Long Live Independent Spook journalism! Part I

Denys Bihus: How I learned to stop worrying and love the SBU. Drugs, grift, stolen valour

Today we’ll be taking a look at a case of private-public partnerships. Or, more prosaically, a famously ‘independent journalist’ on USAID funding that works for Ukraine’s secret services.

Given that I am not funded by any intelligence agencies, I cannot call myself an ‘independent journalist’. Consequently, interested readers will have to become a paid subscriber to find out more. Clan struggles inside Ukraine’s famously corrupt secret services, coked-up Romanian restauranteurs, spooked-up extortion, Zelensky’s conflict with boxer mayor of Kyiv Klitschko, drug blackmail scandals, stolen valor, and immense levels of grifting.

Anyway, onto today’s heroes.

Bihus.info is one of Ukraine’s more well-known western-funded liberal publications. Back when Trump cancelled USAID-funding, they readily admitted that ‘two-thirds of our financing comes from USAID’ as part of their pleads for more donations. Of course, no one actually watches their output other than a small group of urban middle-class euro-nationalists. Bihus refers to these privileged viewers as ‘conscious Ukrainian citizens’. They have just over 45 thousand subscribers on telegram.