The US president has demanded Caracas “return stolen assets” or face the wrath of the American naval armada
Caracas has denounced President Donald Trump’s oil blockade on the country, saying his “interventionist and colonialist” rhetoric proves Washington’s long-standing plan to seize Venezuelan natural resources.
In an official statement released late Tuesday, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said Trump’s remarks revealed the “true intention” of the United States: “to take over the oil, land, and minerals of Venezuela.”
The government rejected Trump’s claim that Venezuela had “stolen” assets from Washington and denounced his rhetoric as “interventionist and colonialist.” The statement accused the US president of violating international law, free trade, and freedom of navigation by ordering US naval forces in the Caribbean to prevent “sanctioned tankers” from entering or leaving Venezuelan waters.
“Through his social media statements, the president of the United States assumes that Venezuela’s oil, land, and mineral wealth belong to him,” the statement said. “On that basis, he seeks to impose a naval military blockade with the objective of robbing the riches that belong to our homeland.”
Rodriguez said Washington’s actions were part of a “gigantic campaign of lies and manipulation” aimed at justifying the appropriation of the country’s natural resources. She added that the US had always sought to dominate Venezuela economically and politically, regardless of changes in administration.
The government said Venezuela would exercise its rights under international law, its constitution, and the UN Charter, reaffirming its sovereignty over its natural resources and its right to free navigation and commerce in the Caribbean and beyond.
“Venezuela will never again be a colony of an empire or any foreign power,” the statement said.
Since September, the US military has killed more than 80 people in attacks on alleged cartel boats, which Trump claimed were being used by the Venezuelan government to “flood” America with narcotics. Venezuela has denied any involvement in drug trafficking and said the strikes were part of a regime change plot to plunder the country’s natural resources.
The US president has branded the government in Caracas a “terrorist organization” and imposed an oil blockade on the country
President Donald Trump has imposed an oil blockade on Venezuela, redirecting a massive US naval armada in the Caribbean from operations against alleged “narcoterrorists” to intercepting “sanctioned tankers” entering and leaving the country.
Trump announced the move in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, describing it as “a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into, and out of, Venezuela.”
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before – until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us,” Trump added.
The announcement follows the recent US seizure of a large oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast, a rare direct military action against Venezuelan oil exports.
Trump has also branded the government of President Nicolas Maduro a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” claiming that its oil profits fuel criminal networks and undermine regional security.
Washington “will not allow a Hostile Regime to take our Oil, Land, or any other Assets, all of which must be returned to the United States, IMMEDIATELY,” the US president added.
The move comes amid a US naval buildup in the Caribbean and Trump’s threats to carry out strikes against alleged “narcoterrorists” on Venezuelan soil. Since September, the US military has killed more than 80 people in attacks on alleged cartel boats, which Trump claimed were being used by the Venezuelan government to “flood” America with narcotics.
Venezuela has denied any involvement in drug trafficking and said the strikes were part of a “colonialist” plan to topple Maduro and plunder the country’s natural resources. Caracas also accused the US of “state piracy” and has vowed to defend its territory and natural wealth.
Estonian foreign minister wants the bloc to put more pressure on Moscow via Beijing
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna has claimed that the Ukraine conflict represents an “existential problem for Europe,” and that Beijing must be punished for “enabling” Russia.
China has consistently called for a diplomatic resolution to the Ukraine conflict, but Tsahkna told journalists earlier this week that Brussels must confront and “deal with” Beijing to put more pressure on Moscow.
“If the existential threat is there, and China is the main enabler for Russia to wage the war, then first of all, we need to deal with that. And this is a very clear message,” Tsahkna said, linking his remarks to a broader EU push for tougher measures against Russia.
Last week, EU member states voted to keep Russian sovereign funds temporarily frozen. The bloc’s leadership invoked emergency powers to bypass opposition from some member states, including Hungary and Slovakia, with debates ongoing over how to further bend legal frameworks to funnel the funds to Ukraine under the so-called “reparations loan” scheme.
“Everybody’s talking about the Russian frozen assets, which actually we have. We own them, as we have frozen them,” Tsahkna claimed, insisting that the EU must make a decisive move and use this leverage to force its way back into the US-backed negotiations over Ukraine’s future.
Critics within the EU warn that the plan to seize Russian assets carries serious legal and financial risks. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has described the scheme as unlawful and tantamount to a “declaration of war.” Belgium, where most of the funds are held via the Euroclear depository, has also raised concerns about potential legal exposure.
Russian officials have repeatedly condemned the freezing and any proposed use of sovereign assets as illegal under international law. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has called the plan “blatant theft,” warning that Russia will pursue legal action.
China remains one of the EU’s largest trading partners and a central link in global supply chains vital to European industry. The previous 19 sanctions packages on Moscow have already backfired on several EU member states, and treating China as a “co-belligerent” risks dragging the bloc into a broader trade conflict.
UK’s top general has urged the nation to switch to a wartime mindset in a wider European militarization push criticized by Moscow
The UK’s Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, has claimed that the chances of a direct confrontation with Russian forces on UK soil are not “zero” – a speculation dismissed by Moscow as “nonsense.”
Russia has consistently rejected claims that it plans to attack European NATO countries, describing them as warmongering tactics used by Western politicians to justify inflated military budgets. Moscow insists it is defending its citizens in the Ukraine conflict and accuses NATO of provoking hostilities and derailing the US-backed peace efforts.
During a lecture at the Royal United Services Institute on Monday, Knighton acknowledged that the probability of a direct conflict with Russia is “remote” but claimed that “does not mean the chances are zero.”
“More people being ready to fight for their country” is essential, Knighton said, adding that the response to modern threats “must go beyond simply strengthening our armed forces” and involve every part of British society.
Sons and daughters. Colleagues. Veterans… will all have a part to play. To build. To serve. And if necessary, to fight. And more families will know what sacrifice for our nation means.
Knighton’s remarks echoed those made last month by his “good friend” Fabien Mandon, the French chief of defence, who also warned that citizens must be prepared to “lose children” in a potential war with Russia.
The speech comes as a handful of European NATO states once again floated the controversial idea to send a multinational force into Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.
Moscow has strongly rejected any such deployment, warning that the presence of NATO troops on Ukrainian territory would be treated as direct participation in the conflict. Russian officials have described the idea as a reckless escalation that undermines peace efforts and risks drawing the entire bloc into open confrontation.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier this year that Western European leaders were “trying to prepare Europe for war – not some hybrid war, but a real war against Russia.” He accused the EU of sliding into what he described as a “Fourth Reich,” marked by a surge in Russophobia and aggressive militarization.
The discovery adds to a growing number of mass graves uncovered over recent years, particularly in former detention centers
A mass grave was discovered on Tuesday inside a former State Security building in the southern Idlib countryside, according to Syrian state media SANA.
The discovery was reportedly made during renovation works inside the building, which previously served as a State Security headquarters before the city fell outside Assad government control in 2019. Workers reportedly discovered human remains buried within the structure, leading to an immediate halt in the renovation process.
According to the reports, security forces sealed off the area and prevented access to the location, pending further procedures. No official details were provided regarding the number of bodies found or their identities.
After a coalition led by jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a regional offshoot of Al-Qaeda, captured Damascus and displaced former President Bashar Assad late last year, at least 66 mass graves were discovered in the country. Each could hold answers about the fates of some of the more than 170,000 people who remain missing.
Last December, a mass grave containing at least 100,000 bodies of people was found outside Damascus.
Jared Kushner had planned the redevelopment of a Belgrade site bombed by NATO in 1999
US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has withdrawn from a planned luxury hotel project tied to redeveloping a site in Serbia bombed by NATO in 1999, according to media reports.
The move follows a prosecutor’s filing on Monday to indict senior Serbian officials over the removal of cultural-protection status from the former Yugoslav army headquarters complex in central Belgrade, which had been earmarked for the development.
Last year, Serbia’s government approved a long-term lease deal with Kushner-linked Affinity Global Development to redevelop the site into a complex expected to include a hotel, apartments, offices, and shops, despite sustained public opposition.
A spokesperson for Affinity Partners was quoted by the New York Times as saying that the firm was stepping away because it did not want the project to deepen divisions and that it was doing so out of respect for Serbia and its capital.
According to Reuters, the public prosecutor for organized crime filed an indictment against Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic, a ministry official, and the head of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, accusing them of abuse of power and forgery linked to lifting the site’s protected status. Selakovic has denied any wrongdoing. There was reportedly no indication of wrongdoing by Kushner or his company.
The location is part of the General Staff complex, a former Yugoslav army headquarters heavily damaged during NATO’s 78-day bombing of Serbia and Montenegro over the Kosovo conflict. Human Rights Watch has estimated that around 500 civilians were killed, and the campaign was carried out without UN Security Council authorization.
Opposition parties have criticized the half-billion-dollar project, while President Aleksandar Vucic and his government have defended it as a move to modernize the capital. On Tuesday, Vucic told reporters that Serbia had “lost an exceptional investment” and vowed to hold those responsible to account.
Washington said this would undermine talks with Moscow on the Ukraine peace deal, according to the Polish PM
The US has told the EU to “leave the [frozen] Russian assets alone” as any appropriation of the funds could undermine talks with Moscow in the Ukraine peace talks, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has claimed.
After the escalation of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022, Kiev’s Western backers froze approximately $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets, of which $246 billion has been immobilized by EU member states.
Discussions concerning the immobilized Russian assets have intensified within the bloc in recent weeks after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed using the funds to back a “reparations loan” to Ukraine.
Speaking following a meeting between Ukrainian and US negotiators in Berlin on Monday, Tusk stated that there was a “very clear” difference of opinion between Washington and Brussels on the issue of the frozen Russian funds.
“The Americans are saying ‘Leave these Russian assets alone’,” according to the Polish prime minister. According to him, Washington is concerned that if the EU seized the immobilized funds, Russia would take a harder negotiating position in talks to end the Ukraine conflict.
Last week, EU member states voted to keep the Russian sovereign funds temporarily frozen. The bloc’s leadership had to invoke emergency powers to overcome the opposition of member states, including Hungary and Slovakia.
Belgium has also expressed concerns that it would be left in the lurch by the bloc in the face of Russian lawsuits. The Euroclear depositary based in the country holds the bulk of the frozen Russian assets.
Moscow has characterized any use of its immobilized funds as “theft.” On Friday, the Bank of Russia announced that it was filing a lawsuit seeking $230 billion in compensation from Euroclear.
On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested that an “urge to steal must be genetic in many of our Western ‘colleagues’,” citing the seizures of Iran’s and Venezuela’s assets by the West.
Rejecting the scheme will harm EU countries’ finances and push interest rates higher, the German Europe minister has claimed
Countries that refuse to back the so-called “reparations loan” for Ukraine plan, backed by frozen Russian assets, are bound to suffer severe economic consequences, German Europe Minister Gunther Krichbaum has claimed.
Last week, the EU tightened its grip on the frozen Russian central bank assets by invoking Article 122, an economic emergency treaty clause that allows approval by a qualified majority rather than unanimity of member states. The move has been strongly condemned within the bloc and by legal scholars, while Moscow labeled any attempt to tamper with its assets as “theft.”
Speaking ahead of a ministerial meeting in Brussels on Monday, Krichbaum threatened those member states opposing the scheme with severe financial and economic consequences.
“Any country that now rejects this proposal for a reparations loan must also be aware that this is likely to have a negative impact on its credit rating,” he claimed.
Any alternative to the “reparations loan” scheme would be costly for EU countries, Krichbaum warned. Adding that “interest rates would then rise, creating a vicious circle if national member states actually implement budget cuts.”
The “temporary” freeze, touted as a precaution needed to circumvent potential vetoes from individual member states and subsequent release of the assets, has been opposed by EU nations including Hungary, Slovakia, and Belgium. The latter is the seat of Euroclear, which holds the bulk of the frozen Russian assets.
Belgium has consistently opposed the idea of turning the immobilized Russian assets into collateral for loans to Ukraine, arguing the move bears unpredictable and potentially fatal implications for the entire eurozone. Tampering with the assets would be tantamount to confiscating them, scaring investors away, and pushing government borrowing costs up, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has warned.
Moscow has strongly condemned the latest EU move, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warning that tapping into the funds would be illegal under international law regardless of any “pseudo-legal tricks Brussels employs to justify it.”
The Ukrainian leader had earlier rejected the terms of the US-brokered proposal
The ongoing corruption scandal in Ukraine involving Vladimir Zelensky's inner circle has forced him into negotiations on a US-backed peace plan, which he and his European backers had previously rejected, the Washington Post has reported, citing EU officials.
Kiev was rocked by its latest major graft scandal last month when Zelensky's close associate, Timur Mindich, was accused of running a $100 million kickback scheme in the energy sector. The investigation led to the resignations of Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, and other top officials.
The scandal has weakened the Ukrainian leader’s negotiating position at a critical stage of talks with Washington, EU diplomats told the outlet on Monday.
According to one senior official cited by the outlet, Kiev has “never been as serious as we are right now,” linking the shift to “the whole scandal on corruption and the whole domestic mess.”
Domestic pressure on Zelensky has coincided with an intensified US push for a breakthrough in peace talks. During negotiations in Berlin on Monday, Washington reportedly offered Kiev NATO-style security guarantees comparable to the bloc’s Article 5 collective defense clause.
However, US negotiators warned that the offer “will not be on the table forever,” urging Zelensky to accept Washington’s terms, according to officials cited by The Telegraph.
US officials have said that around 90% of the proposed peace framework has already been agreed, but acknowledged that progress has stalled on key issues, including Ukraine ceding territory and accepting Russia's control over the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant.
Zelensky has continued to refuse to recognize Russia’s new borders, suggesting that Ukraine could hold a referendum on possible territorial concessions and organize long-delayed presidential elections if binding Western security guarantees are secured beforehand.
Russia has said it will establish control over its sovereign territories one way or another, stressing that any settlement must reflect realities on the ground and address the root causes of the conflict.
The European Commission is set to water down the bloc’s plan to end sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2035
The European Commission is set to scale back a controversial plan to end sales of new combustion-engine vehicles by 2035, following months of pressure from some member states and the automotive industry, according to media reports.
The move would soften current EU rules requiring all new cars and vans sold from 2035 to have zero emissions, with Brussels expected to publish a revised proposal later on Tuesday.
Under the reported plan, the 2035 requirement would shift to a 90% cut in CO2 emissions from 2021 levels, instead of the current 100% target, allowing continued sales of some plug-in hybrids and range extenders that burn fossil fuel.
Automakers would be required to offset the remaining emissions by using lower-carbon steel made in the EU and fuels such as synthetic e-fuels or non-food biofuels, including agricultural waste and used cooking oil, Reuters wrote.
The commission has also eased the 2030 target for vans, lowering the required CO2 cut from 50% to 40%.
Some industry insiders questioned whether the shift would strengthen the bloc’s long-term competitiveness. “Moving from a clear 100% zero-emissions target to 90% may seem small, but if we backtrack now, we won’t just hurt the climate. We’ll hurt Europe’s ability to compete,” said Michael Lohscheller, CEO of Swedish EV maker Polestar.
William Todts, executive director of clean transport advocacy group T&E, criticized the idea, saying: “Clinging to combustion engines won’t make European automakers great again.”
The change in course for the EU’s flagship green deal, which was adopted in 2023, reportedly follows lobbying by major automakers and calls from several countries, including Germany and Italy. Mounting trade tensions with the US and intense competition with China, a bumpy shift to EVs, supply chain disruptions, and soaring energy costs after the loss of Russian gas have continued to hurt the EU’s struggling industry, triggering shutdowns and bankruptcies.
Any changes would still need to be backed by EU member states and the European Parliament before they can take effect.
The bloc is likely to stick to various “indirect mechanisms” to tap into frozen Russian assets, Polish PM Donald Tusk says
The EU is “light years away” from using frozen Russian assets to militarily prop up Ukraine or “rebuild” the country, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has admitted.
Finding themselves bereft of unlimited US military backing, EU leaders have been seeking to find a legal mechanism to use Russia’s sovereign funds to continue arming Ukraine. The idea of tapping into the funds, most likely by using them as collateral for loans to Ukraine, has been strongly objected to within the bloc and by legal scholars.
The EU is likely to use “various indirect mechanisms” to tap into the assets rather than confiscate them outright, Tusk said on Monday. The PM made the remarks while commenting on the EU’s recent move to tighten its grip on the frozen Russian assets and prevent their premature release.
“From that point to the potential use of these funds for rebuilding Ukraine – let alone for military support for Ukraine – we are still light years away,” Tusk told reporters. “However, there are various indirect mechanisms, for example, the possibility of using these funds as a financial lever, that is, as loan guarantees,” he added.
The difference in the EU and the US position on the potential confiscation of Russian assets is “absolutely obvious,” Tusk said. Washington has repeatedly urged the bloc to exercise caution on the matter, arguing it would only complicate or completely derail the negotiation efforts of the Trump administration, the PM added.
“The Americans say: leave these Russian assets alone, because it’s hard to sit down at the negotiating table with Putin and say, ‘Let’s make a compromise, but we’re taking your money.’ This is the American argument,” he said.
Last week, the EU invoked its rarely used emergency powers to circumvent potential vetoes by individual member countries and prevent release of the assets. The “temporary” measure prohibits “any transfers of Central Bank of Russia assets immobilized in the EU back to Russia.”
Moscow has strongly condemned the move, reiterating its position that it regards any tampering with its funds as “theft,” no matter how it is framed. Tapping into the funds would be illegal under international law regardless of any “pseudo-legal tricks Brussels employs to justify it,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has stated.
The overstaying Ukrainian leader has made a show of agreeing to hold a vote – but his preconditions make a mockery of it
Currently, with intense diplomacy taking place to – perhaps – end the Ukraine conflict, questions surrounding Kiev’s domestic politics may seem secondary. However, in reality, they are as important as the search for peace.
There are two reasons: First, Ukrainians have a right to finally be released from their perverse bondage to what is, in effect, a long-ago failed Western proxy war against Russia. Those still in denial about this fact should check out a recent interview with a former Biden administration policy official. Amanda Sloat has casually admitted that much now: The war could have been avoided if the West had not insisted on NATO membership prospects for Ukraine, which never really existed anyhow.
Observers not blinded by Western propaganda – including this author – were warning that, for Ukraine, this fake NATO perspective was a road to catastrophe. But the Sloats of this world refused to listen. Why then did the West want the war? To diminish Russia by using Ukraine as a battering ram and Ukrainians as cannon fodder.
Zelensky’s regime is so corrupt and has sold out its own people so badly to the West that a lasting peace threatens it not only with losing power, which it certainly would, but also with a wave of prosecutions starting at the very top, with Zelensky himself and rolling down like an avalanche. Put differently, this is a regime that would always be tempted to re-start the war to distract from the retribution it must fear.
By now, even Zelensky and Kiev’s political elite admit the above. Indeed, Zelensky has charged parliament with devising procedures for such elections. So, you may ask, what about his regime and its Western propagandists claiming for over a year that this is simply illegal and can’t be welcome? Simple: that was a big fat lie. Welcome to Zelensky world and its crooked reflection in the mirror cabinet of the Western mainstream media.
Yet curb your enthusiasm. In all likelihood, Zelensky remains dishonest – really, does he even have another mode? – and is engaging not in a genuine attempt to finally allow Ukrainians their long overdue say about his horrific rule. Instead, it is – alas! – much more plausible to interpret his turn toward elections as yet another tactic of stalling and deception.
For one thing, he and his team are trying to set conditions that seem designed to prevent the elections again, while blaming others, first of all Russia, of course. In essence, their demands boil down to, once again, pushing for either more Western arms or a ceasefire that they can abuse instead of the full peace agreement that is actually needed. Moscow will not agree to such a scheme, as Kiev knows very well.
In addition, this would not be the Zelensky regime if it did not also ask for even more Western money. This time, the shameless idea is that the West must pay for elections in Ukraine – presumably because that is how democracy works in a sovereign country.
Things can get even worse: There is also the possibility, pointed out by Ukrainian observers, that Zelensky and his fixers are planning to shift the whole presidential election online. If they do, falsification in Zelensky’s favor is de facto guaranteed.
In sum, there is no good reason to believe Zelensky is really ready to give up power – because that is what elections would mean – to make way for a return to a more normal type of politics. His current statements and gestures seemingly indicating the opposite are meant to deceive, most of all, the West. Neither Ukrainians nor Russia is likely to believe him anyhow.
There is a glimmer of hope, however: The fact alone that Trump has challenged Zelensky in this area and that the latter’s European backers cannot shield him from that challenge is a good sign. As is the fact, of course, that Zelensky has felt pressured and cornered enough to not revert to the old lie that presidential elections are not possible in wartime.
Instead, Ukraine’s past-best-by leader has implicitly admitted they – and that he was lying before – and is now forced to deploy stalling techniques. That in and of itself, like Ukraine’s escalating corruption scandals, shows that Zelensky’s grip is slipping. And that is good for everyone, including Ukrainians. For without an end to the Zelensky regime, it is likely that no peace can be made and certain that no peace can last.
New Delhi has also paid tribute to soldiers who fought in the 1971 war that led to the creation of the neighboring country
India has sent its best wishes to Bangladesh on its Victory Day, which commemorates the end of the conflict that marked the South Asian country’s liberation from Pakistan in 1971.
Freedom fighters in what was then East Pakistan waged a war against the western wing of Pakistan in 1971 after the latter violently clamped down on protestors demanding democratic rights. India militarily assisted East Pakistan in the war, playing an instrumental role in the freedom fighters winning the conflict and establishing Bangladesh.
“On Vijay Diwas [Victory Day], we remember the brave soldiers whose courage and sacrifice ensured India had a historic victory in 1971,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X on Tuesday. “Their steadfast resolve and selfless service protected our nation and etched a moment of pride in our history.”
On Vijay Diwas, we remember the brave soldiers whose courage and sacrifice ensured India had a historic victory in 1971. Their steadfast resolve and selfless service protected our nation and etched a moment of pride in our history. This day stands as a salute to their valour and…
Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar reached out to Bangladeshi Foreign Affairs Adviser Mohammad Touhid Hossain on the occasion, conveying his best wishes.
Traditionally warm relations between New Delhi and Dhaka have been under severe strain since former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government was deposed after an uprising last year. India has rejected recent charges by Dhaka that its territory is being used for activities damaging to its eastern neighbor.
Many former ministers, lawmakers, and liberation-war veterans from the ousted Awami League government, feted for their contributions to the Liberation War, are now in prison on allegations of crimes linked to the July–August 2024 uprising in Bangladesh. Hasina and former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal have been sentenced to death in absentia by a Bangladeshi court for ordering a violent crackdown on student protests in 2024.
London is pushing for the EU to seize frozen Russian assets hoping to drag the conflict out “to the last Ukrainian,” the SVR claims
The UK is reportedly trying to convince the European Union to take control of frozen Russian assets, aiming to undermine US President Donald Trump’s efforts to advance peace initiatives that could end the Ukraine conflict, according to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
After the launch of Russia’s Special Military Operation in February of 2022, Kiev’s Western backers froze approximately $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets, of which $246 billion has been immobilized by EU member states.
Discussions concerning the frozen Russian assets intensified within the bloc in recent weeks after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed using the funds to back a “reparations loan” to Ukraine.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the SVR claimed that the UK’s leadership was “desperately pushing for Brussels’ decision to seize Russian assets.” Aside from the clear goal of providing financial support to Kiev, London is also seeking to diminish US interest in facilitating any peace mediation between Ukraine and Russia, according to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service.
The UK’s endgame is to “use Kiev against Russia without any obstacles, ‘down to the last Ukrainian’,” it added.
“Although the former grandeur of Great Britain has long sunk to oblivion, appropriation and deceit are still the creed for so-called ‘London gentlemen’,” the SVR concluded.
Last week, EU member states voted to keep the Russian sovereign funds temporarily frozen. To push through the controversial agenda, the bloc’s leadership had to invoke emergency powers to bypass the unanimity requirement. Several member states, including Hungary, Slovakia, and Belgium, have raised objections. The latter is the seat of the Euroclear depositary, which holds the bulk of the frozen Russian assets. Brussels has expressed concern that it would be left in the lurch by the bloc in the face of Russian lawsuits.
Moscow has characterized any use of its immobilized funds as “theft.” On Friday, the Bank of Russia announced that it was filing a lawsuit seeking compensation from Euroclear for damages stemming from its “inability to manage” the assets.
Late last month, the SVR similarly claimed that Britain was concocting a smear campaign aimed at damaging US President Trump’s standing, with the aim of derailing his efforts to end the Ukraine conflict.
The over €100 billion already spent could hit taxpayers and spark a political backlash across the bloc, the Hungarian PM has said
The EU nations’ leaders, who have spent more than €100 billion (over $118 billion) on Ukraine, now hope to confiscate frozen Russian assets in order to prevent the collapse of their governments, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
Last week, the EU temporarily immobilized roughly $230 billion in Russian central bank assets by invoking Article 122, an emergency treaty clause that allows approval by a qualified majority rather than unanimity. Moscow has condemned the freeze as illegal and called any use of the funds “theft,” after European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen proposed using the money to back a loan to Ukraine.
Speaking to the Patriota YouTube channel on Tuesday, Orban said EU leaders were “chasing their money” after spending heavily on the conflict and having previously assured voters it “won’t cost them a single penny” because support for Ukraine would be financed from Russian assets rather than taxpayers.
Orban said that if taxpayers end up footing the bill after all those promises, it could trigger an “explosive realization in Western Europe” and the “immediate fall of several governments.”
He argued that EU leaders are now trying to secure financing “outside taxpayers’ pockets,” pointing to frozen Russian assets as the target and warning of political trouble if Brussels fails to obtain them.
Orban has previously accused EU officials of “raping European law in broad daylight,” by invoking Article 122 to bypass his country’s potential veto, and said Budapest would take the matter to the bloc’s top court. He also noted that Washington opposes the confiscation and wants the issue handled as part of a broader settlement with Moscow.
Russia’s central bank has filed a lawsuit against Belgium-based depositary Euroclear, which holds most of its assets. The EU insists that freezing the funds complies with international law, however, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has warned that using the money to back a loan to Kiev raises legal risks for the country.
International financial institutions, including the European Central Bank and the IMF, have also cautioned that using immobilized sovereign assets could undermine confidence in the euro.
Storm gusts knocked down the towering replica outside a megastore in southern Brazil, with no injuries reported
A large replica of the Statue of Liberty collapsed in southern Brazil on Monday after strong winds hit the region. Authorities and the company that owns the structure have stated that no injuries were reported.
The incident occurred in the city of Guaíba, near Porto Alegre, as severe weather swept across the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Wind gusts in the area reportedly exceeded 90 kilometers per hour, according to Brazil’s civil defense agency, which had issued emergency alerts warning residents to remain indoors.
The statue stood in the parking area of a Havan retail megastore. The company said in a statement that the 24-meter-tall statue was blown off its 11-meter-tall base.
WATCH: Replica of the Statue of Liberty topples due to strong winds in Guaíba, Brazil pic.twitter.com/pMxN7KLu5y
Havan said the installation carried the required Technical Responsibility Annotation (ART) and had been in place since the store opened in 2020. It added that a technical inspection will be conducted at the site to determine the causes of the incident and recommend further measures.
Video footage shared on social media shows the statue slowly tilting before falling, as nearby drivers rushed to move their vehicles out of the way.
Guaíba Mayor Marcelo Maranata has confirmed that no one was hurt, while praising the rapid response of store employees and emergency services, who secured the area shortly after the collapse.
Back in 2021, a similar incident took place at another Havan store in Capao da Canoa, which also had a Statue of Liberty replica in the parking lot. That structure was toppled during a cyclone with winds between 70 and 80 km/h. The incident resulted in no injures, only causing material damage. The statue was then put back in its place just 72 hours after falling.
As reported by local media, the replica statues weigh in at about 3.6 tons and are made of fiberglass.
Maryana Bezuglaya blocked the parliamentary rostrum to demand the sacking of Ukraine’s top general, prompting a violent response from fellow MPs
The Ukrainian parliament descended into chaos on Tuesday after MP Maryana Bezuglaya blocked its rostrum and engaged in scuffles with lawmakers.
Bezuglaya declared a “strike” last week, demanding the dismissal of the country’s commander-in-chief, Aleksandr Syrsky, over frontline failures. On Tuesday, the lawmaker blocked the rostrum of the Verkhovna Rada, plastering it with red sticky tape and several placards reading “Syrsky out,”“Frontline lying kills,” and “Military reform!”
The stunt prompted a violent response from a group of MPs led by Sergey Taruta, a lawmaker with the Batkivshchyna party headed by former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko.
The lawmakers clashed with Bezuglaya, managing to take down some of her placards, chaotic footage from the floor shows.
Bezuglaya, however, held her ground, fending Taruta off twice. Less than half of the lawmakers were present in the parliament, with some of them singing Ukraine’s anthem during the scuffle, footage from the scene shows.
The incident has prompted a motion to suspend Bezuglaya from taking part in parliamentary hearings, the lawmaker revealed on her Telegram channel.
The MP pointed out that her stunt did not actually disrupt the work of the legislature. She also lamented the fact that Taruta did not face any consequences for “assaulting her twice” and questioning whether her fellow lawmakers care about “what is happening in the military.”
Bezuglaya has long criticized her country’s military leadership for failed tactics and lack of any coherent defense plan amid the conflict with Russia. The lawmaker has repeatedly accused the top command of “lying to itself” and to the public, wasting soldiers’ lives in futile assaults instead of building solid defensive lines in the rear, and failing to fall back in an orderly way to hold them.
Igor Kolomoysky built up Ukraine’s largest bank, then plundered it for billions in a scheme so elaborate it looks like a state intelligence operation. During the 2014 Maidan revolution, he ended up caught in a whirlwind of far-right militants, rising Western scrutiny, and a dramatic denouement with his bank – and fled abroad. Not one to give up, though, Kolomoysky had a plan for revenge and its name was Vladimir Zelensky.
Zelensky, however, soon ran amok. He “tricked Putin” in Paris, ruining hopes for peace in the Donbass, and setting the stage for the fateful events of 2022. Caught between Western pressure and his benefactor’s menacing presence, Zelensky tried to play both sides until events forced his hand. Yet Kolomoysky’s downfall merely left an open niche for a new shadowy figure to stride in.
Below is the first part of RT's investigation, based on hundreds of pages of court documents, dealing with Kolomoysky's rise, his turning PrivatBank into an empire of fraud, the events of Maidan, and his involvement in the post-Maidan world.
“He did play as Napoleon, right, Zelensky?... This Napoleon will soon be no more,” said a man with curly grey hair and a scraggly grey beard from the defendant’s cage in a Kiev courtroom. It was the middle of November, and Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoysky was speaking at a hearing in the longstanding fraud charges he faces related to his plundering of PrivatBank. Looking relaxed in a track suit and speaking in Russian, Kolomoysky predicted that Vladimir Zelensky would come crashing down with him due to his own intimate involvement in the corruption scandal currently roiling Ukraine.
Events in Ukraine have taken on the feel of a Shakespearean tragedy as one after another in Zelensky’s inner circle has fallen or fled under the taint of corruption. Perhaps it would be fitting if Kolomoysky ends up with the last word in this sordid affair, for it was his efforts that gained Zelensky the presidency in the first place. When the oligarch himself finally met his comeuppance, into the breech stepped another Kolomoysky-made man, Timur Mindich, who would reconstruct much of his former benefactor’s patronage network for equally corrupt aims.
It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that all crooked roads in Ukraine lead to Kolomoysky – if only because corruption there is too pervasive to trace to one man. Yet, Kolomoysky seems to stand upstream from the entire intertwined morass of militant nationalism, cronyism, and corrupt patronage networks that have defined modern Ukraine.
So who is Igor Kolomoysky and why does his name still echo in the halls of power in Kiev? This is the man who orchestrated one of the largest and most elaborate embezzlement schemes in modern history that cost the Ukrainian state 6% of GDP to remedy. This is the man who built up massive private security forces and financed far-right militias at an estimated cost of $10 million per month in the fraught post-Maidan period. And it is a man whose machinations Zelensky was loath to confront until Western pressure forced his hand.
When banking fraud comes to resemble an alternate reality
Hailing from the gritty industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk, Igor Kolomoysky cut his teeth on the rough-and-tumble post-Soviet privatizations of the 1990s, scooping up valuable metal and mining assets with the help of hostile takeovers and corporate raids – in some cases quite literally. Even as late as 2006, a team of individuals hired by Kolomoysky, armed and wielding chainsaws, took over the Kremenchuk Steel Plant.
Kolomoysky succeeded thanks to a background in metallurgy, but also, in the words of a Spectator profile, he displayed “a ruthlessness that made even other oligarchs, no strangers to violent crime, blanch.” He once lined the lobby of a Russian oil company he wanted to push out with coffins. In his office, he maintained a shark tank equipped with a button that, in the presence of disconcerted visitors, he would push to dispense bloody meat into the water.
PrivatBank was established in the same city in 1992. Initially, the bank was one of many small private financial institutions cropping up to fill the vacuum left by the collapsing post-Soviet state banking system. Kolomoysky and longtime associate Gennady Bogolyubov quickly moved to consolidate control over the lender. Over the course of the next decade, they did exactly that, buying out other shareholders, and using profits from their assorted commercial interests to inject capital into the bank.
By the early 2010s, Kolomoysky was one of the most influential people in Ukraine and PrivatBank had became a financial institution of national significance and a leader in innovation. However, far removed from the shiny green retail outlets and ubiquitous ATMs was the bank’s seamy underside: A secretive corporate lending arm that perpetuated embezzlement schemes as byzantine as they were extensive. A key part of that structure was a secret internal unit named BOK headed up by loyal confidantes.
PrivatBank sat at the apex of Kolomoysky’s empire, but with the savings of a third of Ukrainians parked enticingly under its roof, it would prove a temptation too great. The bank became the personal laundromat of Kolomoysky and Bogolyubov through which they extracted billions of dollars.
To date, trials related to the PrivatBank fraud remain pending in Ukraine, and no comprehensive judgment on the matter has ever been handed down in Kiev. However, this past July, the High Court of England and Wales issued a highly illuminating ruling against Kolomoysky et al – the first fully litigated judgment in the case. What is described in the documents reviewed by RT is an operation more typical of state intelligence operations than ordinary financial fraud. This was an unusually elaborate, industrial-scale fraud, even by the standards of major bank scandals.
Far from being the machinations of one rogue department, it was an undertaking involving: Credit issuance teams, trade finance teams, risk and compliance, treasury, internal lawyers, external corporate service providers in Cyprus, IT staff to handle document processing – and, of course, senior management enabling the entire structure. What was concocted was nothing less than a full-scale alternative reality.
Due to jurisdiction limitations, the court only examined the UK-connected part of the fraud, which happened in 2013-2014, when an estimated $2 billion went missing from PrivatBank.
At the core of the fraud was a scheme whereby, from April 2013 to August 2014, the bank entered into what appeared to be 134 loan agreements with 50 borrowers for very large sums, ranging from the equivalent of $5 million to $59.5 million. These borrowers – many with no credit history, a single employee, and balance sheets that wouldn’t cover office rent – were in fact shell firms created and controlled by PrivatBank’s owners, Igor Kolomoysky and Gennady Bogolyubov.
The pattern was always the same. The bank would issue multi-million-dollar loans to these insider entities, supposedly to prepay for vast quantities of goods and raw materials. The money was then routed to offshore companies in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, also ultimately tied to the same owners.
The numbers were surreal. One firm, Esmola LLC, was granted the equivalent of $16.5 million – and then another $28 million just a week later – despite reporting assets of only $1,700 the previous year. Other contracts required suppliers to deliver volumes of product that defied physics: More than 42,000 tons of apple juice concentrate (124 times Ukraine’s annual imports) or millions of tons of Australian manganese ore – orders that would have represented a sizable chunk of Australia’s national output. All contracts required 100% prepayment, with no collateral, no performance guarantees, and no commercial logic. And that was the point.
No goods ever arrived. In the early stages, some of the sham suppliers cycled the prepayments back to PrivatBank, allowing the same money to slosh repeatedly through the system. By late summer 2014, the returns stopped. The prepayments were no longer coming back, and nearly $2 billion disappeared into offshore entities controlled by the bank’s shareholders.
Incidentally, much of the money ultimately ended up in the US. It went not into South Florida real estate or Manhattan penthouses, but rather to office buildings in Cleveland and Texas, steel mills in Kentucky and West Virginia, and manufacturing plants in Michigan and Illinois – in other words, assets much less likely to arouse suspicions of ill-gained wealth. Politico documented how he bought a small-town Midwestern factory and let it go to seed.
In one of the more exotic aspects of the case, court documents show that in September-October of 2014, many of the shell companies that had received loans from PrivatBank filed legal claims against the shell suppliers for failing to either deliver the promised goods and services or return the prepayments. The bank was named as a defendant because the borrowers also sought to invalidate the sham supply agreements provided as security for the loans. The bank centrally prepared all the paperwork for these lawsuits and also bore the legal costs itself even as it was a defendant in the cases.
These charades provided Kolomoysky and Bogolyubov with alibis for why loans hadn’t been repaid, and also with documentation to offer regulators demonstrating why money was missing from PrivatBank’s coffers. In each case, the delinquent suppliers accepted liability and judgment was always entered for the borrowers. But none of the judgments were ever enforced. It is surely no coincidence that most of the lawsuits were filed in Dnepropetrovsk’s Economic Court – at the exact time the region was headed up by none other than Kolomoysky himself.
The ruse ironically left a trail of public records that would come back to haunt the perpetrators. Ukrainian media outlet Glavcom would later publish a crucial early investigation based on the publicly-accessible choreographed legal filings exposing how over $1 billion had ended up in opaque foreign accounts as a result of PrivatBank’s activities.
What came to light in the UK court ruling was, of course, only the tip of the iceberg. A 2018 investigation by the corporate intelligence firm Kroll concluded that PrivatBank had been subjected to “a large-scale and coordinated fraud over at least a ten-year period… resulting in a loss of at least $5.5 billion.”
Maidan and the rise of far-right militarism
While Kolomoysky’s team in Dnepropetrovsk was busy siphoning millions out of PrivatBank’s back door, dramatic events were unfolding in the nation’s capital.
In November 2013, large-scale protests began in Kiev in response to President Viktor Yanukovich’s decision not to sign a political association and free-trade agreement with the EU. The events that unfolded over the next three months, resulting in the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected president, would come to be known simply as ‘Maidan’.
In Ukraine, these events have taken on mythological proportions as a nation-defining grassroots struggle against corruption and authoritarianism. Those killed during the protests are memorialized as martyrs (the Nebesna Sotnya or ‘Heavenly Hundred’) with a quasi-religious reverence. Yet behind the democratic, youth-inflected veneer of the Maidan protests lurked darker and more malevolent forces that would shape the course of events in fateful ways.
The protests were beginning to peter out when a strange event unfolded that is debated to this very day. Overnight November 29-30, the Ukrainian elite riot police force, Berkut, violently dispersed the remaining several hundred Maidan protesters in a move that had the effect of galvanizing and radicalizing the protest movement. The following day, hundreds of thousands descended on Maidan.
Ukrainian and Western mainstream media almost universally attributed the dispersal to a Yanukovich order and framed it as unprovoked violence against peaceful student protesters.
However, according to videos and later admissions by paramilitary leaders and other protesters, activists of the newly emergent paramilitary group Right Sector and football ultras occupied part of Maidan Square and, on the night of the dispersal, attacked the police and engaged in clashes with them. Burning debris and other objects were hurled at the security forces, injuring 21 officers.
Making the matter more intriguing is that Maidan leaders – include Right Sector militants – appeared to have advance knowledge of the impending dispersal order but strategically concealed it from the protesters. Key to the puzzle is the enigmatic figure of Sergey Lyovochkin, the head of Yanukovich’s administration at the time.
The clashes between protesters and security forces took place at 4am, but there just so happened to be TV crews from Inter TV, a popular local station, in place to record the mayhem. Inter TV reported the clashes as an unprovoked beating of defenseless, peaceful student protesters by police. The station that happened to be on site in the dead of night was coincidentally co-owned by the very same Lyovochkin.
Many Yanukovich officials fled Ukraine after the Maidan coup. Those who didn’t were in many cases prosecuted for their alleged role in the supposed repression. Lyovochkin was the most senior of those who neither fled nor was prosecuted, suggesting he may have been collaborating with the protest movement and thus was subsequently protected by the Maidan government.
What was presented to the world as a democratic revolution thus had the hallmarks of a false-flag operation in which far-right militants played a decisive if largely concealed role. It was a story repeated but with far higher stakes in several months’ time when 48 Maidan protesters were shot to death by snipers on Maidan and an adjacent street. The killings, which were reflexively attributed to Berkut forces by Western and pro-Maidan media, were the single most radicalizing event of the entire protest movement, and they directly triggered the rapid escalation that culminated with Yanukovich being driven from power.
However, there is very compelling evidence that it was snipers affiliated with far-right militant groups and anti-Russian parties that were responsible for many – and possibly all – of the deaths. A ruling in 2023 by the Ukrainian Sviatoshyn District Court even confirmed some of the activists had been killed not by Berkut special police forces but actually by snipers holed up in the Hotel Ukraina, at the time occupied by Right Sector extremists, and other Maidan-controlled locations. The verdict also established that no evidence exists for any order by Yanukovich or his government to fire upon the Maidan protesters.
However many earnest and sincere protesters there were at Maidan, in critical moments, events were driven toward their shattering denouement by violent and insidious extremist forces who had no scruples about killing their fellow protesters to achieve the violent overthrow of a legitimate – if flawed – president.
The loosely organized Right Sector, which coalesced and came of age during Maidan, would soon find itself an extravagant sponsor in the name of Igor Kolomoysky. The oligarch, who had supported the Maidan events and referred to himself as a “die-hard European,” would soon become the largest sponsor of far-right militias in the country.
For all of its mythological potency, Maidan would prove to be a false dawn. Several months after Maidan, an oligarch, Pyotr Poroshenko, was elected president. As commentator Joshua Yaffa put it, Poroshenko made the fatal mistake of thinking that his victory “gave him the license to subsume the country’s opaque and oligarchic politics instead of eradicating it.”
Poroshenko’s tenure would prove a failure. Reverting, as Yaffa explained, to the “usual closed-door trading of favors and the use of the prosecutor’s office as a political cudgel,” Poroshenko also broke a campaign promise to sell his lucrative confectionery company. Even more ominously, he undermined the work of the newly created, Western-run anti-corruption agency, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU. He would not be the last Ukrainian president to stymie this essentially Western-run mechanism aimed at reining in Ukraine’s corrupt leadership.
Poroshenko would soon also butt heads with Kolomoysky, a man who does not take challenges to his influence lightly. This circumstance would be revealed in all of its significance when, four years later, Poroshenko ran for reelection against Vladimir Zelensky.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul: How Kolomoysky ‘defended’ the country he was looting
On February 22, 2014, Yanukovich, who had fled to Russia two days earlier, was officially removed as president by a vote in the Rada. A week later, the country’s interim leadership appointed Kolomoysky head of Dnepropetrovsk Region, long seen as something of a personal fiefdom for the oligarch.
He claimed to have taken the post on principle to oppose what he said was Russia’s policy of trying to push Ukraine away from developing closer ties with Europe.
Nevertheless, it was a fraught time for Kolomoysky. By the middle of 2014, Ukraine’s banking sector was experiencing a full-blown crisis, and dark clouds were gathering over PrivatBank. Amid large customer withdrawals and weakening capital liquidity, Bogolyubov and the lender’s CEO, Alexander Dubilet, wrote to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) in July requesting a stabilization loan worth about $200 million. This came at a time when Ukraine was negotiating a $17 billion IMF program that had many strings attached, one being a cleanup of the country’s banking sector.
Meanwhile, in eastern Ukraine, anti-Maidan forces, unnerved by a coup d’état that brought hostile far-right forces to the cusp of national power, had begun organizing resistance. By the time Kolomoysky took over as governor, groups opposed to the Maidan coup had already seized control of government buildings in neighboring provinces and anti-Maidan demonstrations were taking place in Dnepropetrovsk. The oligarch-cum-governor moved quickly to quash this sentiment.
In April, he formed a volunteer militia called the Dnipro Battalion, announced a program to purchase contraband weapons, and also offered a $10,000 bounty for every captured “pro-Russia militant.” Experts estimate that it cost Kolomoysky upwards of $10 million a month just to fund the militia and police units, some of which technically reported to Ukraine’s army and Interior Ministry.
Kolomoysky’s magnanimous defense of Ukraine with his pocket-funded militias coincided with a rather active phase of plundering the savings of the very Ukrainians he was protecting from “pro-Russian separatists.” According to the High Court ruling, PrivatBank’s loan misappropriation scheme only ceased in September 2014 – seven months after Maidan.
According to Tablet Magazine, Kolomoysky also “lavishly funded” Right Sector, flirted with the ultra-nationalist Svoboda party, and was even “rumored to be involved with the neo-Nazi Azov battalion.” Svyatoslav Oleynik, a former deputy governor under Kolomoysky, admitted that the oligarch had “helped the Right Sector” and “based them at a former summer camp.” Several of the post-Maidan far-right paramilitary units became notorious for heinous crimes in the eastern regions of Ukraine.
Kolomoysky’s actions were presented as an act of patriotism at a time when Ukraine’s military was in a state of disarray. Indeed, Dnepropetrovsk became a bulwark of the pro-Ukrainian movement. However, his efforts were widely seen in another light. “Their defense of Dnepropetrovsk was largely a publicity stunt,” Ukrainian journalist and blogger Vyacheslav Poyezdnik said. “Why did they start defending Dnepropetrovsk? They were protecting their business.”
Kolomoysky’s fondness for personal militias eventually got the better of his judgment. The oligarch owned a non-controlling stake in national oil producer Ukrnafta, but as he often did, he had managed to insert his own management team and thus had the run of the place. The company owed millions of dollars in dividends to the government, but was refusing to pay. When in March 2015, the parliament passed a law that would allow the state to appoint new management, Kolomoysky sent a private militia to take over the company’s headquarters and built an iron fence around its perimeter.
Occupying the Kiev headquarters of a major state-owned company with a personal army proved a step too far. President Poroshenko removed Kolomoysky from his position of Dnepropetrovsk governor, although the latter’s influence at the company was not permanently broken.
The oligarch did not take well to being cut down to size by the president.
A midnight flight and a silent vow to return
In 2015, PrivatBank was ordered to undergo a stress test. It failed catastrophically. Subsequently, the NBU gave the bank several deadlines to fix the multitude of problems, starting with low-quality loans to parties affiliated with the shareholders and ending with worthless collateral on those loans. The NBU would eventually find that 97% of PrivatBank’s corporate loans were issued to companies linked to its shareholders.
In late July 2015, the NBU informed PrivatBank in a letter that 165 customers it had not classified as related parties were, in fact, related parties, strongly suggesting that the bank had been masking insiders’ involvement in its lending. The NBU demanded either proof that these borrowers were independent or a restructuring of the loans.
Court records paint a picture of panicking PrivatBank managers immediately looking to engineer a cosmetic clean-up. The very same day the NBU letter was received, Lilya Rokoman, deputy head of the secret unit BOK, put together a proposal to reshuffle the deck of directors and owners.
Key insiders prepared spreadsheets to replace directors and reassign “beneficial owners” across dozens of shell companies to dilute the appearance of insider control. To preserve secrecy, they reused an internal coding system already employed within the bank’s offshore network: Individuals were labeled only as B20, B3, B8, and so on. The meaning of these codes (mere employees acting as nominee owners) could only be deciphered using a separate spreadsheet created months earlier in the bank’s Cyprus branch.
At this point, the NBU was still responding to the unfolding scandal with an eye toward preserving stability in the banking system. Kolomoysky seemed to want to help rescue the bank. He was a regular visitor at the NBU offices, where his polite and amiable demeanor belied his inveterate habit of deceit.
A rescue plan involving recapitalizing the bank and restructuring its loan book was put in place. Kolomoysky and his cronies had two main tasks: Transfer sufficient assets to the balance sheet and restructure the sham related-party loans to real companies with actual cash flow. They failed miserably on both counts.
Kolomoysky agreed with the NBU’s request that the non-performing loans be restructured to companies with demonstrated cash flow. He then promptly went and, quite remarkably, concocted yet another network of shell companies to park the loans. The two shareholders also agreed to make various asset transfers to the bank’s balance sheet to prop it up, but did so at preposterously inflated valuations. Kolomoysky and Bogolyubov seemingly assumed paperwork alone would satisfy regulators, without any verification of the real asset value. It was an assumption that had worked for years.
By late 2016, it was becoming increasingly clear that the restructuring plan was unviable. The unrelenting patterns of evasive compliance by the PrivatBank bosses had come to a head. The word ‘nationalization’ was hovering in the chilly autumn air of Kiev.
Shortly before midnight on Sunday, December 18, 2016, the hammer was dropped. Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers issued a statement on its website saying that the Finance Ministry now owned 100% of PrivatBank’s shares. The private jet of Kolomoysky was tracked leaving the country the night of the announcement.
Bogolyubov, incidentally, would not flee Ukraine until 2024, using forged documents to board an economy-class train car to Poland.
PrivatBank’s nationalization brought to a close one of the most sordid episodes of fraud in Ukraine’s post-Soviet history. Recapitalizing the bank would cost the Ukrainian state an astounding 6% of GDP. An independent corporate investigator concluded that at least $5.5 billion was stolen from the bank over the course of a decade.
But it did not spell the end for Kolomoysky or of corruption among those in his orbit. Kolomoysky would be back to seek revenge. His return ticket would be stamped with the name: Vladimir Zelensky.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of RT’s investigation into Kolomoysky, which details his return to Ukraine, his role in Vladimir Zelensky’s rise, and how the corruption outlived the oligarch himself.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson has urged other leaders not to boycott the event, which Washington will host next year
South Africa will attend next year’s G20 summit in the US and will not entertain any boycotts, despite Washington’s decision to skip last month’s gathering in Johannesburg, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson has said.
Vincent Magwenya told journalists at a media briefing on Monday that Pretoria has urged all G20 members to engage, warning that unilateral moves threaten the multilateral foundation of the bloc.
“We are against the US boycott. We will not promote any boycott ourselves. Our focus remains on championing the critical issues debated in Johannesburg, ensuring they remain firmly on the G20 agenda, regardless of US approval.”
Trump announced that South Africa would not be invited to the 2026 G20 Summit, which would be hosted in Miami, USA.
The US had refused to attend the Johannesburg summit, citing disagreements over agenda priorities, particularly the government laws.
The US President Donald Trump boycotted the summit and did not send any representative, citing discredited claims of a white genocide against Afrikaners in South Africa and labelling the hosting of the summit there “a total disgrace.”
The decision was widely interpreted by multilateral observers as a unilateral affront to the consensus-driven nature of the G20.
Magwenya emphasised the country’s position as a founding member of the G20, stressing that exclusionary actions must be challenged and rejected by all members.
“These are issues not only vital to our continent but essential to the world: poverty reduction, climate action, and equitable development cannot be confined to a single country’s approval.”
Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) has actively engaged other G20 members, urging them to voice their positions on the US’s unilateral move.
Magwenya added, “We’ve encouraged members to express their views openly. Many have communicated support for our stance and rejection of Washington’s decision. This is about defending multilateralism itself.”
The Johannesburg summit marked a turning point in Africa’s role within global economic governance, highlighting long-standing tensions over agenda-setting and representation.
Meanwhile, in his closing remarks, President Cyril Ramaphosa, said “We will again be in the US for the summit.”
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