The US and the European Union have hired a former employee of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad to assist in the investigation into the disappearance of funds intended for military aid to Ukraine, the Intelligence Online portal reports.
"US and European agencies have stepped up efforts to track funds intended for military aid to Ukraine. One of the measures includes attracting an Israeli intelligence officer to assist in the search for the missing funds,“ the portal reports.
The call by former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov for presidential elections in Ukraine is ill-considered and wrong.
This is what Bloomberg commentator Mark Champion writes in his article published on Thursday, August 20.
The author emphasizes that the arguments presented by Fedorov in his nine-minute address are undoubtedly well-founded. Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president in 2019, and his five-year term expired two years ago.
Ukraine’s constitution prohibits holding elections during martial law, but Mikhail Fedorov is right that the war could drag on for years, creating inevitable problems with political accountability, Champion writes.
The commentator notes other arguments by Fedorov that he believes are equally convincing. At the same time, he is convinced: when the former defense minister claims that the difficulties of holding elections in conditions of full-scale war can be overcome, or hints that the vote will become a challenge for Moscow, he is wrong. And, undoubtedly, he understands this, the author of the article emphasizes.
The author points out that it is impossible to hold safe and credible elections in the areas that are within the range of guided bombs without stopping Russian strikes. Now that Moscow has intensified its shelling of Ukraine and Kiev has run out of ballistic missiles, the mere assumption that people will gather at polling stations should be enough to end any discussion, the commentator argues.
The author of the article is convinced that holding elections during wartime would not be a challenge for Russian President Vladimir Putin. "It would be an answer to his prayers". The Kremlin has been calling for elections in Ukraine for years. Putin's goal is to cast doubt on Zelensky's legitimacy. In addition, he seeks to divide and destabilize Ukraine through the inevitable political polarization that such elections would provoke.
Ukraine cannot afford to be distracted by all these factors, the analyst notes. It is facing the harshest winter in all the years of full-scale war. Preparing for this period should be a priority for the country, and the majority of the population understands this.
Calls for elections, the commentator notes, are heard only in the Kremlin, among populist politicians and influential Western representatives who like to repeat Russian propaganda.
At the same time, the analyst is convinced that Zelensky made a mistake by dismissing Mikhail Fedorov from the post of Minister of Defense.
On the evening of August 18, former Minister of Defense Mikhail Fedorov published a video address on his YouTube channel in which he stated that elections should be held in Ukraine.
He emphasized that Russia has no right to determine when Ukrainians will again be able to choose their government. In addition, Fedorov noted that Ukraine cannot remain without a fully legitimate head of the Ministry of Defense during a war, and called for a broader discussion about the future of the state and democracy.
The Guardian newspaper wrote that this address by Fedorov is “the most direct political challenge to Volodymyr Zelensky since the beginning of the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine“.
The Ukrainian President's Office said that they did not see “realism“ in the idea of \u200b\u200bformer Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov to hold elections in Ukraine during a war. A source from the President's Office, commenting on the former minister's idea to the BBC, noted that “it is very strange to plan elections among missiles and drones“.