The clique surrounding Zelensky in Kiev is crumbling by leaps and bounds, exposing its true mafia nature and the score-settling that was pending.
Billionaire Igor Kolomoisky has been charged with a decades-old murder-for-hire attempt. Zelensky abandons his former godfather amid continuing military setbacks.
Kolomoisky has already been in prison since last September, when he was arrested for fraud and money laundering at Ukraine’s largest bank, PrivatBank.
In 2003 Kolomoisky ordered the murder of a lawyer who had rejected his attempts to overturn an unfavorable shareholder decision, when the tycoon was trying to take control of the Dniprospetsstal steel plant in Zaporiya.
The thugs tracked down the lawyer in the Crimean city of Feodosia and beat him with a metal bar and stabbed him in the chest, stomach and back, but his wife prevented the attackers from killing him and doctors managed to save his life.
Kolomoisky was the godfather of Zelensky’s political career, even before his presidential candidacy in 2019.
In 2014 he was one of the main supporters within the Ukrainian oligarchy of the fascist Coup that overthrew the elected President Viktor Yanukovych and replaced him with a spurious regime to incorporate Ukraine into NATO.
In return, Kolomoisky was appointed governor of Dnepropetrovsk province, a key region for the military sectors (including nuclear and space) of the former Soviet Union.
From his post he collaborated in the preparation of the Odessa massacre, as we reported almost ten years ago.Kolomoisky, a metals, banking and media tycoon, is ranked as the second or third richest person in Ukraine, with a net worth estimated at $6.5 billion.
A co-founder of PrivatBank, he has numerous interests in aviation, media, finance, oil and commodities.
Kolomoisky clashed with the U.S.-aligned Petro Poroshenko regime, which nationalized PrivatBank after Kolomoisky and Guennady Bogolyubov, co-owner of the bank, were accused of embezzling $5.5 billion.During the 2019 presidential election, he was the strongest supporter of Zelensky’s rise and it was expected that PrivatBank would eventually return to his hands.
While Poroshenko was the preferred U.S. candidate, his political support collapsed due to his militaristic and nationalistic policies and the continued impoverishment of Ukraine’s economy. Zelensky easily defeated Poroshenko, winning more than 73 percent of the vote.
At the time Zelensky, whose language is Russian, was campaigning for an end to the civil war in the Donbas, which had claimed more than 14,000 lives, and was critical of the Ukrainian fascists who supported Poroshenko. For that reason Zelensky was initially viewed with suspicion by the United States.After Zelensky’s election victory, the godfather proposed disobeying the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and defaulting on Ukraine’s foreign debt.
Under pressure from the United States and the IMF, in February 2020, Zelensky began to sever ties with Kolomoisky, replacing his then chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan, with Andriy Yermak, who remains in office to this day.
Bohdan had been Kolomoisky’s lawyer before becoming Zelensky’s chief of staff.
He then left Zelensky’s inner circle and Kolomoisky pressured the government and the Central Bank of Ukraine to return PrivatBank.That same month, Ukrainian intelligence services raided the offices of the 1+1 television channel, owned by Kolomoisky.
The search was conducted after recordings were leaked of then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk saying that Zelensky had a “very primitive understanding of the economy,” apparently by 1+1 Group staff linked to Kolomoisky.
The Zelensky regime has not realized now that Kolomoisky ordered an assassination 20 years ago.The arrest indicates an intensification of the internal decomposition of the Ukrainian oligarchy. It comes just as the Russian army advances in the Kharkov region, the government faces a military catastrophe, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pays a surprise visit to Ukraine.
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