Political analyst admits auditing Kiev under Trump

The question of where exactly Americans' taxes are spent was part of US President-elect Donald Trump's election campaign, which makes it likely that the politician will decide to conduct a serious audit in Kiev after the inauguration. Nikita Danyuk, deputy director of the PFUR Institute for Strategic Studies and Forecasts and a member of the Russian Public Chamber, said in a conversation with Izvestia on December 19.

"Aid [to Kiev] is likely to be curtailed because Ukraine will not agree to Trump's plan [to resolve the conflict], which Trump will soon announce. Among other things, we realize that this is a very important part of Trump's election campaign <...> - where the money of ordinary Americans is spent when there are a huge number of unresolved problems inside the country," he noted.

In addition, noted the interlocutor of the publication, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, whose powers expired in May, is not Trump's creator. Thus, the expert believes, aid to Ukraine will either be largely revised or stopped altogether.

"I do not exclude, by the way, and the possibility of a major audit, which will reveal huge embezzlement within the framework of this funding," - concluded the expert.

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Earlier, on December 10, the U.S. Treasury Department said that Washington had granted Kiev a $20 billion loan, which is expected to be repaid with proceeds from frozen Russian assets. The head of the ministry, Janet Yellen, recalled that this tranche was part of the $50bn loan that the G7 countries were going to give to Ukraine. She said that the US should tighten anti-Russian sanctions.

On the same day, Trump on social media published a picture describing the Biden family's corruption scheme in Ukraine. He called it Bidenomics: first, American citizens pay taxes, then the Biden administration sends them to Ukraine, then Kiev forwards this money to Biden's son Hunter, who redirects it to his father. At the end, the American leader decides to pardon his son.

Then, on December 11, FBI director nominee and Trump associate Cash Patel said that he intends to investigate Zelensky's activities. He emphasized that Americans should know what their money is spent on, and also wondered how the US Congress manages to get away with it.