All in Foreign Affairs

In defense of Ukraine

In defense of Ukraine

Tatiana Prophet
Foreign Affairs

By Tatiana Prophet

In the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, Democrats have pointed to lethal defensive aid for Ukraine that was held up by the President as a clear example of abuse of power.

According to a Government Accountability Office decision released Jan. 16, 2020, President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) violated the law when he ordered a pause in lethal aid to Ukraine that was authorized by the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2019.

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the decision stated. “OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA). The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.”

Burisma founder: From 'wanted man' to 'in-demand'

Burisma founder: From 'wanted man' to 'in-demand'

Tatiana Prophet
Foreign Affairs

Part IV: From ‘wanted man’ to ‘in demand’
How Burisma’s founder turned scrutiny into prestige

“I said I’m going to be leaving here in six hours. If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting a billion dollars. Well, son of a bitch. Got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid. At the time.” — Joe Biden, January 2018.

By Tatiana Prophet

According to James Risen at The Intercept and Lucian Kim at National Public Radio, when Joe Biden called for a prosecutor to be fired in 2016, that prosecutor was not investigating Biden’s son Hunter; according to everyone in the Western world, Viktor Shokin was corrupt himself and had no interest in exposing corruption. Why, then, did Shokin’s replacement close the books on the investigation into Hunter’s employer, Burisma Holdings?

Wrote Risen: “The then-vice president issued his demands for greater anti-corruption measures by the Ukrainian government despite the possibility that those demands would actually increase – not lessen — the chances that Hunter Biden and Burisma would face legal trouble in Ukraine.”

Follow the money ... if you can

Follow the money ... if you can

Tatiana Prophet
Foreign Affairs

Part II: Billions in, billions out

Ukraine is still the second poorest country in Europe in wealth per capita, so where does U.S. aid go?

By Tatiana Prophet

From a large American think tank to scads of non-governmental organizations to the American embassy in Kyiv, the “concern trolls” have been working overtime in Ukraine. Time and again, when you look at the last two decades, these always well-meaning outsiders have been laying out action plans and guiding principles for Ukrainians to end corruption and enact “market reforms” – and yet, money is still being laundered, oligarchs have continued living abroad to avoid prosecution, and almost half of Ukrainian citizens admitted in 2017 to giving petty bribes to doctors and universities, often for convenience.

Burisma's Top Men

Burisma's Top Men

Tatiana Prophet
Foreign Affairs

Part III: Burisma’s Top Men
Billionaire Mykola Zlochevsky’s board has some unusual directors

 By Tatiana Prophet

Before Hunter Biden, there were Joseph Cofer Black and Alan Apter. Black, currently a Burisma director and speaker at Burisma’s annual Energy Security Forum, is not a bean counter. For the CIA, he spent 20 years in Africa, and in 1994, he helped capture Carlos the Jackal in Khartoum, Sudan, according to a profile in The New York Times. Leading up to 9/11 saw Black in the top counterterrorism spot at the CIA. He was praised for predicting the event, and criticized for not having a better response plan. Black went to the State Department in 2002. As if that weren’t weird enough, he then went to military personnel contractor Blackwater from 2006 to 2008, and advised Mitt Romney in the 2008 campaign cycle.

Ukraine is good for the West; but is the West good for Ukraine?

Ukraine is good for the West; but is the West good for Ukraine?

Tatiana Prophet
Foreign Affairs

A Bird’s Eye View: Ukraine
In-Depth Series by Back to Facts

Part I: Energy Crossroads, Gas Storage Titan

By Tatiana Prophet

Ukraine is a vital crossroads for natural gas, from Asia and Russia to Europe. Ukraine has always been a crossroads, with access to the Mediterranean via the Bosphorus Strait at Istanbul. It has one of the largest gas transit networks in the world. It also has tremendous storage capacity, as large as all of Europe and more available due to a relatively small domestic demand. The gas networks are used heavily in the winter.

Further, international storage fee contracts are traded in U.S. dollars, making Ukraine almost as important as a Middle Eastern country for its role in the energy sector. And gas storage futures are a big business on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Key to Trump-Ukraine call: Untangling the alliances

Key to Trump-Ukraine call: Untangling the alliances

Tatiana Prophet
Foreign Affairs

By Tatiana Prophet
editor@back2facts.com
Updated 9/26/2019 6:27 pm
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board in April 2016. It was actually April 2014. Back to Facts regrets the error.

The phone call with new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is meaningless – until you sort through what’s actually going on in Ukraine.

Ukraine has had its ample share of political violence, scandal and even poisoning (see the famous poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko during the Orange Revolution of 2004). With an ideal climate for farming, Ukraine was long the breadbasket of Europe. As such it has been periodically overshadowed and menaced by Imperial Russia and Soviet Russia. To read articles out of context, it appears the political retributions have no end in this country. No wonder they elected an outsider recently, TV personality Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Here is a brief summary of the situation with Joe Biden, best told by the former vice president himself. On January 23, 2018, Biden appeared at an event held by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Steak or garnish? 6 jaw-dropping moments from the Comey-Trump show

Steak or garnish? 6 jaw-dropping moments from the Comey-Trump show

Tatiana Prophet
Politics, Foreign Affairs

By TATIANA PROPHET

James Comey is the anti-Trump, and it appears many -- who are tired of this strange theater that has overtaken our political arena –- hope he is the antidote. He is everything that Trump is not. He speaks in sentences of 20 words or more. He rattles off impeccable syntax and manages to elucidate adult FBI topics for listeners of all stripes. He is polite, deferential, and especially now that he is no longer in government, very willing to answer questions (except ones that would give an impression that anybody at all was innocent in the Trump investigation – in case he had a “duty to correct”).

So from Wednesday, when he released his prepared written testimony, to Thursday when he verbally recounted several Orson Welles-worthy scenes set in the Oval Office, the nation was riveted.

The brains of Americans on both sides pleaded: Give us something new! Anything to relieve the tedium of “officials familiar with the matter” telling us in our nation’s top papers, yet again, that this investigation is being conducted, oh yes, being conducted every day -- but never appearing to give us any sort of, well anything to digest.

So were we satisfied? Most of us have something to munch on. There’s brain food for both sides. And as would be expected, one man’s steak is another man’s garnish.

Spy agencies spying on people? Unthinkable!

Spy agencies spying on people? Unthinkable!

Tatiana Prophet
Foreign Affairs

By Tatiana Prophet
FOX News columnist Judge Andrew Napolitano, in using an anonymous source to make allegations about government wiretapping, has become the main actor in an international incident. He has also garnered criticism from media counterparts, including Slate magazine and CNN Money.

"Enter James Bond," Napolitano wrote in a column on March 16, referring to the British agency Government Communications Headquarters.