patrick.net

MolotovCocktail says

WTF happened with socal2 ?

He's AWOL for a while now.

An explosive leaked transcript from a secret call between top European leaders has exposed a disturbing plot to sabotage President Donald Trump’s efforts to strike a genuine peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

The leaked call reveals growing fear in the European Union (EU) that Trump is about to finally secure peace by bypassing Ukraine’s maximalist demands and sidelining President Volodymyr Zelensky.

French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly warned that the United States might “abandon Ukraine on territorial questions without providing clarity on security guarantees.”

The comments appeared in a “leaked” call summary published by German outlet Der Spiegel.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/confidential-conference-on-ukraine-peace-we-must-not-leave-ukraine-and-volodymyr-alone-with-these-guys-a-a7b269ed-b6c2-4739-8e83-81552e097c14

However, the leak looks far more like a deliberate shot across Washington’s bow than a genuine accident.

Zelensky’s Government Sabotaged Oversight, Allowing Corruption to Fester

Ukrainian leaders blame independent advisers for failing to prevent graft. A Times investigation found that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s own administration removed guardrails.

When Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Kyiv’s Western allies faced a dilemma: how to spend billions supporting a government fighting Russia without watching the money vanish into the pockets of corrupt managers and government officials.

The stakes were high because Ukraine’s vital wartime industries — power distribution, weapons purchases and nuclear energy — were controlled by state-owned companies that have long served as piggy banks for the country’s elite.

To protect their money, the United States and European nations insisted on oversight. They required Ukraine to allow groups of outside experts, known as supervisory boards, to monitor spending, appoint executives and prevent corruption.

Over the past four years, a New York Times investigation found, the Ukrainian government systematically sabotaged that oversight, allowing graft to flourish.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration has stacked boards with loyalists, left seats empty or stalled them from being set up at all. Leaders in Kyiv even rewrote company charters to limit oversight, keeping the government in control and allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent without outsiders poking around.