1). “Zelensky complicit in corporate takeover of Ukraine: ‘It’s an investment’ ”, January 7, 2023 John Parker, Struggle for Socialism / La Lucha por el Socialismo, at <https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/01/07/zelensky-complicit-in-corporate-takeover-of-ukraine-its-an-investment/>, also posted at MROnline, Jan 12, 2023, at <https://mronline.org/2023/01/12/zelensky-complicit-in-corporate-takeover-of-ukraine/ >.
2). “BlackRock to advise Zelensky on investments aimed to rebuild Ukraine”, December 28, 2022, Alexandra Semenova, Yahoo! Finance, at <https://news.yahoo.com/blackrock-ceo-larry-fink-ukraine-president-zelensky-investments-184938062.html>.
Introduction by dmorista:
These two articles, particularly the first one, “Zelensky complicit in corporate takeover of Ukraine: ‘It’s an investment’ ”, point out the complex and intimate relationships between some of the major U.S. Finance Capital and other companies and the Zelensky Government (itself directly descended from the 2014 Coup regime that took power after the U.S. supported Euromaidan Coup).
The other article, “BlackRock to advise Zelensky on investments aimed to rebuild Ukraine'' provides some details on the business dealings of BlackRock Financial with the Zelensky regime. We might remember that BlackRock Financial took advantage of the economic distress of millions of homeowners in the U.S., during lthe 2007 - 2008 Economic Crisis in the U.S., and seized their homes. BlackRock Financial is now the largest landlord in the United States owning millions of rental houses all over the country, in many cases renting the houses to the former owners that they dispossesed.
As an article I posted here a couple of days ago, “ ‘World War 3 has already started’ between US and Russia/China, argues French scholar”, Emmanuel Todd noted that the U.S., under the structures of NeoLiberal economic rule has fallen from producing 80 million tons of wheat to 40 million tons in the last few years. In those same years Ukraine increased its wheat production from 40 million tons to 90 million tons. Both European Russia and Ukraine and the grain producing regions of the U.S. have suffered from some hot dry growing seasons, so that cannot be the only reason. Now a variety of agribusiness corporations, Hedge Fund operators, and Finance Capital mavens from the U.S. are moving boldly to take control of the lucrative business of producing, transporting, and selling wheat produced in the Black Earth region of Ukraine. The Finance Capitalists from the U.S. and some countries in Western Europe and Israel have moved to take control of the rich farmland of Ukraine. To do this they had to get the various post Coup regimes to pass laws that ended the protection of Ukrainian farmland from predatory foreign interests. In fact as Caitlin Johnstone has pointed out the corporate influence by American Finance Capitalists has become so severe that their logos were included in an invitation to an Embassy Party as shown:
Ukrainian Embassy Invitation for event on December 8, 2022
(Source: “BlackRock logo to be added to Ukrainian flag”,December 29, 2022, Caitlin Johnstone, Caitlinjohnstone(dot)com, at <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/12/29/blackrock-logo-to-be-added-to-ukrainian-flag/)
The Oakland Institute produced a couple of fine reports about the role of Agribusiness and Finance Capital Operations in the Ukraine. These two reports were published in 2014, and we can only expect these efforts have greatly increased, as Ukraine became more desperate and economically vulnerable, as the War raged over the past 11 months. Those reports are “Walking on the West Side: the World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict”, July 28, 2014, The Oakland Institute, at <https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/walking-west-side-world-bank-and-imf-ukraine-conflict>: and “THE CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF UKRAINIAN
AGRICULTURE”, COUNTRY FACT SHEET, December 2014, The Oakland Institute, at <https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/Brief_CorporateTakeoverofUkraine_0.pdf >. I have not had time to read these yet, but I did glance at them and they are chock full of good information.
Johnstone posted a Ukrainian Flag with American Transnational Corporate logos placed on it, it compares to the classic image of the U.S. flag with Corporate Logos in place of stars. There are, fittingly considering the size of the two nations, fewer corporate logos on the Ukrainian Flag. Graphics of these two modified flags are posted here below.
1). “Zelensky complicit in corporate takeover of Ukraine: ‘It’s an investment’ ”, January 7, 2023 John Parker, Struggle for Socialism / La Lucha por el Socialismo, at <https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/01/07/zelensky-complicit-in-corporate-takeover-of-ukraine-its-an-investment/>.
(Caption: In 2020, farmers blocked the parliament building in Kiev to protest legislation allowing the sale of agricultural land.)
“Your money is not charity, it’s an investment.” That’s what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his address to the U.S. Congress while visiting Washington on Dec. 21.
He came asking for more billions to add to the more than $68 billion in war funding in 2022 alone. Two days later, Congress approved $45 billion in additional aid to Ukraine, bringing the total for 2022 to $113 billion.
Washington’s spigot has been pumping U.S. dollars into Ukraine since before 2004 to fund imperialist regime change. This plan accelerated, with increasing violence and tens of billions in U.S. dollars, culminating with the coup in 2014.
The coup was orchestrated by Washington and used to select the future leadership of Ukraine; from that moment on, destroying a once-sovereign country and replacing it with consecutive regimes of anti-Russian, pro-U.S. governments that were more than willing to honor the wishes of their U.S. masters: provoking war with Russia.
Zelensky’s statement about “an investment” must be seen in the context of the foreign investments that got a green light to sideline and impoverish the Ukrainian population after the coup in 2014. Some of those foreign investors were active shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union as well.
BlackRock steps in
The trajectory of the latest vampiric deals of the foreign investors was set in November when Zelensky signed over even more of his country’s sovereignty to a U.S. firm that will help broker the deals of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and independent foreign investors.
BlackRock Financial Markets Advisory and the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy signed a memorandum of understanding in November. According to President Zelensky’s official website: “In accordance with the preliminary agreements struck earlier this year between the Head of State and Larry Fink, the BlackRock team has been working for several months on a project to advise the Ukrainian government on how to structure the country’s reconstruction funds.
“Volodymyr Zelensky and Larry Fink agreed to focus in the near term on coordinating the efforts of all potential investors and participants in the reconstruction of our country, channeling investment into the most relevant and impactful sectors of the Ukrainian economy.”
The stage was set for BlackRock by the IMF back in 2013 with a deal to “integrate” Ukraine into the European Union, to facilitate greater control and ownership over Ukraine’s resources. In fact, this desire led to the ousting of former President Viktor Yanukovych during the 2014 coup.
In December 2014, the Oakland Institute issued a report titled “The Corporate Takeover of Ukrainian Agriculture,” showing how Yanukovych’s rejection of this proposal led to the coup which ousted him:
“A major factor in the crisis,” the report states, “that led to deadly protests and eventually President Yanukovych’s removal from office, was his rejection of an EU Association agreement that would have further opened trade and integrated Ukraine with the EU. The agreement was tied to a $17 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. Instead of the EU and IMF deal, Yanukovych chose a Russian aid package worth $15 billion plus a 33% discount on Russian natural gas … This deal has since gone off the table with the pro-EU interim government accepting the new multimillion dollar IMF package in May 2014.”
The report exposed the austerity clauses in the rejected EU trade deal, facilitating not only control over Ukraine’s resources, but also opening Ukraine up to the cultivation of genetically modified crops.
The report continues: “In ‘Walking on the West Side: The World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict,’ a report released in July 2014, the Oakland Institute exposed how international financial institutions swooped in on the heels of the political upheaval in Ukraine to deregulate and throw open the nation’s vast agricultural sector to foreign corporations.
“This fact sheet provides details on the transnational agribusinesses that are increasingly investing in Ukraine, including Monsanto, Cargill, and DuPont, and how corporations are taking over all aspects of Ukraine’s agricultural system. This includes circumventing land moratoriums, investing in seed and input production facilities, and acquiring commodity production, processing, and transportation facilities.”
Selling off land to agribusiness
After the 2014 coup, cabinet positions were literally assigned by the U.S. State Department. Any legislation protecting the sovereignty of Ukraine economically from foreign takeover was set for destruction, replaced by proposed laws that would allow greater foreign ownership of land.
However, even before the moratorium on land sales could be changed, various loopholes were exploited by foreign agricultural entities. Since the sales prohibition only applied to the land, investors could build foreign-owned factories on leased land and hold it until the moratorium expired.
For example, in March 2014 – just weeks after President Yanukovych was deposed – agribusiness giant Monsanto invested $140 million in building a new seed plant. DuPont, in September 2014, completed the extension of its seed facility.
Ukraine is a big prize for the imperialists. It was once known as the “breadbasket of Europe,” with over 74 million acres of uncharacteristically fertile earth known as “black soil.”
So in March 2020, as a condition for a $5 billion IMF loan supported by Zelensky, Washington, the EU, and Western corporations, an economically desperate Ukraine enacted law 552-IX, which amended the country’s laws on conditions of turnover of agricultural land.
BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager and a company that has big interests in Raytheon, Lockheed, Dupont, and Haliburton, companies responsible for destroying Indigenous lands, climate change, supplying weapons of mass destruction for U.S. endless wars, and helping to push World War III.
Now BlackRock is in a close partnership with Kiev, managing billions of dollars in investments to tear away any last shred of Ukraine’s economic sovereignty, while it pretends to be acting in defense of the Ukrainian people’s interests.
2). “BlackRock to advise Zelensky on investments aimed to rebuild Ukraine”, December 28, 2022, Alexandra Semenova, Yahoo! Finance, at <https://news.yahoo.com/blackrock-ceo-larry-fink-ukraine-president-zelensky-investments-184938062.html>.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink agreed to coordinate investments geared toward rebuilding Ukraine, an announcement from Zelensky’s office published Wednesday said following a call between the two parties.
The readout of the call comes after Fink and Zelensky held a meeting earlier this year to discuss a project that involves BlackRock's Financial Markets Advisory group guiding the Ukrainian government in allocating reconstruction funds and creating opportunities to drive further investment.
“Volodymyr Zelensky and Larry Fink agreed to focus in the near term on coordinating the efforts of all potential investors and participants in the reconstruction of our country, channeling investment into the most relevant and impactful sectors of the Ukrainian economy,” the Ukrainian government said in its Wednesday statement.
{Caption: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky holds a video conference with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. (Source: Official website of the president of Ukraine.) }
In November, Ukraine’s economic ministry signed a memorandum of understanding with BlackRock that indicated the money manager will help the country establish a “roadmap for the investment framework’s implementation, including identifying design choices for the envisioned setup, structure, mandate and governance.”
The pact intends to create opportunities for both public and private investors to participate in the future reconstruction and recovery of the Ukrainian economy, according to BlackRock’s announcement of the agreement last month.
A BlackRock spokesperson told Yahoo Finance the call between BlackRock and President Zelensky this week continues work already underway under the existing MOU.
Zelensky met with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington, D.C., last week and delivered an address to Congress about the toll of Russia’s war in the country. The U.S. House of Representatives approved a $45 billion aid package for Ukraine on Friday as part of a $1.7 trillion spending bill that passed mostly along party lines.
Russia's war in Ukraine has stretched on for nearly a year. Zelensky has recently been promoting a peace plan aiming to end the war that has been dismissed by Moscow. As of November, the Kyiv School of Economics estimated damages to Ukrainian infrastructure from the war at approximately $136 billion.
BlackRock's move into world affairs come as the firm faces increasing criticism in the U.S. from Republicans, who have been scrutinizing Fink over what the party sees as him pushing an environmental, social, and governance agenda. Last month, Florida, led by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, said it would redeem $2 billion worth of state assets managed by BlackRock over its ESG investing.
Criticism has also come from others in the investment sphere. Activist investor Bluebell Capital Partners also in November urged BlackRock’s board to oust Fink over alleged hypocrisy on its ESG stance.
Bluebell argued that it was not BlackRock’s role is “to direct the public debate on climate and energy policies or to impose ideological beliefs on the corporate world.”
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Alexandra Semenova is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @alexandraandnyc
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