In September of 2022, Vladimir Zelensky rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Six months after Russia invaded Ukraine, he paid Wall Street a virtual visit.
Zelensky: Ukraine is the story of a future victory; a chance for you to invest now in projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars to share the victory with us.
Ukraine was open for business. The war-torn country needed to be reconstructed and Zelensky needed 400 billion dollars to make that happen. But it didn’t have to be that way.
Black: When Russia began this special military operation when they crossed the border within two months, Ukraine and Moscow were in very serious talks. And they had almost arrived at a peace agreement…And then the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Boris Johnson, came flying into Kyiv unannounced.
The peace deal suddenly disappeared after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s visit… Here’s former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who brokered the deal.
Bennett (B) (In Hebrew with English captions): I was under the impression that both sides very much want a ceasefire. And as I said at that meeting, Putin made two big concessions after the original demands, he renounced disarmament and denazification, and I saw to myself ‘wow, this is a huge shift.’
…Here, I don’t have a say, I’m just the mediator but I turn to America in this regard, I don’t do as I please. Anything I did was coordinated down to the last detail with the US, Germany, and France.
H: So they blocked it?
B: Basically, yes. They blocked it.
But why would the United States, and their junior partners, want to keep the war in Ukraine going? To answer this question, it’s necessary to first review a bit of history… This story begins in 1991—with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Weldon: Everyone was happy when Yeltsin came into power, came over and spoke before the Congress, and we were all excited, I was excited.
Curt Weldon served 20 years in Congress and was the Vice Chairman of the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committee. He also led bi-partisan efforts to improve ties between Russia and the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Weldon: Yeltsin had become corrupt, and had a drinking problem. And therefore, the Russian people lost confidence in him…And he was probably going to lose reelection. But Bill Clinton wanted Yeltsin back in power.
Yeltsin allowed experts from Harvard University, the US Government, and the IMF to oversee an economic shock therapy treatment that turned… state assets into private companies.
A weakened Russia, responsive to U.S. interests and those of an emerging oligarchic class, also allowed the west to expand NATO eastward, breaking numerous promises they had previously made to the Soviets.
Just months before Yeltsin left office, NATO made its first expansion east after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, adding the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland to the military alliance.
What happened to Russia also happened to the newly independent country of Ukraine. Ukraine was part of the USSR until 1991 when international financial institutions… jumped on the opportunity to make money off this newly formed country.
Today, with Ukraine blown to bits, transnational monopolies are licking at the chops.
Iversen: It’s going to be run by corporations and the US government to protect those corporations and those financial interests.
In order of appearance, the first corporations to gain big have been military contractors. Using our tax money, the US government has designated over 100 billion dollars in military aid to Ukraine. This money directly feeds the military industrial complex.
The US is sending Ukraine weapons from its own stockpiles and using the military aid to purchase brand new weapons from manufacturers.
It seems like the value of the US’s largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, increased 45% because of this so-called aid.
Ritter: The military industrial complex has come up with many innovative ways to make money.
Now that weapons manufacturers have grabbed their piece of the pie, international lenders can now sign Ukraine up for more loans. Before the 2022 invasion, Ukraine was the third largest IMF borrower with $9 billion of debt.
Since then, the IMF has lent billions more to the country, and is helping facilitate a projected $64 billion in loans over the next few years.
Credico: they’re going to be in debt for hundreds of years.
But the big winners of the Ukraine jackpot make IMF and defense contractor gains look like a child’s allowance.
Bennet (In Hebrew with English Captions): It’s a very harsh blow to Ukraine, the country. There will have to be a huge restoration of the infrastructures like the Marshall Plan.
And therein lies the rub. The restoration of a large war-torn country means major contracts for the world’s biggest monopolies. None bigger than BlackRock… which manages around 10 trillion –yes, trillion—dollars. To put things in perspective, the whole of the global economy is worth around $100 trillion. You could argue that BlackRock owns 10% of the world –and counting. BlackRock signed an agreement with Zelensky in November of 2022 to administer a fund to raise as much as $750 billion. This money is to be used to reconstruct Ukraine once it’s been converted to rubble. The key here is in the details. Blackrock’s fund is supposed to be independent, with experts from BlackRock and JP Morgan advising. Looking at a pie chart on a document that BlackRock created, however, you see that the Government of Ukraine is only one of four groups that operates the fund. Another group is labeled “Capital Providers” who will give the Ukrainian government “guidance.” A third group is designated “Design Advisors” AKA BlackRock. And the final fund operator is international financial institutions… All in all, it appears that, from now on, Ukraine’s economy will be managed – at least in part – by the world’s largest investment manager; one based in the United States.
Iversen: So Ukraine’s sovereignty, it’s really just an extension of US corporate, really corporate colonialism.
Zelensky: When we are talking about recovery, we are talking about millions of jobs, billions in corporate profits
In June of 2023, The U.K. Government hosted the Ukraine Recovery Conference, which brought together heads of states, and of transnational corporations, to discuss investment opportunities in Ukraine.
Sunak: I am delighted to announce today that over 400 businesses from 38 countries with a combined market cap of 4.9 trillion have now signed up.
The “billions in corporate profits” that Zelensky promised has already come to fruition, and hundreds of billions more could be on the way.
Lira: I think Butler said it, you know, war is a racket.
Weldon: I can’t blame one person. But I can blame a lack of leadership, a lack of leadership on people who made money, who got access and used influence for other reasons.
This has been the twelfth and final episode of Zelensky Unmasked. If you haven’t yet, please check out the first eleven episodes and share them widely. Maybe by raising awareness of the complexity of this conflict, we can bring about a peaceful settlement and avoid nuclear annihilation.
