Zelensky and Russiagate - spookwar
How Ukrainian secret service agents released the 'Manafort leaks' back in 2016. Diamonds and the sand mafia. 'Known in criminal circles as "Brother Karamazov"'. Why Trump doesn't trust Zelensky
Trump’s ever-intensifying verbal assaults on Zelensky are met with surprise by some.
There should be none - the political class in power in Ukraine has played an avant-garde role in the Democrat Party’s war with Donald Trump for years.
First, with the 2016 Manafort affair. Serhii Leshchenko, the USAID-funded journalist and politician who played a major role in publicizing Manafort’s so-called ‘black box’, is currently Advisor of President Zelensky's chief of staff. I even wrote an article about Leshchenko (and Zelensky’s) favorite narcotics.
The second cause for Trump-Zelensky bitterness comes from the end of his first term. Trump’s telephone conversation with president Zelensky in July 2019 was used as the pretext for Trump’s impeachment.
Finally, the topic of this article - Zelensky did not fulfil the promise he made to Trump in the aforementioned phone call. During that conversation, Zelensky agreed to Trump’s demand to investigate the Biden family’s Burisma corruption in Ukraine - as well as the legality of what really happened when USAID-funded Ukrainians launched the Russiagate affair back in 2016.
But these investigations never went anywhere. Zelensky didn’t go through with his promise, and in 2023 he ended up arresting for treason the parliamentarian who did leak information on Burisma in mid-2022, Oleksandr Dubinsky. Dubinsky, a massive Trump fan, remains imprisoned.
Today’s article will go into how exactly Democrat Party-funded networks stalled investigations into Democrat corruption in Ukraine. While this all took place in 2019-2020, it is surely relevant in understanding why Trump doesn’t trust Zelensky to fulfil any deals. No wonder Trump is calling for elections in Ukraine.
Russiagate in Ukraine
The Ukrainian political establishment was already making serious mistakes towards Trump before he was even elected. Interior minister and curator of the Azov batallion Arsen Avakov called Trump a ‘dangerous marginal’ in July 2016 after Trump stated his willingness to recognize Crimea as Russian. After Trump’s victory, Avakov deleted the post.
But Ukraine’s best infowarriors and their curators were hard at work with a new operation against Trump - the Manafort leaks.
As the Ukrainian publication strana.ua writes, the 2016 ‘leaks’ on Manafort’s blackbox were ‘essentially a special operation by the U.S. Democratic Party against Trump through its Ukrainian clients – former Deputy Head of the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) Viktor Trepak, MP Serhiy Leshchenko, and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU).’
The story started with Trepak’s delivery to the USAID-funded and created NABU of information regarding ‘2 billion USD of bribes’ on May 28. These were supposedly paid through a ‘black ledger’ by the Party of Regions, the party of ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, toppled by the euromaidan events of 2013-14.
Next, on May 31, Leshchenko, who had always worked closely with the NABU, published an article on Trepak’s information for the USAID-funded Ukrainska Pravda, a sort of Ukrainian NYT. Leshchenko’s article included a pdf of this ‘black ledger’, which apparently showed the signature of Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager.
The NYT then published an article on August 14, 2016, titled "Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief”, relying on Leshchenko’s findings and statements from Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU).
In December 2018, a Kyiv court would rule that Leshchenko and head of the NABU Artem Sytnyk violated Ukrainian law through their role in the Manafort scandal. Here’s how the KyivPost summarized it:
The release of information about the “black ledger,” which was part of a pre-trial investigation, “led to interference in the electoral processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine as a state,” the court’s press service wrote.
The court also declared that Leshchenko acted illegally and termed his actions “interference in the external politics of Ukraine by spreading the above-mentioned information about Paul Manafort.”
Leshchenko claimed that then-president Petro Poroshenko was trying to court Trump’s favor given upcoming Ukrainian elections. No doubt - but Leshchenko never faced real consequences, and he is now at the heights of Zelensky’s administration.
It’s now time to have a look at why Trump’s 2019 attempts to get revenge for Russiagate failed - just like Poroshenko, Zelensky was unwilling to cooperate.
Trepak’s diamonds
Today’s article will focus on where the Manafort saga began - with the spook Trepak.
I’ve written before about the decades-long mission by the CIA to infiltrate and take over Ukraine’s secret services, or SBU . Under pro-US president Viktor Yushchenko in the 2000s, SBU officers even received their epaulettes under the watchful eye of the US ambassador.
No wonder the SBU played such a key role in Russiagate. It was Viktor Trepak who took the initiative of sending the NABU documents regarding ‘Manafort’s black box’ in spring 2016. Although Trepak’s evidence did not turn into a court case in Ukraine - which Trepak constantly regretted - it was of course seized upon by opponents of Trump in the US. Who was Trepak?
Trepak rose rapidly through the SBU ranks. In 2015, after only 9 years of work, he occupied the second-most powerful post in Ukraine’s security services and was head of the K department, dealing with corruption and organized crime. He left the post after only a year.
Trepak was already clearly aligned with the Democratic Party agenda in 2015. He offered a resignation that year to president Poroshenko, citing his supposed inability to fulfill an anti-corruption investigation on diamond corruption in the court system. He explicitly blamed this on the corruption of chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
Ukrainian journalist and lawyer Volodymyr Boiko summarized the situation as follows:
The goal of [Trepak’s] "diamond prosecutors" case was to force then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin to close the criminal investigation into former Minister Mykola Zlochevsky and the company Burisma, whose board of directors included Hunter Biden, the son of the U.S. Vice President.
And right as Trepak’s resignation letter openly criticized Shokin, USAID-funded, Democrat Party-aligned ‘anti-corruption NGOs’ were attacking Shokin at full steam. Removing domestic control over the court system and placing it in the hands of foreigners and USAID-sponsored ‘activists’ is a long-term Democrat goal in Ukraine.
I remind the reader that Joe Biden, in leaked audio files, repeatedly pressured Poroshenko to fire said chief prosecutor - he threatened to withhold billions in IMF funding unless Shokin was removed. Shokin’s sin was his refusal to dismiss the legal case against Burisma and Hunter Biden. Shokin was dismissed in March 2016. In a 2018 interview with Voice of America, Biden boasted of his role:
“I am desperately concerned about the regression in the fight against corruption in Kyiv. Here is one specific example. I was given a task regarding Ukraine. I remember traveling there to convince our team that we should provide Ukraine with long-term loan guarantees. I went to Kyiv 12–13 times, and in the end, I was supposed to announce that we were offering another billion dollars in loan guarantees.
I received promises from Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk that they would take steps regarding the Prosecutor General, but they didn’t.
I went to a press conference and said: 'We are not giving you a billion dollars.' They told me: 'You don’t have the authority, you are not the president, the president said he would give it.' I replied: 'Then call him.'
I said: 'You’re not getting a billion dollars. I’m leaving in six hours, and if your Prosecutor General is not fired by then, you’re not getting the money.'
And that son of a b***h was fired. And in his place, they appointed someone who was trusted at the time."
Revenge of the Sorosites
Of course, when Zelensky came into office in 2019 on the promise of ending the war in the east, it seemed like the time was ripe to develop relations with Trump. After all, Zelensky had even promised to do everything necessary to bring peace to Donbass through negotiations.
And while Zelensky’s first cabinet was full of ‘Sorosites’ (a popular term in Ukraine for USAID-funded ‘activists’), grown and raised in Democrat Party biolabs, things seemed to be changing in early 2020. In April, Zelensky fired some important Sorosites from government and it appeared that he would remove Artem Sytnyk from his position at the head of the NABU. Sytnyk was one of the most well-known ‘anti-corruption activists’, and played a major role in the 2016 Russiagate in his role at the NABU.
Next, Trump demanded to go further against the Sorosites in his famous July 2019 phone call to Zelensky - investigation into the Biden family’s corruption in Ukraine, as well as investigation into the 2016 Russiagate affair itself. This demand itself became a major political event in the US, eventually leading to Trump’s impeachment.
But while Zelensky promised Trump that ‘the next prosecutor general is 100% my person’ in the phone call, no progress would be made on investigations into Burisma and Russiagate. Sytnyk was not removed from his post at NABU. The Trepak network is again to blame.
Trepak had long been close with Shokin’s deputy at the prosecutor’s office, Vitaly Kasko. Back in 2016, they worked in concert against Shokin in the aforementioned ‘prosecutor’s diamonds’ case. Kasko also had a long history receiving grants from Soros’s Transparency International.
Their closeness was partly a business partnership - both were patronized by the important Konstantinosky brothers, a Kiev business-politics clan accused of organized crime activity. Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky was in fact the richest parliamentarian in Ukraine in 2015, per his declared incomes. He also spent 8 years in the US in the 80s, and was an active sponsor of nationalist paramilitaries in the war in Donbass from 2014 onwards.
In fact, it later turned out that Kasko-Trepak’s much-hyped ‘prosecutor’s diamonds’ case was merely Konstantinovsky’s attempt to seize control of the illegal sand market from his business competitor - Shokin's Deputy Prosecutor of the Kyiv region, Oleksandr Korniyets. The case against Korniyets and his diamonds never went anywhere. In fact, this is the usual fate of the various ‘anti-corruption cases’ trotted out by western-funded ‘anti-corruption activists’.
The whole purpose of their ‘activism’ is merely to discipline the Ukrainian elite, preventing any actions that go against Washington’s plans. Corruption in Ukraine has hardly abated under their decade-long ‘struggle’. In fact, just about every top ‘anti-corruption activist’, including Sasko himself, has himself been implicated in quite real corruption - more on Leshchenko’s corruption in future installments.
Kasko resigned from his post at the prosecutor’s office in February 2015 because the failure of his beloved diamond case. He publicly blamed Shokin. In April 2016, Kasko became board member of Ukrainian branch of George Soros’s Transparency International - for his ‘achievements in the struggle against corruption’. Surely not coincidentally, Kasko Kasko and his friend Trepak in the SBU would soon be hard at work digging up dirt on Trump through the Manafort affair.
While not holding a government post, Washington still kept Sasko under its protection. In April 2019, ex-prosecutor general Yury Lutsenko told the western-funded Babel in an interview that US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch warned him not to continue corruption investigations into Sasko in January 2017, right before the Kyiv Prosecutor's Office closed the case against Kasko "due to insufficient evidence.":
The meeting took place at the Prosecutor General's Office, at this very table (the interview was recorded in the Prosecutor General's office – Ed.), in January 2017. It was not a one-on-one meeting. She was not alone, and I was not alone. Ms. Yovanovitch was interested in the case of (former Deputy Prosecutor General – Ed.) Vitaliy Kasko. The fact was that Mr. Kasko had registered his mother in a government-issued apartment, even though she had never left Lviv – which showed signs of abuse…
According to her, Kasko was an outstanding anti-corruption figure, and the criminal case discredited anti-corruption activists. I presented the details and explained that I could not open and close cases at will. I also listed several so-called anti-corruption activists who were involved in cases. She said this was unacceptable, as it would undermine trust in anti-corruption activists.
I took a piece of paper, wrote down the names mentioned, and said, 'Dictate the list of untouchable persons.' She replied, 'No, you misunderstood me.' I said, 'No, I understood you correctly; in the past, such lists were written on Bankova Street, and now you are suggesting new lists from Tankova Street’ (the former name of Sikorsky Street, where the U.S. Embassy is located – Ed.).
Kasko got the chance to return to power amidst a general counter-offensive of Democrat-sponsored figures. In August 2019, Ruslan Ryaboshapko, one of the most well-known USAID/Soros-funded anti-corruption warriors, became prosecutor general. This was widely hailed as a victory of Biden-aligned foreign agents over domestic elites. Ryaboshapko personally appointed Kasko to become his deputy on October 8.
Democrat Party-controlled figures were once more in power in Ukraine’s court system. Any hopes of investigation into Russiagate and Burisma were dashed.
Following Kasko’s appointment, journalist Volodymyr Boiko wrote the following on the matter to facebook:
Deputy Prosecutor General became Viktor Trepak, who, together with NABU Director Artem Sytnyk and the current First Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaliy Kasko, under the supervision of FBI representative in Ukraine Karen Greenaway, orchestrated the "Manafort case" more than three years ago. The goal was to compromise Donald Trump's campaign manager and help Hillary Clinton win the presidential election.
In 2015, the same Trepak and Kasko, under the leadership of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt and with funds from MP Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky (known in criminal circles as "Brother Karamazov"), orchestrated the so-called "diamond prosecutors case." During this operation, they planted cocaine on the Deputy Head of the Main Investigation Department of the Prosecutor General's Office, Volodymyr Shapakin, and attempted to pass a bribe through an SBU agent to the Deputy Prosecutor of the Kyiv region, Oleksandr Korniyets.
The goal of the "diamond prosecutors case" was to force then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin to close the criminal investigation into former Minister Mykola Zlochevsky and the company Burisma, whose board of directors included Hunter Biden, the son of the U.S. Vice President.
One can only imagine the surprise in the White House when Trepak was appointed Deputy Prosecutor General amid the unfolding scandal over Ukraine’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Biden family's corruption leaks.
Ukrainian journalists like Boiko and Igor Guzhva concluded at the time that there was Zelensky was clearly neither interested nor able to fulfil Trump’s request to investigate Democrat Party intrigues in Ukraine. I have no doubt that Trump learned a valuable lesson - not to trust Zelensky.
Finally, Zelensky himself was close to the coterie of characters that stalled the Russiagate investigations. Many Ukrainian publications pointed out the fact that Sasko went to university not only alongside Trepak, but also Zelensky’s close friend and then head of the President’s Office, Andriy Bohdan. No doubt this existing friendship made it easier for him to return to his position in government, despite the fact that he was already making good money defending those involved in corrupt military contracts in court and working for Soros’s Transparency International.
Russiagate and war
Trump is back in power, and things are worse than ever between him and Zelensky. One can only hope that this time, Trump’s attempts to withdraw US involvement in the war in Ukraine don’t go as badly as it did last time.
The paradox is that while Trump’s 2016 victory was seen in Kiev as a win for Russia, it actually led to a worsening of Russia-US relations.
It was under Trump that the US began sending lethal weapons to Ukraine. The last meeting between presidents in the Normandy format took place under Poroshenko in 2016 - the next one would be in 2019 under Zelensky. Ukrainian nationalists also began a full-scale economic blockade of the separatist regions of the Donbass in 2016, which would eventually be upheld on the government level. This excluded the possibility of negotiations and peaceful resolution of the conflict.
The reason why this happened is quite clear - through Russiagate, Trump was constantly vilified as a Russian agent. To move forward with a peaceful resolution of the war in Ukraine would have ‘confirmed him as Putler’s agent’.
Ironically, it’s speculated in Ukrainian media that the Democrat Party may have intended to go through with just such a ‘Minsk’ style peace in Ukraine, had Hillary won. Perhaps they just didn’t want Trump to get the peacemaker glory. As usual, it was Ukrainians who paid for the vanity of ruling elites at home and across the Atlantic.
Trump is clearly unwilling to let this scenario repeat. Once bitten, twice shy. Zelensky is unreliable.
If you want to keep your fingers on the throbbing pulse of Ukrainian politics, become a paid subscriber. You won’t regret it. This is only the tip of the iceberg.
Thanks for the freebie.
I have said since 2016 that the former Soviet republic that tried to influence US elections is not Russia - its Ukraine.
Just that Ukrainian interference was in favor the the estbalishment candidate, so that makes it okay!