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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   38874 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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I think the most disturbing type of argument around Ukraine is the one that pretends to be doing it "for their own good". Like "Why don't you want peace, why don't you want peace? Why do you want your people to die?" to the victims of a dictator invading their home, bombing their cities, kidnapping their children and stealing their land. If they aren't settling for your offer it's probably because they don't think your offer is good enough to actually protect them. They're in desperation, if an offer was convincing they would take it. So why not?

  1. They've been promised security before, they gave up their nukes for it. They sign a deal that Russia won't punch them in the face, Russia violates it twice and if they don't want to just sign another without a stronger third party guarantee, it's not because they don't want peace. It's because they know Russia can't be trusted.

  2. They don't think American investments means much, before the war there was that joke rule of "no two countries with a McDonald's have ever been at war" which was essentially emblematic of this concept. That international business interests for peace were simply too strong for a country to overcome, and yet the war happened anyway.

If someone doesn't want to support Ukraine fine, there's lots of other bad stuff we ignore and don't help out with. But those people spreading this idea that "they must want to be invaded and die so not helping them is actually the best help", I just find that really sickening.

I’m not sure if you’re aware of who has been influencing Ukraine and what that means for “sovereignty over their land”. Kolomoisky, a Jewish oligarch, is responsible for Zelensky’s rise to power and has an outsize influence in Ukraine. Some information about him —

Dozens of New York’s Jewish organizations have had their bottom lines bolstered by two businessmen accused of laundering billions for a Burisma-connected Ukrainian oligarch, public records show. Mordechai Korf, 48, and Uri Laber, 49, have shelled out more than $11 million to nearly 70 yeshivas and religious charities in Brooklyn and across the state, according to federal tax filings.

But Korf and Laber are more than just generous benefactors: since 2006, the Miami-based pair have allegedly been middlemen for Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, funneling $4 billion of his ill-gotten gains to buy property and businesses in the U.S, according to three civil lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in Florida federal court.

Kolomoisky, who built his fortune during the lawless years immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union, reportedly has a controlling interest in Burisma, the Ukrainian oil and gas company which put President Biden’s son, Hunter, on its board of directors in 2014 at a salary of $50,000 per month. Kolomoisky dispatched his private army to take over companies and destroy a Russian-owned oil and gas refinery in Dnipropetrovsk in 2014, according to reports. Korf and Laber — who met Kolomoisky decades ago while working and volunteering in the Ukrainian province he governed — gave a total of more than $1.4 million to Brooklyn’s Jewish Educational Media, and nearly $1 million to the Manhattan-based Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States, nine countries which banded together after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union].

Kolomoisky associates with and helps mostly other Jews, not just when he launders his money to his tribe abroad, but also at home:

Kolomoyskyi has been a prominent figure in Ukraine's organised Jewish community.[38] In 2008, he was elected the President of "the United Jewish community of Ukraine" in Kyiv.[39] He became a major funder in Ukraine of the Chabad movement, which has Ukrainian roots.[40][41] In 2012, with Gennady Bogolubov and Victor Pinchuk, he financed construction of what purports to be the largest multifunctional Jewish Community Center in Europe,[42] the Menorah Centre, in downtown Dnipro. Comprising seven marble[43] towers (of which the highest is 20 stories) arranged in the shape of a menorah,[44] it houses a synagogue, two hotels, kosher restaurant and grocery store and Jewish Memory and Holocaust Museum.[45][46]

His money went toward building up a parallel ultra-orthodox Jewish colony in Ukraine:

Over the years, he [funded by Kolomoisky] built up parallel education networks, ranging from kindergarten to college. One offers a high-level Jewish liberal education (its primary school once claimed to be the biggest Jewish school in Europe), and the other is much smaller and runs along Chabad-Haredi lines, with a program of Torah studies and separation of boys and girls. Kaminetsky is the archetype of the enterprising Chabad shaliach (emissary), building his own institutions while blending himself and his family into the local community and culture.

His relationship to Zelensky:

The journalists uncovered that law firms running offshore companies — used by former owners of PrivatBank Igor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholyubov to funnel millions of dollars in depositors’ money abroad — lied to the financial monitoring agencies as to who was behind these firms. Also, according to the journalists, Zelensky’s offshore companies accepted payments from Kolomoisky for video content. Kolomoisky’s 1+1 media holding was the key buyer of TV series, shows and films created by Kvartal 95 production studio, founded by Zelensky

Kolomoisky gained his power by hiring gangs to kill whoever stood on his way, at least according to Ukrainian authorities last year. And according to the Atlantic Council:

Zelenskyy’s campaign depended heavily on the backing of Ihor Kolomoisky, arguably Ukraine’s most controversial oligarch of all

During the campaign, Zelenskyy appointed Kolomoisky’s personal lawyer as a key adviser, travelled abroad to confer with the then-exiled Kolomoisky on multiple occasions, and benefited from the enthusiastic endorsement of Kolomoisky’s media empire.

Kolomoisky is accused of helping Zelenskyy settle scores and undermine potential challengers. One of these is Vitaly Klitschko, the former world heavyweight boxing champion and current Mayor of Kyiv who is often cited as a potential future rival presidential candidate after comfortably securing re-election in the Ukrainian capital last year. Kolomoisky’s media outlets have stepped up their attacks on Klitschko, while friends and allies of the mayor have become the targets of police investigations. Klitschko himself complained about harassment after armed officers from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) raided his apartment building in May.

Kolomoisky, of course, owned the TV station that first propagandized Zelensky to the public. He played a character who becomes President, a way to manipulate the public into eventually voting for him.

So yeah, when I think of “sovereignty over my land”, I don’t think about Kolomoisky taking over the resources of a country through murder, illegally extracting all the money he can, spending that money on a lavish 100 million dollar “Menorah Center” and services for his foreign tribe members, funneling the rest of the money through his tribe members to help his co-ethnics 5000 miles away, and then using this media control to boost the popularity of yet another tribe member by depicting him as the president in expensive TV series. When I think of sovereignty, I do not think of “the largest money laundering operation in history”.

If I were Ukrainian I would not want to be controlled by these guys. I would rather be controlled by my brothers in Russia. The fact that they have put out calls for their tribe to flee Russia tells me all I need to know.

I’m not sure if you’re aware of who has been influencing Ukraine and what that means for “sovereignty over their land”. Kolomoisky, a Jewish oligarch, is responsible for Zelensky’s rise to power and has an outsize influence in Ukraine.

Why have you given your account password to SecureSignals?

In addition to what @Stefferi said, the whole "Ukraine as Russia's antithesis" thing was started by Poroshenko, the previous president, who in 2019 lost his reelection to Zelensky, who ran as a conciliatory candidate. Z only flipped his stance in early 2021, when his hastily assembled "drain the swamp" party slumped in the polls.

You don’t have to be as extreme as SecureSignals to see how crazy this scenario is. Ukrainian’s talk about “land” and protecting their sovereignty when a foreigner owned most of their land’s resources via corruption, to launder to his own people thousands of miles away. You mention Poroshenko, but Poroshenko had the awareness to go after Kolomoisky, which is why Kolomoisky fled to Israel (until Zelensky’s reelection, which was his own project). Kolomoisky really wanted his Jewish protege Oleksandr Lazorko in charge of Ukraine’s oil industry at a separate company, and when Poroshenko fired him…

On the morning of March 20th, [a journalist] Leshchenko got a tip that armed men in camouflage and bulletproof vests had arrived at the Kiev headquarters of Ukrnafta, Ukraine’s largest oil and gas producer. Kolomoisky’s PrivatBank Group has a forty-two per cent stake in the company. The men spent the weekend securing the building: they brought in supplies, blocked the entries, and even welded metal grills onto the front entries. One of the men told Leshchenko that he was from the Dnipro-1 Battalion, which has been funded largely by Kolomoisky.

In mid-March of this year, Ukraine’s government put in place reforms meant to improve corporate governance, curb the power of oligarchs, and, in particular, to reduce Kolomoisky’s authority over the oil-and-gas sector. Kolomoisky wasn’t pleased, and on March 19th, Radio Liberty (a branch of Radio Free Europe that was founded as an American news source for the Soviet Union) posted his first YouTube hit. The video opens with a group of men, who are dressed like soldiers, carrying boxes, sports bags, and what appear to be firearms into the headquarters of the state-owned oil-pipeline company UkrTransNafta. Its C.E.O., a Kolomoisky ally, had just been replaced, meaning that Kolomoisky would lose his considerable influence over the company. Kolomoisky is then seen leaving the building, flanked by thick-necked men in black.

When foreigners raid your country’s resources with their own paramilitary forces, and arrange for people to become president, you don’t have sovereignty. The reason these people fled Russia is because Russia stamps down on this stuff — replacing it with their own Slavic version, sure, but at least it doesn’t go to an insular tribe from a different culture. See what they did with Bill Browder.

when a foreigner owned most of their land’s resources via corruption

Kolomoisky owned “most” of Ukraine’s resources? What?

The reason these people fled Russia

The Jews who leave Russia leave, like many others, for economic reasons, not because there’s some huge fear of United Russia pursuing pogroms.

until Zelensky’s reelection, which was his own project

A project that has now ended with him in jail, stripped of citizenship, with billions of dollars of his assets seized and sold by the Ukrainian state without compensation…

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