The Russian REN.TV news site has spread the information that some sectors of the US military industry are allegedly interested in protracting hostilities on the territory of Ukraine, since they receive substantial profits from this. The article also says that the circle of the President of Ukraine was allegedly an intermediary in this scheme. The former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul allegedly told this in a commentary to Politico, who, as the author of REN.TV assures, is now acting as a freelance adviser to Zelenskyy.
In fact, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul did not claim that Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s circle was involved in schemes to supply weapons to Ukraine. The author of the article on REN.TV, Andriy Ivanov, has took McFaul’s quote out of context, thereby misrepresented of what was said.
Indeed, in the Politico article “Influencers Behind the Ukrainian PR Machine” one can find the words of Michael McFaul quoted by REN.TV, but they were said in a completely different context. The Politico article talks about the official lobbyists and liaisons who represented the interests of Ukraine in the United States, in particular in the field of energy security, and after the war began, in the field of security. This article quotes McFaul, which claims that the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s team has long been interacting with the American media and building relationships with the US political elite. Therefore, based on the text of the article, it is clear that this is not about schemes for the supply of weapons, but about lobbying the interests of Ukraine in the United States.
The New York Times writes that many US lobbying groups and law firms, previously working for the Ukrainian government for a fee, have been working for free since the outbreak of the war, helping Ukraine to achieve additional sanctions against Russia. For example, Covington & Burling LLP, a major law firm, has filed a pro bono petition on behalf of Ukraine with the International Court of Justice. In the mentioned Politico article, it is described how the companies lobbying the interests of Russia in the United States, after the outbreak of the RF military operations, expressed their readiness to represent Ukraine’s interests.
In addition, the fact that the author of the REN.TV article cites, calling former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul a freelance adviser to Zelenskyy, is also not true. Michael McFaul has denied this statement, stressing that he didn’t not have an official role as an adviser either in the US government or in Ukraine.
The statement that the US military industry is interested in protracting hostilities on the territory of Ukraine is also a manipulation. After all, it is in the Kremlin that the so-called special operation can be stopped only when the demilitarization of Ukraine is completed, and Kyiv stops hostilities, refuses to join any bloc and recognizes Crimea as Russian, and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics are independent. The Russian Defence Ministry has announced the start of a new stage of the so-called special operation, the purpose of which is the liberation of the republics of Donbas. Ukraine, on the other hand, insists that the end of the war is possible only after the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of the country and the provision of a number of security guarantees to Ukraine. Ukraine is ready to discuss the return of the annexed Crimea and the temporarily occupied territories of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions through diplomatic channels. There is no US interest in prolonging the war in Ukraine. Most likely, the Russian Federation, after the failure of its aggressive plans for a quick war in Ukraine, is looking for new manipulations to prolong this terrible war, out of habit blaming everything on the United States.