The attention of much of the mainstream western media has been focused on the fighting in Ukraine for over a year and a half, with other trouble spots getting lesser attention. Two events have however recently taken place that suggest that the situation in Ukraine, which increasingly favours Russia, will now receive less attention: the refusal of the US Congress to allot a budget to support Ukraine; and the war between Palestine and the Jewish State. The US’s closest ally - military, financial and emotional - is of course Israel, and there will always be arms and money from Washington. Indeed, one can even wonder where Israel ends and the US begins. Apart from the Christian Zionists and the powerful Jewish lobby, a majority of Americans support Israel strongly and emotionally, whereas many do not even know much about Ukraine. Thus American financial support is likely to be only piecemeal, and a PR exercise, leaving European taxpayers to foot the bill.
The Ukrainian government could face a shortage of money and be unable to pay salaries if the US cannot continue to inject huge funds into what is looking increasingly like a black hole, benefitting only mainly rich American shareholders and some corrupt Ukrainians, but not ordinary Americans. The Wall Street Journal reported on 3 October that the US and other donor nations currently pay the salaries of some 150,000 civil servants in Ukraine as well as over half a million teachers, professors, school workers in general and tens of thousands more military personnel. Again, the EU will have to pay yet more than previously, while its economies are already suffering from inflation as a result of masochistic sanctions, and funding and arming a country on a life support machine, the machine being NATO.
Russian military effectiveness and tactics apart, one of the reasons for the failed offensive is corruption. Ukraine is one of the world’s most corrupt countries. Corruption is endemic, at both a personal and institutional level. The more money that pours in, the more the corruption. One recent scandal saw conscription officials taking bribes and smuggling draft-dodgers out of the country. Transparency International stated that ordinary Ukrainians’ main fear is corruption: 73% of the population and 80% of businesses list the ‘restoration of corruption schemes’ as the main fear, followed by the ‘lack of control and embezzlement of public funds’, at 68% and 73% respectively.
The fact that Mr. Zelensky has taken public action against various officials is for presentation’s sake, is balderdash, simply part of a mainstream media-supported PR campaign to convince naïve and gullible Western audiences that corruption is under control. But now the cards are on the table, as serious EU politicians and even the former EU Commissioner, Juncker, note. The latter said on 5 October: ‘Anyone who has had anything to do with Ukraine knows that this is a country that is corrupt at all levels of society. Despite its efforts, it is not ready for accession; it needs massive internal reform processes,’. As for Zelensky, he has taken to lying, by claiming that the corruption has nothing to do with Ukraine’s partners. The fact is that the money pouring in and that collected by Ukrainian fiscal authorities cannot be separated in the Ukrainian budget, other than notionally: without the life-supporting money for this failed state, the Ukrainian state structure would collapse.
In a surreal budget for next year, the Ukrainian government plans to spend 1.2 billion Euros on the purchase of military drones for attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure, 350 million to support its veterans, almost 12 billion to support low-income residents, apart from plans to increase funding for education and medicine by almost a billion; in addition, over 200 million are expected to be spent on the work of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is what EU taxpayers are being asked to finance.
According to data from the European sociological study Eurobarometer, published in September, there is a clear trend of decreasing approval of support for Ukraine among Europeans. In particular, in Bulgaria, 51% are against, in the Czech Republic 48%, in Greece 49%, in Cyprus 52%, and in Slovakia 50%. In several countries, the majority of citizens are already against the continuation of military aid: Cyprus 65%, Hungary 57%, Slovakia and Bulgaria 56% each, Austria and Greece 55% each, and Slovenia 52%.
Recent developments are telling. In Slovakia, the new government has announced that there will be no more money for weapons, while even Poland has announced that once current supplies have been sent, weapons supplies will stop.
It is clear that the West is backpeddling, is already in a face-saving operation, and seeking a way out that will satisfy Moscow’s security concerns. The peoples of the EU are not taking kindly to the US shoving the burden onto them. It is at least unlikely that the US will ask the EU to finance the Jewish state!
The writing is on the wall. The days of the conflict in Ukraine are numbered. The time has come to negotiate on Russia’s territorial gains, and stop the rot.
