{"id":1586512,"date":"2022-08-03T08:18:28","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T12:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1586512"},"modified":"2022-08-03T09:35:23","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T13:35:23","slug":"deep-mistrust-has-reportedly-developed-between-white-house-and-ukraines-zelensky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/deep-mistrust-has-reportedly-developed-between-white-house-and-ukraines-zelensky\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Deep Mistrust&#8221; Has Reportedly Developed Between White House and Ukraine&#8217;s Zelensky"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fdeep-mistrust-has-reportedly-developed-between-white-house-and-ukraines-zelensky%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1586512&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>An ominous detail buried in the same <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/08\/01\/opinion\/nancy-pelosi-taiwan-china.html?referringSource=articleShare\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tom Friedman column<\/a> that Ed wrote about <a href=\"https:\/\/hotair.com\/ed-morrissey\/2022\/08\/02\/friedman-pelosis-taiwan-vist-might-cost-ukraine-the-war-n486800\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">earlier<\/a>. Almost as interesting as the news about the \u201cdeep mistrust\u201d is the fact that Friedman is in a better position than most reporters to know what the White House is thinking. This is a guy who had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/05\/22\/opinion\/biden-trump-republicans-democrats.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lunch at the White House with Biden<\/a> less than three months ago. It\u2019s conceivable that his source is the president himself.<\/p>\n<p>Which means there are two mysteries. What\u2019s caused Biden\u2019s team to lose trust in Zelensky? And why do they want that fact broadcast by Friedman in the pages of the New York Times now?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The timing [of Pelosi\u2019s visit] could not be worse. Dear reader: The Ukraine war is not over. And privately, U.S. officials are a lot more concerned about Ukraine\u2019s leadership than they are letting on. There is deep mistrust between the White House and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine \u2014 <strong>considerably more than has been reported<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>And there is funny business going on in Kyiv. On July 17, Zelensky fired his country\u2019s prosecutor general and the leader of its domestic intelligence agency \u2014 the most significant shake-up in his government since the Russian invasion in February. It would be the equivalent of Biden firing Merrick Garland and Bill Burns on the same day. But I have still not seen any reporting that convincingly explains what that was all about. It is as if we don\u2019t want to look too closely under the hood in Kyiv for fear of what corruption or antics we might see, when we have invested so much there. (More on the dangers of that another day.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It <em>was<\/em> odd that Zelensky fired two high-ranking officials in the middle of a hot war, especially since one of them <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2022\/07\/17\/zelensky-fires-officials-staffers-russia-collaboration\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">was a childhood friend of his<\/a>. But his stated justification was superficially plausible: He claimed that the departments they oversaw were infested with collaborators. There have been reports since the start of the war that Russian intelligence spent years before the invasion quietly bribing Ukrainian officials at various levels of government to switch sides once the Kremlin finally made its move. They didn\u2019t get much return on that investment \u2014 but they may have gotten some, as Kherson province in the south flipped quickly after the war began. It\u2019s conceivable that some officials in Zelensky\u2019s own government are on the take and that the Ukrainians have gotten wise to it only recently.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, given the country\u2019s history of corruption, it\u2019s also conceivable that Zelensky is engaged in some sort of graft himself and the fired officials were onto it and preparing to expose it. Although that graft likely doesn\u2019t involve selling out to Russia; if it does, he\u2019s been <i>exceptionally<\/i> convincing in presenting himself as a resolute Ukrainian patriot.<\/p>\n<p>Is he lining his pockets with U.S. financial aid that was supposed to go to the war effort? The Russian government, for instance, knows all about diverting military spending <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/russia-military-corruption-quagmire\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">to more luxurious pursuits<\/a>. Or does the \u201cdeep mistrust\u201d have more to do with Zelensky\u2019s goals for the war? Maybe he promised the White House early on as a condition to receiving weapons that he\u2019d seek only to restore the pre-February status quo in the Donbas. If so, he lied: For the last several months, he\u2019s talked about regaining all of Ukraine\u2019s territory.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/why-is-the-white-house-quietly-griping-about-zelensky-now\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jim Geraghty<\/a> speculates shrewdly as to the motive behind the leak to Friedman. \u201cPossibility one is that the Biden administration just wants the Ukraine-Russia war to end, and Zelensky isn\u2019t playing ball, so the administration is getting ready to leave Zelensky hanging out to dry,\u201d he writes. \u201cPossibility two is that the administration foresees the Ukraine-Russia war going badly, and is preparing to use Zelensky as a scapegoat. They\u2019re laying the groundwork to argue, \u2018we did everything we could to help the Ukrainians defend themselves, but in the end, they were too incompetent, too corrupt, and too beset by infighting.&#8217;\u201d I\u2019d add possibility three, that Zelensky and his government really are corrupt and the White House is keeping that information under wraps so as not to destroy U.S. support for the war.<\/p>\n<p>If Geraghty\u2019s right that the White House is pessimistic about victory and\/or eager for the conflict to end, though, then it\u2019s awfully strange that they keep sending Ukraine HIMARS units, no? Less than two weeks ago the Pentagon announced that it would send four more of the coveted missile systems to Kiev, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us-send-four-more-himars-ukraine-pentagon-chief-2022-07-20\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">raising the country\u2019s total arsenal to 16<\/a>. HIMARS isn\u2019t going to win the war singlehandedly for Ukraine but it has changed the game recently in the east and south, <a href=\"https:\/\/hotair.com\/allahpundit\/2022\/07\/11\/russian-observers-stunned-by-effectiveness-of-u-s-himars-system-in-ukraine-n482007\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">depleting Russian ammo stockpiles<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/hotair.com\/allahpundit\/2022\/07\/27\/ukraine-strikes-key-bridge-threatening-to-cut-russian-supply-line-to-kherson-n485544\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cutting key supply lines from Crimea<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Had Biden wanted to cut bait on Zelensky and Ukraine and speed a negotiated settlement to the war, he had a ready point of leverage \u2014 simply come up with an excuse to deny the Ukrainians access to HIMARS and let Russia\u2019s advance proceed apace. (\u201cIt\u2019s too provocative, it would risk starting a conflict between Russia and NATO,\u201d etc.) As it is, by damaging Russian supply lines, HIMARS has extended the war and improved Ukraine\u2019s chances of winning by giving them an opportunity to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/war-ukraine-russia-kherson-11659281575\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">launch a major counteroffensive in Kherson<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe Biden feels boxed in by strong American support for Ukraine and has concluded it\u2019s not the right time politically to start backing away, although he intends to do so soon. He\u2019s going to give them a fair shot to prove they can win by retaking Kherson, perhaps, and if that doesn\u2019t pan out then it\u2019ll be time to ease off the gas and start inching away from Zelensky. Biden is sufficiently unpopular at home and Zelensky is sufficiently popular internationally that if the White House told Americans that the Ukrainian government had deceived them somehow, it\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess what share of the public would believe them rather than Zelensky\u2019s denials.<\/p>\n<p>In lieu of an exit question, read Timothy Snyder on <a href=\"https:\/\/snyder.substack.com\/p\/putins-rule-is-weakening\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how Putin\u2019s grip on Russia is weakening<\/a>. It remains an open question between Russia and Ukraine as to which country\u2019s leader will last longer in power at this point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An ominous detail buried in the same Tom Friedman column that Ed wrote about earlier. Almost as interesting as the news about the \u201cdeep mistrust\u201d is the fact that Friedman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1586626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1586512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1586512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1586512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1586512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1586626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1586512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1586512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1586512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}