Remember when Ukraine was “the most corrupt country in Europe”? It still is, of course. The mainstream media, bootlickers for the military-industrial complex that they are, just want you to forget that. They’ve got a new narrative to spin now, to keep the war machine turning.
The propaganda narrative is, of course, “plucky little Ukraine defending democracy for the world”. That’s just another lie, of course, but there is a very small seed of truth: many Ukrainians are defending their homeland against invasion. And who can blame them?
The problem is, they’re being lied to, as well. Because the land they’re fighting and dying for is being sold out from under their boots by the same corrupt oligarchs and foreign chancers as before. Ukraine is, after all, a rich and fertile land, “the breadbasket of Europe”. It’s also home to substantial energy resources. Just ask Hunter Biden.
And, as before, the “big guys” are out to grab all they can, even if they have to wash the blood off, first.
It’s a lose-lose situation for Ukrainians. While they are dying, financial institutions are insidiously supporting the consolidation of farmland by oligarchs and Western financial interests. So says Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute, an independent think tank.
“It’s good for business, bad for the people”
Fahrenheit 9/11
To damn Putin with faint praise, at least he’s brutally up-front with his methods. The oligarchs and carpet-baggers are stealthily stealing the land while ordinary Ukrainians fight and die.
Oligarchs and financial interests are expanding control over Ukraine’s agricultural land with help and financing from Western financial institutions.
Aid provided to Ukraine in recent years has been tied to a drastic structural adjustment programme requiring the creation of a land market through a law that leads to greater concentration of land in the hands of powerful interests. The programme also includes austerity measures, cuts in social safety nets and the privatisation of key sectors of the economy […]
The report shows the total amount of land controlled by oligarchs, corrupt individuals and large agribusinesses is over nine million hectares — exceeding 28% of Ukraine’s arable land (the rest is used by over eight million Ukrainian farmers).
The largest landholders are a mix of Ukrainian oligarchs and foreign interests — mostly European and North American as well as the sovereign fund of Saudi Arabia. A number of large US pension funds, foundations and university endowments are also invested in Ukrainian land through NCH Capital – a US-based private equity fund, which is the fifth largest landholder in the country.
The land reform laws were enacted in 2020 by none other than the poster-boy of the pro-War Western establishment.
President Zelenskyy put the land reform into law in 2020 against the will of the vast majority of the population who feared it would exacerbate corruption and reinforce control by powerful interests in the agricultural sector.
Which, lo and behold, has come to pass.
All but one of the ten largest landholding firms are registered overseas, mainly in tax havens such as Cyprus or Luxembourg. The report identifies many prominent investors, including Vanguard Group, Kopernik Global Investors, BNP Asset Management Holding, Goldman Sachs-owned NN Investment Partners Holdings, and Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.
Most of the agribusiness firms are substantially indebted to Western financial institutions, in particular the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, and the International Finance Corporation – the private sector arm of the World Bank.
Western taxpayers are being stiffed to tune of hundreds of billions in order to keep the West’s proxy war rolling on with no sign of peace in sight. Ukrainians are getting an even rawer deal.
Ukraine is now the world’s third-largest debtor to the International Monetary Fund and its crippling debt burden will likely result in additional pressure from its creditors, bondholders and international financial institutions on how post-war reconstruction – estimated to cost US$750 billion – should happen.”
Off-Guardian
As a US military contractor famously said on the eve of the Iraq War: “It’s good for business, bad for the people”.
