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The Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 sparked the beginning of an intensified war between the two forces. Now, the richest man in Ukraine, Rinat Akhmedov, set out to build shelters for Ukrainian soldiers as the war raged on with all of its devastations. According to Bloomberg's report, a Ukrainian steelworks controlled by billionaire Akhmetov has started constructing prefabricated dugouts and transporting them to soldiers engaged in front-line combat with Russia. WAR CAPSULES According to steel manufacturer Metinvest Holding LLC, the capsules can resist impacts from 150-millimeter rounds after being buried 1.5 meters (5 feet) beneath the surface. They...

MOSCOW (Mineweb.com) -- It is almost forty years since those fine falsettos, the Bee Gees, put their pop classic, “Massachusetts”, on the top of the charts. They had no idea that their lyrics might become the alleged plot of a scheme by a trio of Ukrainian metal men to steal hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from the processing of manganese ore, and the sale of ferromanganese, ferrosilicon, and silicomanganese to steelmakers around the world. “And the lights all went out in Massachusetts,” sang Robin and Barry Gibb. “They brought me back to see my way with you.” On...

On January 2, Biden called Zelensky at 16:00 Washington time (23:00 Kyiv time). Biden called Zelensky two days after talks with Putin, where Ukraine was the main topic. A symbolic element of the American president's genuine attitude to Zelensky. If such a call had taken place before the conversation with the Russian leader, then one would think that the Americans adhere to the principle "nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine." And so these are empty words. Unfortunately, Ukraine remains an instrument in the confrontation between the great powers. Judging by the statements of Washington and Kyiv, the two presidents approve of...

The U.S. Justice Department has filed a civil forfeiture complaint claiming that a piece of commercial property in Ohio was obtained with funding misappropriated from PrivatBank. Two civil forfeiture complaints were lodged earlier this year regarding properties located in Texas and Kentucky which are also alleged to have been secured with funds misappropriated from the bank in Ukraine, according to a DOJ press release. "The three complaints allege that Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholiubov, who owned PrivatBank, one of the largest banks in Ukraine, embezzled and defrauded the bank of billions of dollars," according to the DOJ. "The two obtained...

Last year Joe Biden bragged about how he coerced Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor Victor Shokin by threatening that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees from them. While this type of interference in a foreign government by the then-Vice President of the United States is highly inappropriate in itself, what makes it even worse is that the prosecutor he got fired was probing a firm for which his son Hunter Biden worked. Yesterday an audiotape has been released by a Ukrainian politician which details conversations between corrupt and discredited former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko...

How Christine Lagarde, Clinton and Nuland Funded a Massive Ukrainian Ponzi Scheme John Helmer Fri, Jul 5, 2019 | 3120 words 8,340 Comments The author is the longest serving foreign correspondent covering Russia. He published his fascinating memoirs in December of 2018. They are full of insights into what has really been going on in Moscow over the past 30 years. RI wrote about it here. He is the author of 12 books, 3 of them about Russia. When Igor Kolomoisky (image below, centre) financed anti-Russian units operating with the Ukrainian Army in the Ukrainian civil war, he was a staunch ally of Petro Poroshenko’s government in...

Robert Powell, the husband of Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla., reportedly took $700,000 from a Ukrainian oligarch named Igor Kolomoisky. Mucarsel-Powell sits on the House Judiciary Committee, the committee that drafted two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump for his alleged abuse of power with regards to Ukraine. In 2018, the Daily Beast reported that a number of businesses linked to Kolomoisky hired Powell as an attorney. One of those firms paid Powell at least $700,000 over two years, according to public records. The Miami Herald reported Powell was working for companies tied to Kolomoisky for 10 years. Powell made...

In an explosive legal complaint filed last month in Delaware, attorneys for a major Ukrainian bank alleged that two oligarchs who founded the bank and controlled it from 2006 to 2016 laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent corporate loans to purchase assets in the United States and unjustly enrich themselves and their associates. Dubbed the "Optima Schemes" in the 104-page document, these "brazen fraudulent schemes" were successful, among other things, in making the oligarchs and their co-defendants the largest commercial real estate holders in Cleveland. With money siphoned from public bonds and 20 million private Ukrainian citizens who'd...

A group of hackers called Green Dragon Crew announced on Twitter that the recent cyber-attack on the Privatbank, the largest commercial bank in Ukraine was their doing. The attack appears to be a distributed denial-of-service since on June 30, for a few hours, the bank’s pages either would not load or offered sporadic access to the customers. However, the group also claims that they managed to breach the bank’s systems and that they have access to customer bank accounts. In order to do this, they would have to access different systems because payment service and the website are not part...