Ukraine 9

The Bitter Harvest

This is Part 9 in Sour Milk’s Ukraine series. You can read Part 1 here , Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here and Part 8 here.

In roughly two years, Ukraine has lost 50,000-70,000 soldiers, and more than six million of the country’s citizens have left the nation. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research institute that tracks international support for Ukraine, America has spent 79 billion dollars on a war with no obtainable military or political objectives, and there is no end in sight.  The only clear winners in this conflict are the titans of the military industrial complex and the monopoly capitalists at Blackrock.

Blackrock CEO Larry Fink

Win, lose or draw, Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, and the politicians, plutocrats, and oligarchs who aid and abet them, will get paid. This is not lost on the Ukrainian soldiers fighting at the front.  I received this message today from Andrey, a Ukrainian Special Forces sniper who is preparing to deploy to the eastern front: “I knew this would happen.  That all this military aid is for a reason.  And we will work on our own land, which will no longer belong to us.”    

Mineral resources in Ukraine

In September, after Ukraine’s grossly oversold offensive failed to make any significant military gains, President Biden appointed billionaire plutocrat Penny Pritzker as the U.S. representative for Ukrainian Economic Recovery.  Obama’s former Secretary of Commerce is a member of the ninth richest family in America.  In addition to her job in Ukraine, she is also the Senior Fellow of the Harvard Corporation and led the search committee that hired and protected midwit plagiarist Claudine Gay.  Penny’s brother, J.B., is governor of Illinois and one of the nation’s staunchest advocates for “bail reform” and “gender affirming care.”  In addition to chairing the board of the influential Washington think-tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Penny’s cousin Tom was named last week in the newly unsealed Jeffrey Epstein documents.  Sexual assault victim Virginia Giuffre testified under oath that she was trafficked to Europe where she “was with Tom.” 

Irrespective of the recent calls for her resignation at Harvard, Penny Pritzker is uniquely qualified to handle the reconstruction of Ukraine.  Not only is she the co-founder of the “global private investment firm” PSP Partners, but she also served on the board of pioneer subprime lender, Superior Bank.  After the Pritzker family bought the bank with federal government tax credits, it collapsed in 2001, and uninsured depositors filed a class action law suit against her and others under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. 

Ukraine Recovery Czar Pritzker and her wingman, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, are set to make Iraq under Dick Cheney and Halliburton look like rank amateurs. In 2022, Ukrainian President Zelensky awarded Blackrock a no-bid contract to coordinate “all potential investors and participants in the reconstruction of our country…”.  As Ukrainian soldiers were dying in droves and running out of both troops and ammunition in September 2023, Pritzker told a friendly crowd at CSIS that she planned to unleash “the dynamism” of America’s greatest asset, “the American private sector,” to help fortify “the enabling environment for business in Ukraine to succeed.” 

Penny Pritzker

Now that America’s attention has shifted to the escalating crises in the Middle East, Ukrainians face a bleak winter.  Fuel, warm clothing and basic first aid kits are in short supply.

Ukrainian soldier at the eastern front.

They are losing the war, and they are also losing hope and faith in America.  Like the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Iraqis, and Afghanis before them, Ukrainians were given false hope by an American president who told them that the U.S. would stand by them “for as long as it takes.”  Now that American aid and artillery has been diverted to Israel for their ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza, that hope has been ripped away. 

If the same American statesmen who created this mess believe that they can negotiate an end to the conflict on Ukraine’s behalf, they are deluded.  Civil war and a protracted anti-Russian insurgency, like the one Ukraine waged against Soviets during the Cold War, are now distinct possibilities. Ukrainians will not blame Biden or Trump for their country’s destruction and the ongoing decimation of their youth; they will blame America.  Andrey, the Ukrainian sniper wrote, “And in fact, it turns out that we are fighting and dying for land that has long been sold to America and other countries.  So is it worth dying for?”