From investigative reporter Seymour Hersch, and hold on to your heads…
The Ukraine government, headed by Volodymyr Zelensky, has been using American taxpayers’ funds to pay dearly for the vitally needed diesel fuel that is keeping the Ukrainian army on the move in its war with Russia. It is unknown how much the Zelensky government is paying per gallon for the fuel, but the Pentagon was paying as much as $400 per gallon to transport gasoline from a port in Pakistan, via truck or parachute, into Afghanistan during the decades-long American war there.
…Zelensky has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.”
“Zelensky’s been buying discount diesel from the Russians,” one knowledgeable American intelligence official told me. “And who’s paying for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making millions” on it.
In related news, the federal deficit topped $1 trillion in the first six months of fiscal 2023 (October through March), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.
KABOOM!
Ethics Alarms 
“The political left has shown its pattern of propaganda lies within their narratives so many times since 2016 that it’s beyond me why anyone would blindly accept any narrative that the political left and their lapdog media actively push?” Steve Witherspoon 2022
The Ukraine propaganda narrative is likely no different.
Seymour Hersch?
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, it is hard to assess accuracy of Sy’s “reporting.” This may be true, it might not be true. Reporting on Pentagon Oalers, My Lai and Watergate, among many other important “stories,” was accurate and he has earned multiple awards for his reporting — many years ago. In the last 10 years, however, his reporting has been (at best) controversial and (at worst) questionable. In 2013, for example, Hersh alleged that the gas used in Syria was used by the rebels, not the government. Anonymous sources. Probably incorrect. Two years later, he wrote an account about the killing of Osama Bin Laden that differed greatly from all other reports. Anonymous sources. Right or wrong? We don’t know. Just this year, he “reported” that the U.S. and Norway had sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines. Anonymous sources. No traceable evidence. Do we detect a pattern in the Sy Hersh reporting of recent years? I do, and it does not give me confidence in his writing. He may be right. He may be wrong. Or he may just be the lunatic we’re looking for. (Thanks to Billy Joel for inspiration).
I agree completely. His work for the last decade or so has shown a deteriorating level of plausibility. I’m not discounting the possibility that he’s right about this one, but until one of those anonymous CIA sources goes on the record, I’m leaning towards “has-been reporter tries to get his name in the headlines one more time.” Sometimes the reason we exclaim “how could this be true?” is that it isn’t.
Agreed. But Sy’s livelihood is hanging by a thread: I find it hard to believe he would go public with a story like this if he didn’t have solid evidence.
Perhaps. But this isn’t the kind of allegation that can be readily disproved. The best that can be said in rebuttal is “there’s no real evidence of that,” which is not enough to overcome confirmation bias, either in Hersch’s integrity or in Zelensky’s lack of it.
It still has to be proved, though. Sy has to do more than say he heard it through the grapevine, or he looks ridiculous.
And he’s 86, an age that has prompted the writer of this wonderful blog to urge others to retire into private lives.
Pentagon Papers. I don’t even begin to imagine how autocorrect came up with Oalers! Wish I could core t it in the text.
In a previous life, I was a source for Mr. Hersh on one of his books. Nothing classified, just background. It was very apparent that he was looking at this particular story from a “US bad / USSR understandable” perspective, and that seemed to drive his questions and his (preordained, I believe) conclusions. I view all of his writing now as initially suspect without further confirmation.
Having said that, and having done a fair amount of work in the CIS, including Ukraine, I have no doubt that every dollar we send is subject to being stolen or diverted from its original purpose by the recipients. The culture in the former Soviet states (particularly those under Russian control for many decades) is almost unimaginable to Western business people, with the exception perhaps of the Biden family. Most of us who had that experience are very critical of sending money to the Ukrainian government. We should be sending aid in kind, like ammunition, missiles, and launchers. And even then, we must expect that some portion of that will make its way to international markets. And the lack of effective audit procedures is inexcusable. Again.
So this report surprises me not at all.
77Zoomie?
Michael is a 69Zoomie
Fast, neat, average?
Friendly, good. good
Yes, sir. And I think there is another Zoom in the Cadre here as well.
And hence your head is intact.
As a Ukrainian, following the war with Russian and Ukrainian language sources, I can tell you that every dollar of Western air is skimmed. Ukrainian volunteers, who crowdfund for the war effort skim. This has been shown in some investigative reporting, where the volunteers proudly submit that they bought Y amount of drones after collecting X amount of dollars. And when you do X/Y math, it is something like $50k per unit for consumer-grade drones, which one can get off Aliexpress for $600 per unit, or something ridiculous like that. There was a scandal with the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, where on paper, soldiers are getting posh food rations, and the army buys quite fancy food. As you can guess, nobody on the front lines sees any of that. The Russians are no better with corruption. Half of of the MoD’s high level bureaucrats have dachas in France, Spain, etc, and their wives/mistresses regularly spend their time there. It is hard for me to imagine the soldiers, on either side of the conflict, knowing that they could die for this disgusting and cynical graft. I am so thankful I am spared from this conflict.
Well, now we have a better idea of who’s REALLY been colluding with the Russians…
The key question is whether or not supporting Ukraine in a larger goal of undermining Putin’s designs on eastern Europe is worth it. To me, so far, the answer is yes.