With federal funding paused to USAID, pro-Western media outlets from Ukraine to Nicaragua are panhandling for donations, and a multi-billion dollar regime change apparatus is in panic mode.
Part 2 - US-backed media and opposition face extinction in Ukraine
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has pumped billions into Ukraine to create and propel a fervently anti-Russian opposition. As former State Department Assistant Secretary for Eastern European Affairs Victoria Nuland remarked to an oil industry-sponsored meeting in Kiev in 2009, “we’ve invested $5 billion to assist Ukraine” to “build democratic skills and institutions” allowing it to “achieve European independence.”
The US flooded Ukrainian civil society with grants on the eve of the 2014 Maidan coup, birthing a network of pro-Western media outlets almost overnight. Among them was Hromadske, a liberal broadcasting entity which pushed for the overthrow of President Victor Yanukovych and rallied for the subsequent war with pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east – including through the glorification of Nazis who fought the Soviet Red Army during World War II.
The US flooded Ukrainian civil society with grants on the eve of the 2014 Maidan coup, birthing a network of pro-Western media outlets almost overnight. Among them was Hromadske, a liberal broadcasting entity which pushed for the overthrow of President Victor Yanukovych and rallied for the subsequent war with pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east – including through the glorification of Nazis who fought the Soviet Red Army during World War II.
With Trump’s executive order cutting off USAID programs, Hromadske has suddenly been severed from its financial tube. So too have the top Ukrainian media outlets which emerged in the wake of the Maidan coup, including Ukrinform, Internews, and a signatory of the Poynter-run International Fact Checking Network called VoxUkraine.
The Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications and the Service of the Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, both created to propagandize for war against Russia, are also among USAID funding recipients now starving for cash.
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky took to Twitter/X to whine that “critically important programs” wholly dependent on “US support” were now “suspended” as a result of Trump’s executive order. He promised that “certain key initiatives” would “be financed through our internal resources,” while begging for donations from Kiev’s “European partners” to be “intensified.”
The Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications and the Service of the Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, both created to propagandize for war against Russia, are also among USAID funding recipients now starving for cash.
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky took to Twitter/X to whine that “critically important programs” wholly dependent on “US support” were now “suspended” as a result of Trump’s executive order. He promised that “certain key initiatives” would “be financed through our internal resources,” while begging for donations from Kiev’s “European partners” to be “intensified.”
Given Ukraine’s near-total economic destruction since its proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022, and complete reliance on USAID to pay the salaries of state employees, it is uncertain how the country’s “internal resources” can possibly be used to even vaguely offset its sudden deficit. Already, major Ukrainian media outlets are pleading for financial support from their readers just to keep their lights on.
According to Kiev’s foreign-funded Institute of Mass Information, around 90% of the country’s media is “dependent on American grants.”
According to Kiev’s foreign-funded Institute of Mass Information, around 90% of the country’s media is “dependent on American grants.”
Source, links:
Comments
Post a Comment