War profiteers descend on battlefields like personal injury lawyers follow ambulances.
The profiteering happening in Ukraine comes as no surprise. War is a business, and business is booming in Ukraine.
There’s over $62 billion in aid the Pentagon sent Ukraine in 2022. This is a war profiteer’s dream, and there are varying voices in the U.S. government that have expressed concern about massive fraud and the potential for weapons and technology to end up in the wrong hands.
The bigger concern is that the American public is softening their stance on defending Ukraine against Russia because of this. The more corruption and contract fraud comes to light, the less American taxpayers are willing to foot the bill.
The Pentagon is worried that independent investigations are being conducted, looking at contract fraud and war profiteering in Kyiv.
Pretty much everyone agrees: Ukraine was highly corrupt long before its even more corrupt neighbor invaded.
It’s a given that foreign aid is most certainly lining someone’s pockets. We know our United States tax dollars were sent to Ukraine and some of those dollars were sent back in the form of Democrat candidate campaign funds.
Rumor has it that an American intelligence source says that Ukraine is buying discounted Russian diesel to fuel its war and, as such, lining Putin’s pockets and also skimming from U.S. dollars intended to fund fuel purchases.
This thinly sourced statement, however, skims over the complexities of a very nuanced war. It is not a statement that can exist without a deeper explanation – one that takes the wind out of the sails of a very damaging allegation.
In 2022, Ukraine was purchasing tons of diesel from Bulgaria. That diesel was produced with Russian oil.
In total, an investigation into these purchases showed that Bulgaria exported around $774 million in fuels (mostly red diesel) to Ukraine.
That figure represented a 1,000-fold increase in such exports from before the Russian invasion. Bulgaria’s only gas oil refinery is owned by Russian Lukoil, and Bulgaria is fully entitled to continue to operate this refinery with Russian oil because it has an exemption from EU sanctions.
So, yes — essentially, Ukraine was buying “discounted Russian diesel,” but in a very indirect way.
All of this market activity is accepted by the EU. Bulgaria is allowed to export products produced from Russian oil to Ukraine.
In January, the U.S. started exporting fuel to Ukraine, reducing this dependency.
American military aid to Ukraine is about the wider threat to Europe, and to NATO. It’s about the consequences of allowing the Kremlin to simply steamroll its way across Europe.
There’s a lot that we cannot control, including much of what I just discussed. But we can control the quality of our lives, particularly health and wealth through our choices.