Clintons Turn Page on Ukraine and 'Radioactive' Zelensky – Wall Street Analyst
18:22 GMT 26.09.2024 (Updated: 18:27 GMT 26.09.2024)
© AP Photo / Frank Franklin II
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By the time the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) 2024 reconvened on September 23 in New York City, Volodymyr Zelensky had already arrived in the US to present his "victory plan" to President Joe Biden.
Nonetheless, the issues of Ukraine, its leadership and its crises were noticeably absent on this year's CGI agenda. No Ukrainian political or social leaders took the stage during the Clintons' 2024 event.
This raised the eyebrows of those who remember how the Clintons woed the Zelenskys in 2022 and 2023.
Hillary Clinton attended the public launch of the foundation formed by Volodymyr Zelensky's spouse, Olena, in September 2022. A few months later Olena Zelenskaya received the Hillary Rodham Clinton Award for exceptional leadership.
In September 2023, the Clintons announced a joint Ukraine Action Network initiative to solicit funds together with Olena during the CGI 2023 where she received the Clinton Global Citizen Award.
Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel suggested that Volodymyr Zelensky has become "radioactive" for the Clintons.
Why is that?
The pundit drew attention to the fact that Zelensky lost his legitimacy under Ukrainian law after his presidential term expired in May.
The Kiev regime's corruption has become so notorious that even US mainstream press that used to tout Zelensky as a "new Churchill" is now bashing his cabinet for not doing enough to stop the embezzlement of foreign funds.
Ortel does not rule out that the funds from the widely advertised CGI Ukraine Action Network may have met the same fate as other Western funds which weren't sufficiently supervised by any government or independent watchdogs.
The Pew Research Center's July survey found that confidence in Zelensky has dropped in the US and several European countries compared to last year.
Washington has been allegedly working on options to replace Zelensky with "a more manageable and less corrupt figure," as the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) revealed in mid-August.
Apparently, under these circumstances, the Clintons may have decided that any further bromance with the Zelensky family wouldn't correspond to their interests, according to the analyst.
One should bear in mind that the Clintons themselves appear "to specialize in monetizing their public service for illegal private gain," said Ortel, who has carried out a private investigation into the Clinton Foundation's alleged fraud for several years.
"Despite at least two FBI investigations (2001-5 and 2016 forward), Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, to date, have not been punished for their charity frauds, based in New York, even though the Trump family has been punished twice for far smaller offenses, in my view following extensive review of their many false and materially misleading public filings," the pundit told Sputnik.
Reconstruction of Ukraine Not as Easy & Profitable as Seemed
The CGI 2024 silence on Ukraine is especially remarkable given the Clintons longstanding ties with the country's politicians and tycoons, including oligarch Viktor Pinchuk and his wife Olena — daughter of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.
"The Clinton Foundation, in various guises, has operated in Ukraine since 2004 and powerful citizens there have donated sizable sums, ostensibly, towards purported arms of this public charity," the pundit said.
Last year Ortel suggested that the Clintons' reinvigorated interest in Ukraine stemmed from their apparent desire to cash in on "a mammoth rebuilding package" once the hostilities ended.
"[The Clintons] are positioning themselves, as they did in Haiti and India, to get close to the rebuilding capital pools that likely will be funded by the US and allies," the Wall Street analyst presumed at the time.
However, this year has seen Russia thriving economically and advancing militarily in Ukraine. It has become clear that the conflict is unlikely to end on Washington's terms. Furthermore, the damage is huge and the Ukraine project might not offer immediate financial gains for investors, according to the analyst.
"Too much of Ukraine’s population has fled and likely never will return. Damage, to date, has been devastating. From Western perspective, an investment case for rebuilding necessary infrastructure is not possible to make, other than by lying about important assumptions," Ortel said.
Apparently, those circumstances prompted the Clintons to shift their focus to health, Africa and racial equity in order to solicit new funds.
Likewise, if presidential candidate Kamala Harris manages to win in 2024, she and her team are likely to turn their back on Ukraine too, the pundit believes.
"Judging from what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think a Harris Administration will just turn the page and shift focus to some other, more lucrative war and try to blame the mess in Ukraine on Trump," Ortel concluded.
