Biden accused by Lutsenko of interference in Ukraine law enforcement

The latest allegation of the U.S. government
interfering with Ukrainian law enforcement surfaced this week when thehill.com
reported on Apr. 1 that former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin was
fired in March 2016 just as he as leading an investigation into the Ukrainian
business dealings of the family of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. The
report pointed out that Biden boasted in January 2018 – at a speech to the
Council of Foreign Relations in New York – of having given Ukrainian President
Poroshenko the ultimatum of having six hours to fire Shokin or lose USD 1 bln
in loan guarantees.

“Poroshenko and Ukraine’s parliament obliged by ending
Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor,” wrote John Solomon in his latest column, based
on revelations of what he identified as the case file and an interview with
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. “Shokin was facing steep criticism in
Ukraine, and among some U.S. officials, for not bringing enough corruption
prosecutors when he was fired. But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one
crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to
his audience: the prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption
probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger
son, Hunter, as a board member.”

Zenon Zawada: This is the
latest evidence, presented by John Solomon of thehill.com news site, of the Poroshenko
administration seeking to align itself with U.S. President Donald Trump against
his political opponents, including Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to
Ukraine (who is alleged by U.S. congressmen to have made disparaging comments
against Trump). It’s a questionable strategy both in the short term
(Yovanovitch might remain as U.S. ambassador beyond May, when her three-year
term concludes) and in the mid-term (Trump could lose his re-election campaign
in 2020).

Other than ingratiating the Poroshenko
administration with Trump, we don’t see any other motivation in Lutsenko
offering this information to the U.S. press. MP Serhiy Leshchenko, among those
alleged to have aided the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 presidential
elections, claims Lutsenko has been leaking the information as revenge against
Yovanovitch for her recent criticism of his office. With these allegations, Leshchenko alleged that
Lutsenko is acting against the will of Poroshenko, who has expressed his
support for Yovanovitch’s actions. But a lot more could be occurring behind the
scenes, possibly with the president’s support, in our view.