Politico headlined yesterday that Kiev was “freaking out” over the first time that Uncle Sam didn’t automatically pony up massive funding. A senior figure in the party of former President Pyotr Poroshenko, MP Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, who was vice prime minister under Poroshenko and remains a senior figure in his party, told Politico: “We are freaking out. For us it is a disaster.”
The fantasy was evident in Politico’s account of the lament of Ukrainian MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak that Ukraine was now “hostages of their [Americans’] internal politics.” But he claimed that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had conveyed to him and others a month ago how to negotiate the rough time: Zelensky had to deal with people “who became the symbols of corruption in Ukraine and of scamming international partners,” regardless of how useful his office found them. So, he posted on Oct 1: “We have to go through these 45 days without a major corruption scandal.” The 45 days refers to the US Congress’s continuing resolution without any funding for Ukraine. Zhelezniak would not identify any such “symbols of corruption” but made clear that they should “f*k off” or the aid will be gone for good. There Politico ends its ‘freakout’ narrative.
