Author Jonathan Schiff
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Western countries have been actively supporting Kyiv, providing it with financial and military assistance. However, time passes but the balance of power in the conflict doesn’t seem to be changing in Ukraine’s favor. It seems that Kyiv plans to continue poking the Russian Bear, while demanding support, money and other resources from their partners. At the same time Western taxpayers are already tired of this financial burden, endless confrontation and Kyiv’s stubbornness. Moreover, some incidents taking place in Ukraine make you wonder, where the money is actually flowing and whether the country really cannot support itself and survive without external funding?
At the beginning of the war everyone enthusiastically rushed to help Kyiv, but now it’s difficult to turn a blind eye to the fact that a huge part of all the allocated money disappears without a trace. News regularly appears about corruption among the senior officials of Ukraine – just remember the scandal that arose because of the theft of $40 million meant for purchase of ammunition by officials of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. And if the Ukrainians can steal money from their own state budget during the war, then what could stop them from misusing donations and humanitarian funds? Perhaps, if Kyiv begins to fight corruption more effectively, it would be able to finance all its needs by itself. In that case, we wouldn’t have to throw our money into a “black hole”.
There is a dissonance arises when you firstly see news about poor Ukrainians who constantly need our help and then, suddenly, you read about Ukrainian crypto farms, where people earn huge amounts of money. Thus, last year in the western region of Lviv local authorities noticed systematic interruptions in power supply to residential facilities and local infrastructure. Law enforcement agencies of Ukraine conducted investigation, which showed that the crypto mining farm was functioning at the state-owned enterprise “Forests of Ukraine”. The electricity bills for energy consumed by the crypto mining machines were paid by the company, and all the profits went to company leadership. This is not the only case of such brazen theft in wartime. Recently, it became known about illegal mining farm at one of municipal enterprises of Chernigov. The crypto farm was connected to the company’s electricity grid and consumed a large amount of energy. The director of the state agency earned more than $1,000 a month on mining, causing enormous damage to the enterprise.
Against the backdrop of the foregoing, the question arises: why should the Ukrainian Western partners allocate funds and try to help the country while the Ukrainians themselves do nothing but steal the state budget, engage in financial fraud and continue to beg for more and more money and weapons? Moreover, seeing how they treat the money and resources of their own state, where are the guarantees that they do not steal our ones in the same way? While we try to do our best and help Kyiv to defeat the enemy, Ukrainians just take advantage of the opportunity to line their pockets with money and cryptocurrency. Perhaps it is time to reconsider approaches to sponsoring Ukraine and introduce stricter conditions?
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