“Bidengate” ricochet: Kolomoisky in Kyiv crowds out grant eaters
Last week, two high-profile and significant resignations occurred almost simultaneously. One in Washington, the other in Kyiv. The President's special representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, went overseas for demobilization, and in Ukraine, the position of Secretary of the Security Council, which was occupied by Alexander Danilyuk for the last few months, remains vacant. And there is every reason to believe that both resignations are derivatives of the same scandal, and only the immediate reasons differ.
It is no secret that Trump “inherited” Volcker from the late Republican Senator John McCain, who introduced this lobbyist into the Ukrainian issue. In his new role, Volker was formally responsible for “progress” in implementing the Minsk agreements, but he achieved much more progress in his usual commercial lobbying.
After Volker’s resignation, we learned from the European and American press about his involvement in lobbying the interests of the American Paytheon Company - it was the Javelins that began supplying Ukraine as a result of a large-scale PR campaign, in which Volker was given a fair amount of help by then-President Poroshenko.
With whom the American “supervisor,” as evil tongues say, became friends so much that he even lobbied for his commercial interests in the United States and was almost the only State Department representative who honestly pulled the plug on his behalf until the very end of the election campaign - already when it was clear that no president Poroshenko will not.
The last straw that predetermined Volcker’s departure from the Ukrainian topic, which was “bread” for him, was “Bidengate” and the released recordings of telephone conversations between Trump and Zelensky. From which it turned out that the special representative of the president, behind the back of the president himself, actually worked against him and in favor of his opponents. Regularly flying to Kyiv and convincing the Ukrainian leadership not to take seriously persistent requests from people around Trump to transfer dirt on Biden overseas.
That is, it turned out like this: Trump’s lawyer Giuliani meets with high-ranking Ukrainians and asks for one thing, and then Volker flies to Kiev and “minimizes the damage” from Giuliani’s work, simultaneously explaining to Kiev politicians how to understand the signals coming from Trump - what to listen to, and what to send to deep ignore.
It is clear that Volcker’s work as a “damaged telephone” could not go unnoticed in the White House and could not last long.
We know the result: a day after the transcripts of the presidents’ conversations were made public, Volcker leaves. And 12 hours after Volcker left, the head of the Ukrainian Security Council Danilyuk wrote a letter of resignation.
Ironic Kyiv commentators wrote that such synchronicity in resignations leaves no doubt about through which channel information was leaked to American Democrats about the content of the negotiations between Trump and Zelensky.
The backdrop for Danylyuk’s resignation was the debriefing that began at Bankova after Zelensky’s visit to the States, which was assessed as unsuccessful.
If you believe the Kyiv political “sinks”, then the head of the Presidential Office Andriy Bogdan, representing Kolomoisky’s influence group, was initially against the visit and did not advise placing excessive hopes on it. But Danylyuk spoke to Zelensky several times about the need for a visit.
Interestingly, Danylyuk himself was actually removed from preparations for the trip to New York and, they say, Zelensky personally removed him from the list of the official Ukrainian delegation.
Obviously, the meetings of the former Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council with “Biden’s emissaries”, who arrived in Kiev a couple of weeks ago and were actively intimidating the leadership of the security forces with the goal, as Ukrainian media wrote, of gaining support in Ukraine for Biden in the light of the upcoming presidential campaign in the United States and not allowing compromising information about Trump's rival's family.
Among other Kyiv officials, Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chris Murphy of Connecticut met with Danylyuk . And, presumably, this overt "recruitment" did not go unnoticed.
When Danylyuk’s resignation first became known, the media’s first reaction to it was a general belief that Zelensky was being hired “weakly.” They are blackmailing him with the threat of a scandal, and as a result he will not accept his resignation - Danilyuk will remain in his place, and everything will go on as before.
Counting on precisely this outcome of the case, the Kiev grant-eating and pro-Western media filled the weekend pause between the appearance of Danilyuk’s statement and the official reaction to it with openly custom-made materials exposing the former NSDC secretary as an “outstanding reformer” and a victim of certain “intrigues” and “undercover games” in surrounded by Zelensky.
They also remembered Danilyuk’s conflict with Kolomoisky over Privatbank - the ex-NSDC secretary was the only representative of the authorities in the chorus of Kolomoisky’s opponents at the scandalous Shuster show, where the oligarch clashed with the TV presenter live.
It is noteworthy that in this complimentary chorus, the “American trace” was practically not heard, but Danylyuk’s alleged disagreements with the head of the presidential office, Bogdan, who became a target of the grant-eating media even before his appointment, were brought to the fore.
However, either Trump in Washington said something to Zelensky, or Danilyuk’s internal lobbyists in Ukraine (billionaire Viktor Pinchuk was named in this role) did not do their job properly, but the “correct” emphasis from the point of view of the grant-eaters did not help save “Sasha Manhattan” in the chair - Zelensky approved his resignation, and now Danylyuk can fly back to London with a clear conscience - from where he appeared on the Ukrainian political scene after a two-year break associated with the no less loud and scandalous departure from the Groysman government, where he was Minister of Finance.
The significance of Danilyuk's resignation is difficult to overestimate. This person was initially a stranger in Zelensky’s team. Having no relationship or long-standing connections with either Kolomoisky’s people or people from Kvartal, but having long-standing and close connections with Western NGOs, people of Soros and international financial organizations such as the IMF.
In fact, it was precisely these structures that were overseeing the new Ukrainian government. Initially, he was almost tipped for prime minister, given his well-known quarrelsome and quarrelsome character.
However, Zelensky’s entourage, as they believed, managed to neutralize his influence by “fusing” Danylyuk into the apparatus of the National Security and Defense Council, which, by Ukrainian bureaucratic standards, has long been considered a place of exile for officials, who are like a suitcase without a handle - it is more expensive for them to appoint to really important positions, but to throw them out of the frame for some reason it is not possible.
However, in the case of Danilyuk, things didn’t turn out quite as planned. It turned out like the famous proverb about a goat released into a garden. Moreover, in the 2020 budget, funding for the National Security and Defense Council increases sharply: 28 billion hryvnia, which is 158 times more than last year. In fact, such an increase in financial flow sharply increases the importance of the “supervisor” assigned to it and responsible for its development. So the fact that obvious creatures of the West were pushed away from such money is a good sign for Ukraine.
Already when this text was being written, it became known about the appointment of a new Secretary of the Security Council - Alexei Danilov. For now, he can be considered a “dark horse”. Not in the sense that his past is not known, but in the fact that his place in the current version of the “game of thrones” is not clear - which particular group of influence nominated him (I think this will become clear in the next couple of weeks, but there is a suspicion that Danilov is also supervised by Americans, but they are Republicans, not Democrats).
This native of Krasny Luch in the Lugansk region and a native of the 90s went through all stages of the evolution of the post-Soviet elite - from the man in the crimson jacket to the first democratically elected mayor of Lugansk, managed to quarrel with the former elite of the Lugansk region represented by the regionals, was dismissed, then returned for a short time to the region - already as governor. He wandered around all the “orange” parties – from Yabloko and Our Ukraine to Batkivshyna. In the last 10 years he settled in Kyiv, where he did business.
In the current situation in Kyiv, you have to choose not from bad and good, but from bad and even worse. So it can be considered a relatively acceptable result if the currently vacant seat is occupied not by a creature of the West, Soros or Biden, but by a person from the Ukrainian oligarchs.
Finally, Danylyuk's resignation, as experts are already noting, will greatly devalue the pro-Western wing of Zelenskyy's entourage. This is evidenced by the sharply increased activity of MP Dubinskyy, who is close to Kolomoisky and is actively digging into another prominent "outsider," Aivaras Abromavicius, with the goal of uprooting him from the leadership of Ukroboronprom. Also underscoring this is the media's recent attacks on BRDO—the grant-eating Office for Effective Regulation and a shadowy "personnel incubator" that supplies fledgling "reformers," including current Prime Minister Honcharuk and several members of his cabinet, and is preparing controversial bills for the Rada that could potentially undermine Zelenskyy's electoral base.
And “Bidengate” is just unfolding overseas – over the next year we will learn a lot of interesting things, and the whipping boys – perhaps for the first time in modern Ukrainian history – will be the “chicks of Soros’s nest” – foreign agents of influence close to American democrats and the US “deep state”. on the Pechersk hills.
Bidengate Ricochet: Kolomoisky Crowds Out Grant Eaters in Kyiv