Arps, keep in mind that Skadden Arps is the firm employing Alex van der Zwaan, the son-in-law of Alfa bank founder German Khan (who happens to be Ukrainian) who was also working with Manafort as part of the “Hapsburg Group” initiative. So when we learn about the halting of these investigations in Paul Manafort, that includes Ukraine’s investigation into the Hapsburg Group:
Also note how Ukraine’s official refusal to work with Mueller’s investigation appears to have happened rather suddenly in the last few months, with a formal offer to Mueller given in January:
Finally, we learn that the Ukrainian government has allowed Konstantin Kilimnik to leave Ukraine, putting him out of reach for questioning:
So, all in all, it’s pretty clear that the Ukrainian government really, really, really wants the world to know that it halted its investigations into Manafort in order to placate Donald Trump. It’s a rather odd public relations strategy that looks openly corrupt on its face, but that’s the image many of those in Ukraine’s government want to project.
And while it’s tempting to assume that Donald Trump himself is the primary audience for this openly corrupt quid pro quo ‘no-investigation-in-exchange-for-arms’ arrangement, don’t forget that the Black Ledger investigation potentially implicates dozens of Ukrainian officials including those in the current government. So if the closure of the investigation into Manafort can help assist in obscuring the investigation into all the other Ukrainian officials, there’s going to be an incentive to emphasize to domestic Ukrainian audiences the ‘pleasing Trump’ angle to the halting of the Manafort investigations and deflect from ulterior motives.
Along those lines, as the following article from April of 2017 points out, two of those Black Ledger entries on Paul Manafort were basically confirmed by documents found in the former Kiev office occupied by Manafort. And at that point in time only one other entry in the Black Ledger had been verified as authentic: Mykhaylo Okhendovsky, who is charged with receiving more than $160,000 from Party of Regions officials in 2012, when he was Ukraine’s main election official.
So when those documents found in Manafort’s old office appeared to confirm two of those Black Ledger entries in April of last year, that discovery was important for the rest of the Ukrainian political establishment because it lent credibility to the entire Black Ledger:
“Dozens of Ukrainian political figures mentioned in the Black Ledger are under investigation in Ukraine. The anti-corruption bureau, which has been looking into the Black Ledger, publicly confirmed the authenticity of the signature of one top official mentioned there. In December, the bureau accused Mykhaylo Okhendovsky of receiving more than $160,000 from Party of Regions officials in 2012, when he was Ukraine’s main election official.”
Yep, of the dozens of Ukrainian political figures mentioned in the Black Ledger, the entries detailing payouts to only one official, Mykhaylo Okhendovsky, had been public confirmed by Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau as of April of last year.
But then documents were uncovered confirming $1.2 million of the alleged Black Ledger to Manafort:
And those documents appear to have been simply left behind by Manafort in his Kiev office, although Manafort called it a forgery:
And those discovered documents confirming two of the payments to Manafort bolstered the credibility of the Black Ledger that had been attacked as a politically motivated fabrication:
And as of April 2017, Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau was projecting it would identify more Black Ledger suspect in coming months:
So with that in mind, let’s take a look at the following article from a few months later in June of 2017, about how the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office passed the Black Ledger documents to the Special Investigations Department of the Prosecutor General’s office. And as a result of that transfer, the Black Ledger investigation fell under political control and had already ground to a halt:
““The fact that the black ledger case was passed to the Prosecutor General’s Office means it will from now on be under political control,” Viktor Trepak, the former deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, wrote on Facebook on June 11.”
So in April of 2017 we have the anti-corruption bureau announcing more suspects in coming months, but by June of 2017 we learn that the anti-corruption bureau passed the Black Ledger to the Prosecutor General’s Office, putting the investigation under much more direct political control. And that political control is particularly relevant because it’s not just Yanokovych allies at risk from the Black Ledger. Plenty of people in the current Poroshenko-led government could also be at risk if this investigation continues:
The Special Investigations Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office responds by noting that detectives from the supposedly politically independent anti-corruption bureau will continue working with them on the case. Of course, that was in June of 2017, and the situation has changed as we’ve seen.
Also note how the Special Investigations Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office is also the main investigator for the EuroMaidan sniper attacks. And as we’ve seen, that investigation into those sniper killings could very well point back to Paul Manafort and reveal that Manafort was effectively working with the goal of getting Ukraine into the EU’s orbit and prosecutors have already warned that members of the Maidan revolution played in role in organizing the killings. So when we learn that the Black Ledger investigation is under political control, keep in mind that the sniper investigation is under the same control:
So that’s all something to keep in mind regarding the recent declarations by the Ukrainian government of the halting of the investigation into Paul Manafort in order to placate Donald Trump:
1. The Black Ledger investigation fell under political control last year and appeared to have already been halted by June of last year.
2. The more credible the Black Ledger investigation into Manafort appears, the more credible all the other Black Ledger entries appear. And those ledger entries probably aren’t going to be limited to Party of Regions officials.
In light of the reports of the Ukrainian government shutting down cooperation with the Mueller probe — i.e. halting the investigations into Manafort’s alleged payouts listed in the Black Ledger and allowing Konstantin Kilimnik to leave Ukraine — here’s a pair of article that describe how Manafort and Kilimnik first started working together. The two pieces — a 2016 piece from Meduza.io and a 2017 piece from the Wall Street Journal — actually give somewhat differing accounts, so it’s worth looking at where they agree and diverge because an interesting picture emerges.
First, let’s take a look at the following 2016 profile of Kilimnik published by Meduza, a Russian-language publication based in Latvia. The sources for the article are all anonymous and characterized as being close to Kilimnik, so there’s the obvious ‘buyer beware’ element to content, but note that Meduza is staffed by Russian journalists with a distinct anti-Putin/Kremlin outlook (which is why it’s based in Latvia).
The profile contains some important facts about Kilimnik that are rather critical to keep in mind. First, Kilimnik does indeed have ties to Russia’s GRU through his job at the Military University for Foreign Languages (known today as the Military University of the Ministry of Defense). And while that’s typically characterized as being a sign that he’s currently a tool of Russian intelligence, the profile notes that Kilimnik was born in Ukraine and did his work with the GRU before the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, just as all of the non-Russian people in the Soviet intelligence apparatus would have strained loyalties in the post-Soviet era, Kilimnik’s loyalties and ties with the GRU would obviously be potentially subject to some sort of strains following Ukraine’s independence.
But a far bigger fun fact in Kilimnik’s background that should raise questions about his relationship with the GRU is the fact that his main occupation after leaving the Military University for Foreign Languages was to go to work for the DC-funded International Republican Institute (IRI). The IRI is known for its strong backing by John McCain and promoting regime change. Kilimnik worked for the IRI’s Moscow branch. So he certainly has worked in Russia for a number of years, but much of that was as an IRI employee.
Note that, as we’re going to see in the WSJ article, Kilimnik wasn’t the only person from IRI’s Moscow branch to join Manafort’s team. Philip Griffin, the former head of the Moscow branch, also joined Manafort’s team.
In 2004, Kilimnik returned to Ukraine for an IRI assignment. According to the Meduza profile, 2004 is also the year he was first approached with the offer to work on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions (it’s 2005 in the WSJ piece). And when they approached him he was assisting the campaign of was advising Viktor Yushchenko, Yanukovych’s political opponent (and the ultimate winner following the “Orange Revolution” protests). Kilimnik was also investing enormous efforts into building Yushchenko’s alliance with Yulia Tymoshenko (who was also part of the “Orange Revolution” coalition). That’s the kind of background you wouldn’t expect from a die hard GRU agent in 2004 but it’s exactly the kind of activity you would expect from an IRI employee.
According to the Meduza article, Kilimnik was still an employee of the IRI When Yanukovych’s allies first approached him in 2004 in the middle of the “Orange Revolution” protests. Yanukovych’s people concluded that advice from ‘the other side’ was going to be necessary to win the revote ordered by Ukraine’s Supreme Court in early December. The initial outreach to Kilimnik was through people tied to Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Ukraine and Yanukovych’s biggest donor. Akhmetov is considered the primary financial force behind the Party of Regions (now the Opposition Bloc). That’s when Kilimnik reportedly came up with Paul Manafort’s name.
Manafort then held several meetings with Akhmetov, but declined to help with revote effort concluding that Yanukovych didn’t stand a chance. However, Manafort did conclude that Yanukovych still had a political future in Ukraine and agreed to consult Yanukovych after the 2004 election.
So, according to the scenario described in the Meduza profile, Manafort wasn’t willing to help spoil a revote that could threaten the Western-backed Yushchenko, but he was willing to consult Yanokovych after the vote, which raises the question of whether or not part of Manafort’s original intent was to push Yankovych and the Party of Regions in a more Western-leaning direction. It’s a scenario that would be in keeping with Manafort’s work to get Ukraine accepted into a trade union with the EU in 2012–2013 (the “Hapsburg Group”). Although keep in minde that, as we’ll see in the following WSJ profile, it sounds like Manafort’s firm did indeed spend much of December in DC trying to gauge the US government’s attitude towards the Orange Revolution, so it’s entirely possible Manafort was willing to take the job of helping Yanukovych win the revote by lobbying the US government to pull its support for the Orange Revolution and concluded that it was effectively impossible.
The IRI reportedly fired Kilimnik as soon as it learned of his new affiliation with Paul Manafort and Viktor Yanukovich, which makes sense given the orientation of the IRI. But that still leaves the question of the ultimate intent of Manafort and Kilimnik’s work with Yanukovych: were they simply working like political mercenaries to help Yankovych get elected and that’s it? Or were they working to push Yanukovych’s party and Ukraine into a more pro-Western orientation?:
“Konstantin Kilimnik was born in Kirovograd, a regional capital in central Ukraine (the city is now called Kropyvnytskyi). Like many Soviet teenagers, he left his hometown to get a higher education in Moscow. He then landed a job at the Military University for Foreign Languages (known today as the Military University of the Ministry of Defense), teaching Swedish language and literature. However, when the Soviet Union fell apart and the economy tanked, Klimnik started looking for new job opportunities, and he eventually ended up at the Russian office of the International Republican Institute.”
So Kilimnik was born in Ukraine and moved to Moscow to study languages at the Military University for Foreign Languages. That’s the source of his GRU ties.
But then the Soviet Union collapses and he ends up working for the DC-based International Republican Institute, known for promoting regime change operations:
It’s quite a biography, with Kilimnik returning home to Ukraine in 2004 to help Viktor Yushchenko’s campaign and promote an alliance between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko (an alliance implicitly against Yanukovych and the Party of Regions):
And it was during this returns to Ukraine to work for Viktor Yushchenko that he first gets approached by people close to Rinat Akhmetov, Yanukovych’s biggest donor. Akhmetov wants help with the revote and Kilimnik puts him in contact with Manafort. Manafort refuses to help with the revote but agrees to help with Yanukovych’s political future. Then the IRI finds out about this and fires Kilimnik. It’s a pretty remarkable story, in part because it sure sounds like Yanukovych basically looking for a politically connected American who they can negotiate/plead with. In other words, this sounds like Yanukovych’s allies wanted to negotiate with the US and/or make themselves seem more appealing to the West and asked Kilimnik to put them in contact with an appropriate middle-man who turned out to be Paul Manafort. We don’t know that’s the case, but given the circumstances — and the later “Hapsburg Group” push by Yanukovych to get Ukraine into an EU trade pact — that looks like one of the more plausible scenarios:
After the “Orange Revolution” protests that stop the revote and puts Yushchenko into power, Manafort and Kilimnik then proceed to work with the Party of Regions. And they are apparently so successful that the party comes in first place in the 2006 parliamentary elections, allowing Yanukovych to become prime minister. Intriguingly, sources claim that Moscow actually backed away from its support of Yanukovych by the time of the next presidential elections in 2010 but Manafort’s political skills alone allowed Yanukovych to win that election and become president. This apparent lack a support from Moscow is worth keeping in mind given what appeared to be a serious effort by Yanukovych’s government to join the EU trade union in the following years and the remarkable 2004 outreach effort to Kilimnik:
At the same time, it sounds like Manafort was also trying to offer his political consulting services to several Russian politicians too during this period. But that didn’t actually work out very well and he never established any working relationship. That’s according to one source, although this is contested. Given the stunning success he had with the makeover of the Party of Regions in short order you have to wonder why they wouldn’t have taken his advice if he offered it:
Also note the claims by one source that Manafort’s relations with Yanukovych actually suffered following Yanukovch’s 2010 victory. It’s something to keep in mind regarding the possiblity that Manafort had a role in the sniper attacks that precipitating the downfall of Yanukovych following the fail of the EU trade union negotiations. And note one of the areas of disagreement between Yanukovych and Manafort/Kilimnik: the jailing of Yulia Tymoshenko. Keep in mind that her jailing ended up being one of the key sticking points on the negotiations over Ukraine’s admission into a trade union with the EU:
Then, after Yanukovych is ousted in the Maidan protests in 2014, Manafort gets hired by Rinat Akhmetov to remake the Party of Regions into the Opposition Bloc:
So while it’s hard to put too much weight in anonymous sources (but don’t forget Meduza is an anti-Putin publication), the profile of Kilimnik still gives us a better idea of the nature of the work of both Kilimnik’s and Manafort’s work for Yanukovych and the Party of Regions:
1. Kilmnik is born in Ukraine, heads to Moscow as a teenager to finish his higher education.
2. He gets trained in languages at a Russian university with intelligence ties.
3. Then the Soviet Union falls and Kilimnik finds a job with the International Republican Institute, which is about as non-Kremlin-ish a job as one can imagine.
4. Kilimnik returns to Ukraine in 2004 to help the IRI promote Viktor Yushchenko’s Western-backed presidential campaign, as well as promote and alliance between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko (two key backers of the “Orange Revolution”).
5. After Ukraine’s Supreme Court orders a revote, Yanukovych’s top donor (and the wealthiest man in Ukraine) Rinat Akhmetov approachs Kilimnik to get in contact with an American political consultant to help them win the revote. Kilimnik is at this point working for their opponent. He puts them in touch with Manafort.
6. Manafort refuses to help with the revote, but agrees to help Yanukovych after the election (did a quiet ‘deal’ with the West get made?).
7. Kilimnik gets fired by the IRI after they discover his work with Manafort and Yanukovych.
8. Manafort and Kilimnik lead the Party of Regions to victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections.
9. Moscow allegedly backs away its support of Yanukovych, but Manafort and Kilimnik lead them him to victory in 2010 and he becomes president.
And it’s after Yanukovych becomes president that we see the big drive to get Ukraine into a trade union with the EU. A drive Yanukovych dramatically complicated with the jailing of Tymoshenko. Hence the focus of the “Hapsburg Group” lobbying effort on convincing the US and EU governments that Tymoshenko’s release shouldn’t be required for the trade union to happen. But by late 2013, when the EU’s offer to Ukraine to go ahead with the trade union turns out to be so miniscule that it would pose a major risk if Ukraine actually joined, Yanukovych switches course and moves to join Russia’s rival Eurasian Union instead, leading to the Maidan protests.
So when we incorporate Konstantin Kilimnik into the story of Paul Manafort and his relations with the Ukrainian government, that story only gets more and more convoluted. Kilimnik and Manafort helped Yanukovych and the Party of Regions win elections while pushing them to move Ukraine closer to the West. And after that push to get Ukraine into the trade union finally fails in 2013 (in no small part due to the EU’s horribly austere offer to Ukraine) we have Yanukovych driven out of office following the public outrage caused by the sniper attacks on the Maidan protests. Sniper attacks that may have been orchestrated by Paul Manafort, according to the hacked text messages of Manafort’s daughter.
And note how none of the sources for this article, who appeared to be close to Kilimnik, could confirm Kilimnik’s alleged deep connections to the Kremlin:
Along those lines, it’s worth noting that Rinat Akhmetov — Yanukovych’s biggest donor and the wealthiest person in Ukraine and the guy who basically hired Manafort and Kilimnik in 2004 — has a unique role in Ukraine after the outbreak of war and is know for maintaining good working relations with Moscow and Kiev. His business empire is based in the separatist-controlled Donbass region but he’s still has a massive business presence in the rest of Ukraine. Akhmetov continued to operate his businesses in the rebel held areas and keep people there employed by exporting products like coal until the separatists seized his assets last year. In early March of 2017, separatists seized his assets in protest over Akhmetov paying taxes to Kiev instead of locally for his assets in the separatist-held regions and in response to a government blockade of all trade with the separatist-held regions imposed a month earlier. Then in mid-March, Kiev formalized the blockade and officially cut off all trade and humanitarian aid to the separatists, largely to please Ukrainian nationalist demands. So the wealthiest person in Ukraine has major assets held by the separatists, and he’s consistently called for a reintegration of the separatist regions into Ukraine, making Akhmetov a default person to help broker a peace deal, especially since he’s expressed an interest in leading the Donbass as governor as part of a reintegration process.
So when we’re assessing Manafort’s and Kilimnik’s work for Yanukovych, it’s important to keep in mind that they were hired by a Ukrainian oligarch who certainly maintains friendly ties with Moscow but doesn’t appear to be someone simply taking their directions from Moscow. And that’s similar to Yanukovych, who appeared to be serious about getting Ukraine into the EU trade union (hence the “Hapsburg Group” diplomacy) until the talks broke down in response to the EU’s relatively tiny aid package offer in the face of what would be a massively expensive upgrade to Ukraine’s economy in order to get the country up to EU standards. In other words, the typical assessment that everyone in Ukraine who was associated with the ‘pro-Russian’ Party of Regions takes their orders from the Kremlin doesn’t appear to reflect reality and obscures some key context for understanding the work Manafort was doing at this time. These ‘pro-Russian’ politicians are still Ukrainian and forced to straddle that divide.
Ok, now let’s take a look a the WSJ’s version of how Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik ended up working for for Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. The key difference between the WSJ version and the Meduza profile is the role played by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. According to the WSJ version of events, it was Deripaska who first got in touch with Manafort’s consulting firm in early 2004 seeking advice related to Georgia, which had just undergone its own “Rose Revolution” in 2003. It was Deripaska who put Manafort in contact with Rinat Akhmetov later that year. That contrasts with the Meduza profile barely mentions Deripaska and describes a scenario where Akhmetov approaches Kilimnik and then puts Akhmetov in touch with Manafort, so it’s a pretty significant difference.
According to the WSJ, it was in early 2004 when one of Deripaska’s investing partners, Nathanial Rothschild, invited Manafort’s partner, Rick Davis, to the Moscow office of Deripaska’s holding company. The purpose of the meeting was to meet with Igor Giorgadze, a former Georgian Minister of State Security who was exiled from Georgia following charges by the Georgian government that Giorgadze orchestrated a 1995 assassination attempt on Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze. Giorgadze was living in Moscow and trying to start a new political party there and Deripaska wanted to hire Manafort’s firm for advice on how to allow for the return of Giorgadze to influence Georgia. Rothschild and Davis apparently dined with Georgia’s new president, Mikheil Saakashvili, in late 2004 to lobby for Giargadze’s return but he scuttled their plans.
The article also notes that of the employees of Manafort’s firm, Philip Griffin, who worked on the Georgia project was also a former IRI employee in the Moscow office (according to Mark Ames, Griffin was the former head of IRI’s Moscow office).
It was in November of 2004, when the “Orange Revolution” protests started, that Manafort’s firm turned its attention to Ukraine. And this was done on behalf of Deripaska. Griffin recalls flying home from the Georgian capital when he got a call for Rick Davis that rerouted him to Ukraine for an “intelligence gathering” project. Manafort and Griffin then spent the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas “huddled in Washington, where they met with political contacts and gauged the U.S. attitude toward events in Ukraine.”
Recall how in the Meduza profile the stated initial purpose of the Ukrainian work for Manafort’s firm was to seek assistance with the planned revote following the Orange Revolution protests. And in this WSJ profile, the initial purpose of the Ukrainian work for Manafort’s firm to assess US government attitudes regarding the Orange Revolution. So both accounts sound pretty similar, although the Meduza profile characterizes the people who hired Manafort’s firm as ‘allies of Yanukovych’ and doesn’t mention Deripaska being the person who initially hired Manafort’s firm to do this kind of work.
It was in late December of 2004 when Deripaska dispatched Manafort to Donetsk to meet Rinat Akhmetov. According to Griffin, “We told them about the mood in Washington,” regarding the Orange Revolution and that that the U.S. wasn’t going to do anything to counter it. That’s also largely consistent with the Meduza profile in terms of what Akhmetov was initially interestested in.
Akhmetov then wanted Manafort to “Westernize the image of his holding company, System Capital Management,” and provide strategy and branding assistance to help SCM survive in Kiev’s new political atmosphere. In other words, Akhmetov, the financier of the Party of Regions, wanted Manafort to help him become more palatable to the West.
In the summer of 2005, Manafort and Griffen go on to meet with a number of Party of Regions at the Baltschug Kempinski Hotel, across the Moscow River from the Kremlin to meet with with Akhmetov, Yanukovych and influential Ukrainian businessmen and officials from the Party of Regions. Akhmetov pitches the project of providing consulting services for the Party of Regions. Manafort goes on to hire more than 40 consultants for the project, many from Washington. Deripaska wasn’t involved with this project according to Griffin. It was Akhmetov’s idea.
Manafort then traveled to the US embassy in Kiev to inform thenthen-ambassador John Herbst of his work for Yanukovych. “He said this would be consistent with American interests,” said Mr. Herbst.
Later in 2005, Deripaska went on to hire Manafort’s firm to do some work in Montenegro. The state was in the midst of an independence push Serbia and Deripaska was a major investor in the country. Montenegro went on to gain independence.
Finally, the article mentions a 2007 project between Deripaska and Manafort’s firm that eventually led to a falling out between the two. In 2007, Deripaska pledged $19 million for Pericles Emerging Market Partners, a Cayman Islands-registered private-equity fund run by Davis and Manafort. The money was to be invested in a Ukrainian telecommunications company. Mr. Deripaska also paid the partners a $7.3 million management fee. Deripaska later concluded that he was swindled out of ~$1 million by Manafort and Davis, leading to falling out. It’s assumed that this ongoing dispute and debt to Deripaska is the basis for Manafort’s pledge during the 2016 campaign to give private briefings to Deripaska and “get whole”. Also note that this dispute between Manafort and Deripaska implies that Manafort’s ties to the Kremlin were probably frayed quite a bit in recent years.
So was we can see, the Meduza and WSJ profiles do overlap quite a bit, but with the notable exception of the role Oleg Deripaska. In both cases is sounds like the initial interest in Manafort’s services had to do with seeking Western help for Yanukovych in the midst of the 2004 Orange Revolution. In the Meduza profile, Deripaska is a minor figure in how Manafort and Kilimnik ended up working for Yanukovych. But in the WSJ profile Deripaska played a central role and started his relationship with Manafort in early 2004 for a project involving Georgia:
“Paul Manafort’s political-consulting firm was active for more than a decade doing work that often dovetailed with Russian political interests not only in Ukraine, but also in Georgia and Montenegro, other countries the Kremlin considered to be in its sphere of influence.”
As we can see, Oleg Deripaska played a critical role in Paul Manafort rise as a go-to political consultant for the former Soviety Union, with jobs for Deripaska in Georgia and Montenegro in addition to Ukraine. And it’s that relationship with Deripaska that led to Manafort’s work with Konstantin Kilimnik.
At the same time, Manafort’s relationship with Deripaska is only described as continuing through at least 2007. That’s because it was 2007 when Deripaska made his ill-fated investment in Manafort’s private equity fund that Deripaska asserts resulted in him being defrauded by Manafort and Davis:
And this relationship with Manafort appears to have begun in early 2004, when Deripaska hired Manafort and Rick Davis to formulate a strategy for returning Igor Giorgadze to Georgia:
The Georgia scheme didn’t pan out, but Deripaska had another political emergency erupted for Deripaska: Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. This appears to be where Manafort and Davis start their work in Ukraine:
And look which employee of Manafort’s firm first made the trip to Ukraine to gather intelligence: Philip Griffin, a former employee of IRI’s Moscow office (who actually headed the office):
At the beginning of this project, before the revote in late December, it sounds like Manafort and Griffin actually spent their time in Washington trying to get a sense of how DC felt about the Orange Revolution protests. In other words, Deripaska hired Manafort to lobby DC. In late December, Deripaska has Manfort meet Rinat Akhmetov, the chief financier of the Party of Regions. It was concluded by Manafort that DC was committed to the Orange Revolution:
So Akhmetov, apparently seeing the way the political winds are blowing, decides to hire Manafort to rebrand his holding company to deal with the new political realities:
Yanukovych goes on to lose the revote and in January of 2005 Viktor Yushchenko (backed by the IRI) goes on to become Ukraine’s president. So Akhmetov hires Manafort’s firm for a new project: rebranding Party of Regions. It was a wild success:
Interestingly, the US ambassador to Kiev at the time recalls Manafort informing him that his work for the Party of Regions “would be consistent with American interests”:
And as we saw with the “Hapsburg Group” lobbying effort, he did appear to be pushing Yanukovych and the Party of Regions towards closer ties to the West.
Finally, Deripaska hires Manafort for another project that year: Montenegro’s independence drive:
Keep in mind that Deripaska’s and Moscow’s backing for Montenegro’s independence had an interesting ally in the US: Senator John McCain, one of the primary backers of the IRI. Also keep in mind that Rick Davis used to be McCain’s top political strategist. Small world. So while Manafort’s work on Montenegro’s independence might seem like another instance of Manafort working against US interests, it’s more complicated than that.
So that all should give some additional context about Konstantin Kilimnik, Paul Manafort, and the work they did in Ukraine.
Here’s a pair of articles with some interesting information about Paul Manfort’s work in Ukraine and his working relationships with clients in Russia. And it also includes a rather intriguing fun fact pointing to a possible relationship between Manafort and Andrii Artemenko going back to 2013 in the midst of the talks over Ukraine entering into a trade union with the EU (i.e. the “Hapsburg Group” lobbying push):
McClatchy got Paul Manafort’s flight records into and out of Ukraine from 2004 to 2015. According to those records, Manafort visited Ukraine at least 138 times during that period.
Records also show Manafort took at least 18 trips to Moscow during this period. Although all of those trips took place between 2005 and 2011 and were mostly in 2005–2006. Note that this timeline, with most of the trips to Moscow in 2005 and 2006, is consistent with the profile of Manafort beginning his consulting work for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in 2004 but then having a falling out in 2007 over Deripaska’s suspicions Manafort’s firm stole over $1 million from Deripaska’s investments in the Pericles private equity fund. So based on Paul Manafort’s flight records it looks like his relationship to Moscow clients were probably pretty limited to work for Oleg Deripaska.
And here’s the flight information related to Andrii Artemenko and the “Hapsburg Group”: in July of 2013, Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik flew from eastern Ukraine to Frankfurt on a private plane owned by a Ukrainian aircraft company, Belbek Avia. And Belbek Avia’s founders included the father of Andrii Artemenko. Since Artmenko is consistently described in the press as a “pro-Russian” Ukrainian politician — which is the opposite of the available information about him — this trip to Frankfurt is characterized as a possible sign of a Manafort coordinating with Moscow to derail the EU trade union talks.
And it’s worth recalling that one of the more intriguing aspects of the “Hapsburg Group” is the involvement of German politicians. Specifically, SPD leader Martin Schulz. And now we learn about a flight to Frankfurt in July of 2013 on a plane owned by a company co-founded by Andrii Artemenko’s dad.
The article also includes some comments about the work Manafort did for the Opposition Bloc (formerly the Party of Regions) in 2014 following the Maidan protests and collapse of the Yanukovych government. Manafort is hailed as “a genius” by Opposition Bloc leader Nestor Shufrych for his advice encouraging the party to be the “voice of Russians in (Ukraine’s) East” and to take an anti-NATO stance. This is being cited as an example of how Manafort was acting as a Kremlin agent.
But as we’ll see in the second article, Manafort would have had to have been implausibly negligent as a political advisor if he didn’t give that exact advice and it was the kind of advice the Opposition Bloc probably didn’t need because it was so obvious. As Gallup pointed out in March of 2014, Ukrainians in general had never warmed to the idea of joining NATO. It was more popular in the West and Central-Ukraine, but not the South and East and that had been the case all along. And the new innovation Manafort brought to Ukrainian politics was modern polling techniques, which revealed a general lack of support for joining NATO as far back as 2006 when the Party of Regions first took it up. So while Manafort appeared to generally be pushing Yanukovych’s party towards the West, there was no plausible way Manafort could have ignored those polls while dispensing his political advice.
So let’s start off with a look at Paul Manafort’s flight records. Flight records that appear to show a significant drop off in his trips to Moscow after 2006 and a rather mysterious flight to Frankfurt in 2013 that sure looks a lot like it could be related to the “Hapsburg Group” diplomatic push to get Ukraine in the EU trade union:
“Even after the February 2014 fall of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych, who won office with the help of a Manafort-engineered image makeover, the American consultant flew to Kiev another 19 times over the next 20 months while working for the smaller, pro-Russian Opposition Bloc party. Manafort went so far as to suggest the party take an anti-NATO stance, an Oppo Bloc architect has said. A key ally of that party leader, oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, was identified by an earlier Ukrainian president as a former Russian intelligence agent, “100 percent.””
Even after the fall of Yanukovych’s government following the Maidan protests, Paul Manafort still made 19 trips to Kiev as part of his work remaking the Party of Regions as the “Opposition Bloc”. It’s actually quite reminiscent of Manafort getting hired by the Rinat Akhmetov in 2005 to advise the Party of Regions following the Orange Revolution: Manafort coming to the rescue of the Party of Regions with savvy political advice after a mass protest topples the government:
And Manafort’s advice certainly got rave reviews by some in the Party of Regions/Oppo Bloc, like Nestor Shufrych, who called Manafort’s advice for the Oppo Bloc to take an anti-NATO stance and frame itself as the ““voice of Russians in (Ukraine’s) East,” as genius:
Although people close to Manafort, like Philip Griffin (who was the former head of the Moscow branch of the International Republican Institute before joining Manafort’s consulting firm), assert that Manafort, a “Reagan Republican” would have never considered encouraging Ukraine to take an anti-NATO stance:
Of course, as we’re going to see in the following articles, Manafort would have had to have been brain dead not to advise the Oppo Bloc to take an anti-NATO stance because anti-NATO stances are wildly popular with Ukrainian voters in the East and South and have been for years. In other words, advising the Oppo Bloc to take an anti-NATO position wasn’t an act of political “genius”. It was so obviously the thing to do that Manafort would have been discrediting himself as a plausible political advisor if he didn’t make that recommendation.
But that anti-NATO advice Manafort gave is still inevitably cited as an example of how he was actually acting as a Kremlin agent during his years of working in Ukraine. And that’s part of what makes the flights logs to Moscow rather interesting. Because those logs do indeed show 18 flights to Moscow, but they all occurred between 2005 and 2011 and most of them happened in 2005–2006. And as we saw, Manafort’s work for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska appeared to fizzle out by 2007 over the Pericles private equity fund that Deripaska felt Manafort used to cheat him. So learning that his trips to Moscow dropped off after 2006 appears to reflect that falling out with Deripaska and points towards these flights primarily involving Manafort’s work for Deripaska:
But by far the most interesting flight in those flight logs is a curious flight July 20th, 2013 flight that Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik (another former International Republican Institute employee who, along with Philip Griffin, joined Manafort’s consulting firm) took from eastern Ukraine to Frankfurt on a private plane owned by Belbek Avia. And one of the co-founders of Belbek Avia is Andrii Artemenko’s father:
And a big part of what makes this mystery flight so mysterious is that it happened right in the middle of the final diplomatic tussle over Ukraine’s acceptance into a trade union with the EU which puts it right in the middle of the “Hapsburg Group” initiative — an initiative to convince the US and European governments to allow Ukraine into the EU trade union despite their misgivings over issues like the jailing of Yulia Tymoshenko — Manafort is accused of secretly managing. And some of Germany’s top politicians appeared to be involved with the Hapsburg Group diplomacy. Recall how the politicians recruited to assist with the “Hapsburg Group” claimed to also be working with Martin Schulz of Germany’s SPD. In other words, there was a clear German component of the “Hapsburg Group” lobbying push, and now we learn about a to Frankfurt on a private plane right in the middle of that effort in July of 2013 and the plane was apparently owned by a company co-founded by Andrii Artemenko’s dad.
Also don’t forget that Artemenko’s political background puts him squarely in the Tymoshenko camp early on in his political career before moving on to the Radical Party and close ties with Right Sector. So one big question raised by the possibility that Artemenko was also engaged with this “Hapsburg Group” diplomatic initiative is whether or not he was on the side of those who argued Tymoshenko’s release from jail should be required or not to allow Ukraine into a trade union. The jailing of Tymoshenko was a key sticking point over those trade union negotiations. Did Artemenko believe Tymoshenko’s release should be a sticking point? It would be an interesting fun fact to learn.
Of course, this mystery flight is being characterized as a possible “prelude to a broader Russian influence effort to dissuade Yanukovych’s government from signing an agreement to associate with the European Union”:
So it’s important to keep in mind that, in addition to the EU/US demands for the release of Tymoshenko, another key reason Yanukovych ended the trade union negotiations in late 2013 is that the EU really did offer a very crappy deal. There were massively expensive demands that Ukraine modernize its economy but very little financial assistance. And this was happening during the peak of the EU’s austerity madness where budget shortfalls were used to justify massively unpopular austerity. So a trade union with the EU was exceptionally unappetizing at that particular moment in time all thanks to the EU’s exceptionally ill-advised austerity policies. In other words, one likely motive for pinning the blame on Ukraine backing out of the EU trade union negotiations at the last minute on Paul Manafort is to avoid confronting the fact that the EU’s austerity brutality probably played a big role in sinking the deal.
Finally, let’s note the comments from Daniel Fried, an Atlantic Council member and a former assistant secretary of state who was in communication with Manafort during George W. Bush’s second term while Manafort was advising Yanukovych and Deripaska (indicating that Manafort was talking to the US government during this time). Fried has a rather revealing comment about what Manafort was telling the US government:
“What’s now known leads some Russia experts to suspect that the Kremlin’s emissaries at times turned Manafort into an asset acting on Russia’s behalf. “You can make a case that all along he ...was either working principally for Moscow, or he was trying to play both sides against each other just to maximize his profits,” said Daniel Fried, a former assistant secretary of state who communicated with Manafort during Yanukovych’s reign in President George W. Bush’s second term.”
As Fried, who was in contact with Manafort, describes it, you could make the case that Manafort was a Russian asset “all along”. Or maybe he was just trying to play both sides against each other for personal gain. That’s how Fried sees it. So it’s worth noting that those two scenarios Fried sees as plausible are actually two very different scenarios and highlights the ambiguous nature of the information on Manafort. Playing “both sides against each other” isn’t the kind of thing you would expect from a Kremlin or US asset.
A fascist asset, on the other hand, would be more than happy to play the US and Russia against each other. So don’t forget to consider the scenario that Manafort really was acting for a foreign power, but not Russia. And that foreign power might be a non-nation state like the Underground Reich or some other power network interested in seeing the US and Russia head towards conflict in Ukraine (the Habsburgs, perhaps?).
At the same time, the fact that Yanukovych’s sudden turn away from the EU trade union negotiations was reasonable given the crap deal the EU was offering is a reminder that the negotiations may have fallen apart despite Manafort’s best efforts to keep them going. As Fried indicated in his comments, there’s a wide variety of scenarios that fit the data we have on Manafort, and that includes the scenario where he made a legitimate push to get Ukraine into that trade union and the deal still fell apart. Or the scenario he was working both sides against each other.
There are a variety of scenarios that fit the data. But as we’ll see from Fried’s comments in the following article, Manafort appeared to be communicating with certainty to the US government that Yanukovych was indeed someone who would move Ukraine close to the West. As Fried puts it: “Manafort’s guy turned out to be not the guy Manafort said he was...Either Manafort was unable to deliver the guy or he was spinning us and had no intention of doing anything but collecting his very large fees.”
So Manafort was telling the US that Yanukovych was “the guy”, according to Fried. Recall how the profiles of Konstantin Kilimnik indicated that the Yanukovych team concluded they needed to work with someone from “the other side” to win after the Orange Revolution protests and Manafort proceeded to hire to former employees of the Moscow branch of the International Republican Institute, Konstantin Kilimnik and Philip Griffin, to assist with that consulting effort. Might Manafort have been telling the US government Yanukovych was “the guy” who would move Ukraine closer to the West when Kilimnik and Griffin left the International Republican Institute in 2005 to help advise Yanukovych and the Party of Regions?
Manafort also told the US that Yanukovych was the one Ukrainian who could Ukraine closer to the West at a pace Putin could stand. That’s also according to Fried. So while it’s somewhat ambiguous who Manafort was ultimately working for, he appeared to be actively trying to convince the US State Department he was ultimately working for them:
““Manafort’s guy turned out to be not the guy Manafort said he was,” Fried said. “Either Manafort was unable to deliver the guy or he was spinning us and had no intention of doing anything but collecting his very large fees.””
As we can see, Dan Fried, the former U.S. assistant secretary of state for the region which includes Ukraine for George W. Bush’s second term, is basing his suspicions of Manafort working for the Kremlin on a palpable sense of betrayal. Manafort was “spinning us” about Yanukovych and Manafort couldn’t “deliver” like he claimed he would. It’s a sense of betrayal that appears to ignore how Manafort spent years slowing getting Yanukovych’s government deeply involved in trade union negotiations that fell apart at the last minue with the EU’s crap offer and austerity bonanza. As Fried put it, Manafort assured them he was moving Ukraine closer to the West “at a pace Putin could stand”. And he did indeed appear to do that:
And note how Manafort’s work helping Yanukovych defend the jailing of Yulia Tymoshenko is characterized working in Moscow’s interests, which ignores how, as Yanukovych’s adviser, the most ‘pro-West’ thing Manafort could have done is help Yanukovych make the case that the jailing shouldn’t get in the way of a trade union with the EU. Which, again, is much of what the entire “Hapsburg Group” initiative was all about:
And that “Hapsburg Group” lobbying effort Manafort was leading in 2012 and 2013 to convince US and EU leaders that Tymoshenko’s jailing shouldn’t stand in the way of the EU-Ukraine trade union involved Manafort recruiting the firm of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLC on behalf of the Ukrainian Justice Ministry to write a lengthy report on Tymoshenko’s prosecution. Don’t forget that the particular Skadden Arps lawyer who worked on that 2012 report — Alex van der Zwaan, the Dutch lawyer and son-in-law of Alfa bank co-founder German Khan — ended up getting prosecuted by the US for lying to the FBI about the extent of his communications with Manafort’s partner Rick Gates in 2016. Then Manafort wrote up a media strategy based on using this report. A media strategy designed to convince people that the jailing of Tymoshenko didn’t violate her due process and shouldn’t stand in the way of the trade union:
Then, after the Skadden report is released, Manafort starts prepping for the Party of Regions for the October 2012 parliamentary elections, bringing on board Tony Fabrizio, who would later become the Trump campaign’s chief pollster. Note that Fabrizio is a veteran GOP pollster. He was chief pollster for Bob Doles 1996 presidential campaign and has worked for dozens of US Senators and Governors. And in 2012 he was recruited by Manafort to help the Party of Regions:
And at the same time Manafort is bringing on board a veteran GOP pollster to work for the Party of Regions he’s advising Yanukovych to push ahead with the trade union. The talks, which had a heavy focus on Tymoshenko’s release, continue through 2013 until Yanukovych ends the negotiations and suddenly decides to take Putin’s offer (don’t forget that the EU’s offer was crap and austerity). The subsequent protests over the pro-EU forces spiral into the Maidan protests that end with the collapse of Yanukovych’s government following the sniper attacks. Sniper attacks that Paul Manafort apparently played a role in according to the hacked text messages of his daughter:
And the financing of this lobbying effort was documented, at least in part, in the “Black Ledger” discovered in 2016. Recall that documents discovered in Manafort’s old Kiev office appear to corraborate at least some of those ledger entries, but the government investigation into the ledger had effectively froze last year due to fears of how many people outside of the Party of Regions in might implicate in Yanukovych’s kick-back system. So while Ukrainian prosecutors are indeed investigating the bribery system in place when Yanukovych was in power, it’s very unclear if those investigations will be allowed to actually proceed:
But because that lobbying effort to get Ukraine into the EU trade union despite the jailing of Yulia Tymoshenko ultimately failed, it is now widely characterized as somehow working for Moscow. As yet, Dan Fried revealed when he complained, “either Manafort was unable to deliver the guy or he was spinning us,” Manafort was clearly tell the US he could “deliver the guy”. And he almost did! So either Manafort and Yanukovych were engaged in some sort of incredibly highstakes strategy of pretending move Ukraine towards the EU with the plan of switching at the last moment, or it really is the case that Manafort tried but failed (because, again, the EU’s offer was crap).
Similarly, Manafort’s advice to Yanukovych and the Party of Regions that they campaign of issues like opposition to NATO or being the voice of Russian-speaking Ukrainians is portrayed as a sign of his Moscow puppetmaster strings by many while it’s hailed as “genius!” by people from the Party of Regions. And yet, as the article points out, all Manafort was doing was running polls and discovering these were already popular ideas. That was his “genius” that led him to advise the Party of Regions adopt policies like opposition to pushing Ukraine into NATO: running polls and responding to them:
“Crucial to the strategy—and new to Ukraine—was research from focus groups and better polling to drive messaging. Among the issues: the rights of Russian-speakers and opposition to Ukraine’s joining NATO.”
Yep, when Manafort first advised the Party of Regions to adopt an anti-NATO position in the 2006 parliamentary elections, he was basing it on something that had was new to Ukraine: polls showing this was already popular. Genius!
And then, in 2008, Viktor Yushchenko announces his plans to campaign for eventual NATO membership for Ukraine and Manafort recommends the same genius strategy of focusing on existing anti-NATO sentiments. More genius!:
Then following Yanukovych’s ouster in 2014, Manafort agrees to continue advising the Party of Regions, rebranded as the Opposition Bloc. And look who he retains: GOP veteran pollster Tony Fabrizio. So Manafort had a major GOP pollster help him poll Ukrainians and come up recommendations like branding the Oppo Bloc as the “voice of Russians in the east.” A “genius” recommendation, as Nestor Shufych put it:
Don’t forget, in March of 2014, Gallup found that Ukrainians still weren’t generally interested in joining NATO even after the collapse of the Yanukovych government following the sniper attacks. So Manafort’s anti-NATO ‘genius’ advice was still Politics 101 even in 2014.
And, of course, that anti-NATO advice was coupled with Manafort’s pro-EU trade union advice. Don’t forget what Dan Fried told us: that Manafort was telling the US government that Yanukovych was “the guy” who could move Ukraine closer to the West, at a pace Putin could stand. And based on Fried’s palpable sense of betrayal, it would seem that the US government more or less accepted that assessment. It’s another reason why Manafort’s anti-NATO advice shouldn’t necessarily be seen as an indication that Manafort was some Kremlin crony the whole time, in addition to the general unpopularity of the idea among Urkaine’s populace.
And it’s in that larger context that we now learn about the mysterious flight to Frankfurt on a private plane owned by the father of Andrii Artemenko in the middle of the “Hapsburg Group” lobbying effort to get Ukraine into that trade union. Which raises an interesting question: Artemenko entered the Ukrainian parliament in 2014, and according to the parliament’s website Artemenko was the deputy head of the European Integration Committee and responsible for diplomatic connections with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United States, Kuwait, Lithuania and Belarus. Artemenko also has business ties to the US. So Artementko was involved with diplomacy with the US while in parliament and this flight on Artemenko’s dad’s company plane in July of 2013 happened right before he joined the parliament and right in the middle of the big “Hapsburg Group” diplomatic push with the US. So was Artemenko himself part of the “Hapsburg Group” lobbying effort too?
Some supplemental info about Maidan & the snipers from Strategic Culture. https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/06/03/how-why-us-government-perpetrated-2014-coup-ukraine.html
Since Manafort appears to have been surreptitiously maneuvering Ukraine toward the Western sphere & that means was to be by the EU Association Agreement, Manafort could not have been blind to the fact that the EUAA requires a common security and defense force (likely NATO), see comment on FTR #1008 for link. Thus Manafort was also trying to also sneak Ukraine into NATO through the EUAA, despite what he portrayed as being against it. He was a spook, thats what spooks do...lie.
Amazing details, Pterrafractyl, my appaluse!
Here’s a recent article that shed some new light on the origins of the ‘Ukrainian peace plan’ scheme developed by Andrii Artemenko, Felix Sater, and Michael Cohen.
First, recall how we recently learned that former GOP congressman Curt Weldon was also reportedly involved with the development of this scheme and Weldon claimed to associates that Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg endorsed the scheme and was planning on financing the promotion of it. And recall how Artemenko and Weldon both spoke at a February 2016 event at Manor College about the situation in Ukraine. You can watch the video on YouTub, where Artementko talks about how he was among the first to take up an armed resistance against the Yanukovych government during the Maidan protests (~33:50–34:00 in the video). Curt Weldon’s talk starts at ~17:00, when he discusses his close ties to the Ukrainian diaspora and at ~26:00 he talks about the need for the US and international community to support Ukraine against Russian aggressionin the video.
So, as we learn in the following article, it turns out that it was at the sidelines of that February 2016 event at Manor College where the ‘peace plan’ proposal was first hatched between Weldon and Artemenko. And there was another speaker at that event who was also reportedly part of the scheme: Alexander Rovt, a Ukrainian-American oligarch and New York real estate mogul.
As we should expect at this point, Rovt’s involvement is being characterized as further evidence that this scheme was concocted by the Kremlin. And as we should also expect at this point, when you look into Rovt he appears to fall into the category of Ukrainian’s opposed to Kremlin influence in Ukraine. In fact, you can listen to the ~10 minutes talk he gave at Manor College and it’s largely about the need for the West to counter Kremlin propaganda and the need to isolate the Russian people the same way the West has done to Iran in order to bring Russia to the bargaining table. Rovt’s segment at the the Manor College event starts at ~40 minutes. This is the guy who is being cited as another link to the Kremlin.
Also recall that, while Artemenko is suggesting February 2016 is now the origin of this peace plan, we’ve already heard from Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the former head of the Security Service of Ukraine and a political ally of Yulia Tymoshenko, who claims he gave some sort of peace plan material to Artemenko in 2015. And while Nalyvaichenko says he doesn’t back Artemenko’s peace plan, he did admit to submit a peace plan of his own to the US government.. And Artemenko has already admitted to discussing his peace plan with Tymoshenko. So we have strong indications that the Tymoshenko faction of Ukrainian politics was already trying to work out a ‘peace plan’ of some sort before this February 2016 event. But it’s still notable to learn when the Artemenko peace plan ‘officially’ took shape.
So this all helps flesh out the timeline for the ‘peace plan’ scheme: It apparently got started in February of 2016 a Manor College event where Andrii Artemenko, Curt Weldon, and Alexander Rovt all spoke about the situation in Ukraine and the need to counter Russian aggression:
“Ex-Ukrainian legislator Andrii Artemenko told McClatchy in several recent interviews that the peace proposal, which some analysts believe had a pro-Moscow tilt, was hatched in February 2016 during side discussions at a Ukraine-focused conference at Manor College in suburban Philadelphia. Former Republican Rep. Curt Weldon and New York real estate mogul Alexander Rovt were involved, said Artemenko, who also participated.”
That’s where the Artkemenko/Sater/Cohen scheme was apparently initially hatched: at the February 2016 Manor College event. And it was Artemenko, Curt Weldon, and Alexander Rovt who hatched it. It was called the Rovt-Weldon plan according to Artemenko:
According to Artemenko, it was Weldon who introduced him to “high society in the US” :
And note that while the article points out that Weldon introduced Artemenko to Dana Rohrabacher, who is known as Putin’s best friend in Washington, the other two congressional figures listed have very different pedigrees when it comes to relations with Russian Ukraine. Marcy Kaptor is consider one of Ukraine’s best friends in congress and Rob Portman backs the sale of lethal military hardware to Ukraine.
But it’s Weldon and Rovt Russian business links that are pointed to as the key evidence of their Kremlin allegiance, as if that precludes him from eventually aligning with pro-Ukrainian interests years later (and ignores Weldon’s business ties to Ukrainian defense contractors):
And Rovt’s Russian business ties appear to largely be limited to the sale of his Ukrainian fertilizer business to Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch close to the Party of Regions and Viktor Yanukovych government. So it’s not even clear if Rovt has any substantial direct links to Russian businesses:
So that’s the evidence put forward that Weldon and Rovt are Kremlin operatives: Weldon had a potentially corrupt business relationship with a Russian-managed oil and gas company in 2006 and Rovt sold his fertilizer business to a Ukrainian oligarch close to Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. It’s not exactly compelling evidence.
But Rovt does have one business interest that directly relates to the #TrumpRussia investigation: Rovt was an investor in Spruce Capital. And a subsidiary of Spruce Capital just happened to make a $3.5 million mortgage loan to a small company set up by Paul Manafort right after he left the Trump campaign in August of 2016:
So Rovt appears to tie into the Trump campaign shenanigans in two key areas: he was there was the ‘peace plan’ idea was alleged conceived in February of 2016 and his financial firm made a suspicious loan to Paul Manafort in August of 2016 right after Manafort left the campaign.
And in addition to Artemenko telling McClatchy that he discussed the plan with Yulia Tymoshenko and a pair of Russian MPs (discussed here), another new detail Artemenko told McClatchy in this interview is that it was just a few weeks before the 2016 election that Artemenko even started discussing the ‘peace plan’ with Felix Sater. If true, that would place Sater at a relatively late point in the development of this scheme. Of course, there’s little reason to assume that’s true given how much the story of this plan has changed, but it’s still worth noting:
And it’s worth noting that both Artemenko and Sater told McClatchy that the plan never included the previously reported language that would have leased Crimea to Russia, although Artemenko now said the plan did included a referendum for Crimea on whether or not it should be part of Ukraine, Russia, or Independent:
Regarding Artemenko’s new claims that the plan involved a referendum that would include the possibility of independence for Crimea, it would be interesting to learn if the Crimea population has strong desires for independence. If so, that could make such a referendum still potentially quite desirable for Russia’s opponents even if it didn’t result in Crimea being returned to Ukraine.
Both Artemenko and Sater also give some additional details on how the plan was passed along to the Trump team: Artemenko asked Sater if Sater could help introduce him to the administration;
Recall that Artemenko was actually at the 2016 GOP convention in Cleveland and the Trump inauguration in January of 2017 and was apparently getting introduced to “US high society” by Curt Weldon. So it’s notable that he apparently felt the need to approach Felix Sater about passing this plan along to the Trump team.
And, as with so much of this case, the story of what Michael Cohen actually did with the proposal kept changing. Artemenko tells McClatchy that Sater informed him that “The package had been delivered” to Michael Flynn. And Cohen initially said he delivered the plan to Michael Flynn. But days later said he never gave it to Flynn or anyone and threw the plan in the trash:
So that’s the update from McClatchy a few weeks ago that introduce Alexander Rovt as a key figure behind the ‘peace plan’ as well as a figure possibly involved with paying off Paul Manafort.
But this wasn’t the first time Rovt’s name has come up in all this. Those suspicious payouts to Manafort were reported on over a year ago. As the following article describes, Manafort set up a shell company on the day he stepped down from the Trump campaign in August of 2016 and that shell company ended up receiving $13 million in loans from two different businesses. One of those business was Rovt’s Spruce Capital when lent to Manafort in September of 2016. The second business, Federal Savings Bank of Chicago, focuses on affordable mortgages for military veterans and is headed by Stephen M. Calk, a senior Trump economic adviser at the time and gave Manafort a loan shortly after Trump won the election.
Interestingly, while Rovt made a last minute $10,000 donation to the Trump campaign on Election Day (which of which was returned because it exceeded the $2,700 maximum), prior to that Rovt had donated almost exclusively to Democrats, including $2,700 to Hillary Clinton in February 2016. So during the same month that Rovt attended that Manor College event where he talked about the need to counter Russian aggression and the ‘peace plan’ was secretly concocted, he also donated the maximum amount to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It’s another data point highlighting how Rovt doesn’t actually fit the profile of a pro-Kremlin oligarch.
And as the article points out, Rovt’s investment partner in Spruce Capital, Joshua Crane, had previously been involved in two Trump projects, including a Trump International Hotel & Tower in Waikiki. So Spruce Capital has ties to Ukraine (and, in turn, potential Manafort) via Rovt, but also direct ties to the Trump organization via Joshua Crane, making the motive for this loan to Manafort extra obscure:
“But behind the scenes, he was busy with other matters. Papers were recorded that same day creating a shell company controlled by Mr. Manafort that soon received $13 million in loans from two businesses with ties to Mr. Trump, including one that partners with a Ukrainian-born billionaire and another led by a Trump economic adviser. They were among $20 million in loans secured by properties belonging to Mr. Manafort and his wife.”
So on the same day Manafort steps down as chairman of Trump’s campaign, he sets up a shell company that will soon receive $13 million in loans from Spruce Capital and Federal Savings Bank of Chicago. It’s certainly interesting timing, especially given the fact that Manafort was an unpaid campaign manager:
And since the collateral for these loans were Manafort’s substantial real estate portfolio, the whole thing highlights the importance real estate was to Manafort’s savings. He clearly had a taste for real estate given how many properties he owned:
And because real estate lends itself to all sorts of possible money laundering activities, like the records of alleged secret payments Manafort received found in the Ukrainian “black ledger”, there’s going to be a high level of investigator interest in any suspicious activity involving Paul Manafort’s real estate:
When it comes to Spruce Capital’s $3.5 million loan to Manafort in September of 2016, the fact that Rovt is a Ukrainian has clearly drawn the interest of investigators. But the fact that Rovt’s partner in Spruce, Joshua Crane, has been a developer of Trump hotel projects should also be kept in mind when trying to determine which ties helped prompt this unusual loan to Manafort:
Manafort’s explanation for the loans is that he deicded to “assist with additional funding to protect my existing investments,” totaling more than $4 million, in several luxury properties in California owned by limited liability companies controlled by” his son-on-law, Jeffrey Yohai. But there isn’t really an explanation of why those two companies, Spruce Capital, and Federal Savings, were the companies Manafort went to for those loans:
And that’s all part of why the suspicion involving Manafort’s finances overlap with the suspicions involving the Ukrainian ‘peace plan’: one of the developers of the ‘peace plan’, Alexander Rovt, also happens to be a partner in one of the companies that make an anomalous loan to Manafort.
And while some of those suspicions are understandable and reasonable, those suspicions are also rooted, in part, in a reflexie assumption that Rovt move be some sort of Kremlin dupe, despite all the signs pointing in the other direction. So it’s worth noting that, while Rovt made a $10,000 donation to the Trump campaign on Election Day (most of which had to be returned because it exceeded the $2,700 maximum limit), Rovt had previously almost exclusively donated to Democrats, including $2,700 to Hillary Clinton in February of 2016, the same month of the Manor College Ukraine event:
And note how Rovt is described as “active in the Ukrainian-American community”. It will be interesting to see what more can be learned about Rovt’s Ukrainian-American community activities. Because if someone is described as being active in the Ukrainian-American community that strongly implied they are active in decrying Russia and the Kremlin, generally speaking these days. The two go hand in hand since 2014. And that’s clearly the case given his attendance at the Manor College event where he railed about how Ukraine needed to get better at countering Russian propaganda.
So that’s what we know at this point about the latest figure to be introduced into the #TrumpRussia investigation: Alexander Rovt, a Ukrainian oligarch who appears to have helped conceived the ‘peace plan’ at an event where he called on the West to take a much stronger stance against Russia. Surprise!
With Paul Manfort’s trial currently underway, here’s a fascinating article that gives a lot of details about Paul Manafort later years in Ukraine and his work with the ‘Hapsburg Group’. The article is from bne IntelliNews, a business publication specializing in European markets. And while the article is no longer available on bne IntelliNews, it is thankfully still available on the Internet Wayback Machine which is very fortuitous because it turns out this article is a treasure trove of information.
Most of the article is based on Manafort’s flight records from 2012–2015 and describes how Manafort’s flights to different cities align with key meetings held by the Hapsburg Group. Recall the earlier report on Manafort’s flight records that indicated he may have flown on plane owned by Andrii Artemenko’s father’s company to a meeting in Frankfurt in 2013 that may have been involved with the Hapsburg Group lobbying push. So this newer report is another example of Manafort’s flight records providing potentially important clues in terms of what Manafort did and who he was working with.
But there’s another angle of Manafort’s time in Ukraine that the article explores: the cryptic hacked texts of Paul Manafort’s daughter where she told her sister that it was Paul Manafort’s idea “to send those people out and get them slaughtered. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that Revolts [sic] and what not […] As a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine.” Andrea Manafort then called her father’s money “blood money.” This article suggests that these texts were not in reference to the Maidan sniper attacks of February 2014 that precipitated the collapse of the Yanukovych government. Instead, the article suggests that Andrea Manafort’s texts were referring to a role Manafort may have played in instigating the initial conflict in November of 2013 between pro-EU protestors and the Ukrainian police that sparked the Maidan in the first place. No one was killed during that initial scuffle but it took place shortly after the collapse of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement talks and had a big effect of on the country’s psychology at that moment. If the riot police hadn’t been called in at that moment there’s there’s a good chance the Maidan protests would have never grown as large as they did.
This article suggests that these texts were not in reference to the Maidan sniper attacks of February 2014 that precipitated the collapse of the Yanukovych government. Instead, the article suggests that Andrea Manafort’s texts were referring to a role Manafort may have played in instigating the initial conflict on November 29, 2013 between pro-EU protestors and the Ukrainian police that sparked the Maidan in the first place. No one was killed during that initial scuffle but it had a BIG effect of on the country’s psychology at that key moment.
Part of the circumstantial evidence suggesting Manafort may have played a role in encouraging those initial protests centers around Viktor Yanukovych’s former chief of staff, Serhii Lovochkin and his sister Yulia Lovochkina who is a Ukrainian MP. It turns out that Lovochkin was a big supporter of the EU Trade Association agreement and his sister Yulia was participating at some of the events held by the ‘Hapsburg Group’.
Here’s a quick rundown of the circumstantial evidence that suggests Lovochkin and Lovochkina were part of the pro-EU lobbying effort:
1. Yulia addressed a secret March 6, 2013, meeting in Rome of former European heads of state discussing the fate of Ukraine’s bid to join the Association Agreement with the EU. Flight records show Manafort flew with her on one of the Lovochkin family’s private jets to the meeting and was in the audience.
2. At that meeting, Yulia declared that, “Ukraine has made its irrevocable choice and is committed to being a part of Europe, part of the European Union...The president of Ukraine reiterated that he is ready to implement all the necessary measures.” All of the speakers at this event expressed a desire to do the Association Agreement deal and there was an undercurrent to their speeches that the signing of the agreement should be separate from the issue of releasing Yulia Tymoshenko, which was in stark contrast to Brussels’ initial line.
3. Serhii is a co-owner of Ukrainian television station with Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash. On November 28, 2013, the day before the police clash with the protestors, reporters noted that Yulia Lovochkina was openly fraternizing with the students on the Maidan. Lovochkin’s TV crews covered the protest closely, including the 4am clash with police. Serhii tendered his resignation as Yanukovych’s chief of staff immediately after the police violence. The next day, Lovoshkin’s TV channel played footage of the worst of violence on heavy rotation on prime time news and news anchors intoned that Yanukovych had “shed the blood of Ukrainian children.”
4. On November 29, 2016, the third anniversary of the police clash with the protesters, Ukraine’s interior minister Arsen Avakov told the BBC that “Lovochkin was the author of the dispersal of the [students’] Maidan, and should be in prison, not in parliament.”
5. Manafort had a close working relationship with Serhii (which makes sense given their respective jobs working for Yanukovych).
6. Flight records indicate Manafort frequently flew of the Lovochkin family’s private jet to meetings in Europe involved with the Hapsburg Group lobbying effort.
So when you consider all of those facts, the idea that Andrea Manafort’s texts to her sister could have been referring to that November 29, 2013, clash with police starts sounding pretty plausible. So what might have Manafort’s role been? Did he encourage Yanukovych to call in the riot police? We he merely coordinating with Lovochkin in hatching the plan?
Also keep in mind that, if Manafort was indeed somehow involved with instigating the November 29, 2013, clash with police that sparked the Maidan protests, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved with the February 2014 sniper attacks too. If anything it would make him more of a suspect in those attacks.
The article also gives us more insight into how the Hapsburg Group initially formed and some of the figures involved with it:
1. The idea of recruiting European politicians to lobby for Ukraine’s admission into the Association Agreement without release Yulia Tymoshenko apparently came in a June 2012 memo to Manafort by Italian-based US journalist Alan Friedman. Friedman chaired the March 2013 conference in Rome.
2. Friedman’s memo suggested recruiting Alexander Kwasniewski to the group.
3. The memo also noted that Kwasniewski would have a conflict of interests because Kwasniewski was the leading figure in the European Parliament’s monitoring mission to Ukraine.
4. In light of Kwasniewski’s conflict of interest, Friedman suggested that Alred Gusenbauer be appointed the ‘leader’ of the Hapsburg Group who would direct the rest of the group. Gusenbauer would then “take direction from us informally”.
And that all helps elucidate one of the most fascinating aspects of this whole story: one of the members of the Hapsburg Group, Kwasniewski, wasn’t just an ‘ex-politician’, like the rest of the Hapsburg Group members. He was the leading figure of the EU’s monitoring mission to Ukraine! That’s wildly scandalous and yet almost completely ignored (which, itself, is wildly scandalous and ignored).
One of the big questions swirling around this Hapsburg Group story has been the question of whether or not the Hapsburg Group was primarily working for the Yanukovych government, or working for EU forces, or both. And while that memo by Friedman to Manafort makes it clear that the Hapsburg Group was definitely working for Manafort, the question remains as to whether or not it was also working for a faction of the EU that wanted to separate he issue of freeing Yulia Tymoshenko and the Agreement. Because it’s entirely possible the Hapsburg Group was sort of a joint operation, where Gusenbauer was acting as the conduit for Yanukovych/Manafort and Kwasniewski was acting as the EU’s negotiator in this shared mission to make the Association Agreement happen. And learning that the lead figure in the EU mission to Ukraine was part of the Hapsburg Group points towards the that scenario where the Hapsburg Group was a kind of coordinated effort between the EU forces that wanted to see the agreement happen and the Yanukovych government.
Don’t forget that the picture that emerges when you look over the news reports from this 2012–2013 period leading up to November 2013 is a Yanukovych government that was very interested in the Association Agreement until the EU made its final super crappy offer that included little financial assistance and massive costs to Ukraine’s economy. And part of that picture included the Hapsburg Group apparently working with people like Martin Schulz who was president of the EU parliament from 2012–2017.
We already had indications that this Hapsburg Group initiative was at least working in coordination with a faction of the EU. Learning that Alexander Kwasniewski, the leader of the EU’s mission to Ukraine, was also involved with the Hapsburg Group just adds evidence that this was, in reality, a joint operation. If true, it’s pretty scandalous, although perhaps not nearly as scandalous as it would be if Kwasniewski was secretly taking orders from Kiev on his own and not as part of a coordination campaign with an EU faction.
So it’s clear there’s an impressive scandal at the heart of this Hapsburg Group initiative. It’s more of a question of what kind of scandal at this point. And based on the following article, it’s looking increasingly like the Hapsburg Group was a joint Kiev/EU-faction operation. And it’s also looking more and more like Paul Manafort really was involved in instigating an attack on protestors:
“Infamous US lobbyist Paul Manafort organised EU luminaries to plead with Brussels to sign off on an Association Agreement with Ukraine without the freeing of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko in 2012–2013, his flight records, revealed by bne IntelliNews for the first time, show.”
Manafort organized EU luminaries to pleading with the EU to let Ukraine join the Association Agreement. That’s the central element of this whole story that is simultaneously never refuted, regularly acknowleged, and yet somehow never really recognized. It’s kind of amazing.
Yes, Yanukovych’s government really, really, really wanted to keep Yulia Tymoshenko in jail at the same time they really, really, really wanted to get Ukraine closer to the EU, but the fact that this was a serious push to get Ukraine much closer to the EU is a pretty undeniable aspect of this whole story.
And as Manafort’s flight records also reveal, Manafort remained an important player in Ukraine’s political landscape long after Yanukovych fled, highlighting how Manafort’s ties to Ukraine weren’t limited to a close working relationship with Yanukovych that started in 2005 and ended in February 2014. His advice remained valued by the post-Yanukovych leftovers of the Party of Regions that morphed into the Opposition Bloc. Part of that political resiliance in Ukraine appears to be rooted in his close ties to Yanukovych’s chief of staff Serheii Lovochkin. And it’s those ties to Lovochkin, and Lovochkin’s own possible role in instigating the November 29, 2013, clash with police, that raise the question of whether or not Manafort and Lovochkin helped trigger the incident that sparked the Maidan protests:
Manafort’s ties to Lovochkin appear to be key to understanding the people behind the Hapsburg Group because it turns out Serheii’s sister and Ukrainian MP, Yulia Lovochkina, was at a key meeting in Rome in March of 2013, where Yulia made the case to a select gathering that the EU Association Agreement needed to be handled separately from the issue of the freeing of Yulia Tymoshenko:
And while it sounds like all Yulia’s desires to see these issues handled separately was shared by the rest of speakers. Speakers who it turns out were part of the Hapsburg Group: Alfred Gusenbauer, Romano Prodi, and Alexander Kwasniewski:
Also in attendance was Paul Manafort, who flew to the meeting with Yulia on one of the Lovochkin family’s private jets. It was Manafort who assembed the speakers:
It’s also important to recognize how close Manafort and the Lovochkins came in accomplishing their goal. Thanks to Manafort’s lobbying effort, the EU eventually agreed to allow Ukraine into the Association Agreement as long as Yulia Tymoshenko was released and allowed to get medical treatment in Germany. But that didn’t change the fact that the EU’s offer was still potentially financially devastating to Ukraine and it didn’t include the firm offer of Ukraine eventually joining the EU, leading to the eventual collapse of the talks. But it did almost work. Manafort was actually remarkably successful considering the circumstances:
But that lobbying effort wasn’t free, and the money flows involved with it are part of what’s created legal trouble for Manafort under the Mueller investigation. Don’t forget that the Hapsburg Group lobbying involved lobbying the US government, making the Hapsburg Group’s finances a potential violation of US foreign lobbying laws:
Interestingly, it appears to be Italian-based US journalist Alan Friedman who conceived of the plan Hapsburg Group. Friedman wrote a memo to Manafort where he explicitly suggests recruiting Alexander Kwasniewski, the lead member of the EU monitoring mission to Ukraine. And because this would be an obvious conflict of interest, Friedman recommended that Manafort get ex-Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer to act as the middle-man: Manafort would give order to Gusenbauer, who would relay them to Kwasniewski. This appears to be the dynamic that was secretly playing out that the Rome meeting and the various other Hapsburg Group meetings:
Kwasniewski denies being part of the Hapsburg Group, which he obviously has to deny given his role as the lead figure in the EU monitoring mission. But he still acknowledged having a “double-hatted role” as Ukraine’s ambassador in Europe and the United States and as ambassador of the transatlantic community in Ukraine:
As part of Manafort’s direct role in supervising the Hapsburg Group he appears to have used the Lovochkin family’s private jet frequently to either fly out to conferences (like the one in Rome) or meet with Hapsburg Group members individually. This raises the question of whether or not Serheii or his sister Yulia were also on those flights, as Yulia was for that March 2013 Rome meeting:
Note that Yulia Lovochkina owns an executive jet business, so while these appear to be basically Lovochkin family private planes, they are likely operating as part of this executive jet business. Also note that Lovochkina is acting like the flight she and Manafort took to Rome on her jet was just coincidental. She literally says she had “her own agenda for the trip”, which is farcical given the circumstances:
One of the flight records involving the use of the Lovochkin plane involved a July trip to Frankfurt. It’s worth recalling that the previous report on Manafort’s flight records involving a plane operated by a business owned by Andrii Artemenko’s dad also involved a trip to Frankfurt. So it would be iteresting to learn how often Manafort’s flights were on these private planes during this 2012–2013 period. Were most of them on private planes or just some flights? Following that one day visit to Frankfurt, Manafort flew to Crimea. Kwasnievski and Patrick Cox (another Hapsburg Group member) arrived in Crimea that same day:
Kwasniewski also acknowledges that he had a series of one-on-one meetings with Manafort in the summer and autumn of 2013. This is a good example of how Kwasniewski was probably acting as a backchannel between the Yanukovych government and EU forces who wanted to see this Association Agreement happen. Manafort eventually makes a flight to Warsaw on October 18 (about a month before the collapse of the talks) on a Lovochkin plane. It was after that meeting that Yanukovych agrees to allow Tymoshenko to get medical treatment in Germany, pending approval by the Ukrainian parliament. That bill that would release Tymoshenko was eventually rejected by the Ukrainian parliament hours after Yanukovych pulled out of the negotiations on November 21, 2013, but, again, this is how close this came to happening, highlighting how serious Yanukovych and Manafort were in making this happen:
It’s also important to recognize that the support of the Lovochkins for the Association Agreement points towards the support of a much more significant Ukrainian oligarch: Dmytro Firtash. Serheii is described as a junior partner of Firtash.
The article also notes that Lovochkin continued his political career with impunity after Yanukovych fled, which is rather remarkable given that he was Yanukovych’s chief of staff:
So the Lovochkins are clearly part of the post-Yanukovych Ukrainian political establishment. And flight records indicate Paul Manafort may have attended a March 25, 2014, meeting where that post-Yanukovych establishment was established. On that date he flew from Vienna to Kyiv, where is the date of a meeting were Firtash agreed to back Petro Poroshenko for president, effectively crowning Poroshenko president:
And that was just one of a number of flight records that indicate Manafort’s services were very much in demand in the post-Yanukovych era, especially with the Opposition Bloc being largely funded by Firtash:
And those close ties between Manafort, the Lovochkins, and Firtash is part of what has led to speculation that they were all involved with instigating the November 29, 2013, clashes between riot police and protestors that sparked the Maidan protests:
Specifically, on the day before the police attack, we have the reports that Yulia Lovhkina was openly fraternizing with protestors the day before the attack. When the riot police were sent in to disperse the students, the TV channel owned by Lovochkin and Firtash covered the events closely. And the next day footage of the attack was played heavily in prime time, with the anchors intoning the Yanukovych had “shed the blood of Ukrainian children.” Again, this is from the TV station owned by Yanukovych’s chief of staff, but a chief of staff who would have been enraged by the pull out of the Association Agreement talks a week earlier:
And for what it’s worth, Ukraine’s interior minister alleged in 2016 that Serheii Lovochkin was indeed the author of the order to disperse the students that night. Keep in mind that there’s no compelling region to believe Avakov in general, but his claims do appear to be consistent with the rest of the available evidence:
Finally, it’s worth noting that the Ukrainian government itself still hasn’t issued a ruling on who was behind the decision to order the police attack on the students. Or the February 2014 sniper attacks. It’s the kind of delay that suggests a strong desire to not know who was behind the violence:
And, of course, we can’t forget about the warnings from Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko that the Ukrainian public will be shocked when they learn that the man who helped so-called “black hundred” of police task force Berkut flee Kyiv and deliberately drowned their weapons to conceal evidence was part of the Maidan protests.
So that all sheds quite a bit of light on what we know about Paul Manafort and the Hapsburg Group lobbying effort. We’re learning that it was a lobbying effort that had Manafort working closely with Viktor Yanukovych’s chief of staff, Serheii Lovochkin. We’re also learning that Lovochkin happens to be a prime suspect for giving the order for the November 29. 2013, police to attack the students and politically capitalize on the outrage.
Was Paul Manafort also involved in giving that attack order? That remains to be seen but it sure looks like it.
And we’re also learning that Alexander Kwasniewski was apparently both a member of the Hapsburg Group and the lead figure in the EU’s monitoring mission to Ukraine. So the Hapsburg Group was either a joint coordination effort between Kiev and an EU faction that wanted to see Ukraine join the EU regardless of the fate of Tymoshenko, with is pretty scandalous for the EU, or Kwasniewski was secretly working for the Hapsburg Group will officially acting as the head of the EU monitoring mission to Ukraine, which would be incredibly scandalous for Kwasnieski personally.
It’s one of the enduring themes of this story: the more we learn, the more scandalous it gets and yet the more mysterious it gets too, with one of the biggest mysteries and why there’s so little general interest in actually making sense of this scandal.