OPINION: To date, we have no idea how much business Biden junior has in Ukraine. Yet his father, now as president of the US, has squarely come out in defence of Ukraine in the conflict with Russia.
By Wesley Seale
At the end of January earlier this year, US President Joe Biden had a call with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. According to reports, the call “did not go well” according to a senior Ukrainian official.
Two years earlier, Biden’s predecessor in the White House would during the same time, as the Biden-Zelensky call was made, stand trial for impeachment also based on a call he had made to the same said Zelensky.
Donald Trump, we would recall, stood impeachment trial for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. It was alleged that Trump had withheld military aid to Ukraine and had apparently wanted to work with Zelensky to investigate his then presidential opponent, Joe Biden.
The July 25 2019 call Trump made to Zelensky would become the basis for the impeachment. Trump was eventually acquitted on February 5, 2020, nearly two years and a week to the day Biden would call Zelensky.
Trump is said to have blocked and then released the $400 million military aid package which was meant to be part of his quid pro quo deal with Zelensky. But it is also Trump that alleged that Biden, then as US vice-president, had shaped US foreign policy towards favouring the business interests of his son, Hunter, in Ukraine.
To date, we have no idea how much business Biden junior has in Ukraine. Yet his father, now as president of the US, has squarely come out in defence of Ukraine in the conflict with Russia.
Nonetheless it is the military aid that the US has been giving to Ukraine for the last three decades that should really concern us. Some sources suggest that total US aid to Ukraine has been to the tune of $3 billion since the reforms in the Ukraine in the early nineties.
Through questionable means, the US alleged in 2002 that the then Ukrainian president, Leonid Kuchma, had agreed, two years earlier, to transfer a Kolchuga early warning system to Iraq. The US invaded Iraq a year later.
While the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze haunted Kuchma there should be little doubt that the US would have played a role in the so-called Orange Revolution which eventually led to the fall of Kuchma. The so-called revolution was heavily influenced by nationalism.
Media reports suggest that US military aid towards Ukraine between 2014 and 2019 was totalled at between $1.5 and $2.5 billion.
Other reports suggest that the US submission to the 2021 Biological Weapons Convention meeting of states parties, the US itself reported 26 laboratories and other facilities in the Ukraine. The US has yet to come clear on these biological laboratories and facilities said to be engaging in secret research on the production of viruses.
These laboratories operate under the auspices of the US Department of Defence and that the US, besides the billions it has provided in military aid to Ukraine, more than $200 million has been specifically allocated to these alleged virus producing laboratories.
Hitherto, Russian officials have reported more than 30 US-affiliated biological facilities in the Ukraine. Traces of plague, anthrax and other pathogens are also reported to have been found.
On March 8 2022, in no less than a Senate hearing, US undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, confirmed that “Ukraine has biological research facilities, which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain
control of. So, we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”
As we have seen, the US’s questionable relationship with Ukraine, especially in the light of its billion dollar support to Ukrainian military, has even affected US domestic politics.
The US has a dubious record in the domestic interference of sovereign states and the support of Ukrainian bio-labs, to support the production of chemical weapons, must once again alert the international community to the greatest threat to world peace: an unfettered superpower called the United States of America.
* Seale has a PhD in international relations.
** The views expressed here may not necessarily be that of IOL.