Guest post by EU Insiders for The Gateway Pundit
With the intensification of actions around the possible impeachment of Joe Biden, the dependent Ukrainian government continued to persecute those who conducted their own investigations into his corruption cases and were not afraid to tell the world about them.
Another target was Oleksandr Dubinsky, a well-known journalist and an MP, who revealed and substantiated two crucial and sensational facts for the investigations against Biden: audio recordings of phone conversations in 2015-2016 between Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (known as “Derkach tapes”) are authentic, and behind their leak and dissemination is… the Office of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky!
In Ukraine, Dubinsky is known for being close to Volodymyr Zelensky and the head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak for many years. And it was Dubinsky who was one of the participants in the press conferences organized in 2019-2020 by another Ukrainian MP, Andriy Derkach, where sensational evidence of corruption and influence peddling by Joe Biden in Ukraine was first revealed.
However, Dubinsky’s problems did not start in 2019, but only in 2023 – just after his allegations that Ukraine’s leadership gave instructions to publish and legitimize audio recordings with the voices of Joe Biden and Petro Poroshenko. This made it obvious that the story with the tapes was not a game of foreign intelligence agencies but solely a political game of Ukrainian top officials who allowed them to be leaked and encouraged their further dissemination. As a result, the Ukrainian Themis began hastily looking for any excuse to stop his revelations.
After a series of rather frivolous accusations in the summer, which did not stop Dubinsky’s public activities, on November 13, the Ukrainian authorities accused him of participation in a Russian agent network. And just as unexpectedly, the official reason was Dubinsky’s participation in the mentioned press conferences that took place four years earlier.
Late at night on November 13, Dubinsky was sent to a pre-trial detention center. It is noteworthy that on the previous day, he invited his audience to think about how the audio recordings of the conversations, which were conducted through the most secure special communications, could have unexpectedly gone beyond the Presidential Office and eventually reached one of the investigators of corruption in Ukraine, which turned out to be MP Andriy Derkach (who was not afraid to publicize them later).
Dubinsky also suggested to pay attention to the fact that such a leak took place during Zelensky’s presidency, just at the moment when he wanted to settle scores with Petro Poroshenko.
In Ukraine, they say that Dubinsky’s unwillingness to “keep quiet” coincided with the release of fresh presidential ratings in the U.S. (unfavorable for Biden) and the appearance of new accusations against the U.S. president (accounts of receiving funds and summoning his son and brother to the Oversight Committee), which clearly worsened the mood of the Ukrainian authorities.
Moreover, the emergence of rumors that Oleksandr Dubinsky, as well as Andriy Derkach, Andriy Telizhenko, and Viktor Shokin, might be invited to Joe Biden’s impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives could provoke another attack on Dubinsky.
On December 2, Dubinsky was beaten by unknown persons in the pre-trial detention center. His lawyers are still unable to get an official response from the authorities, and Dubinsky himself was denied a forensic medical examination.
Dubinsky calls these events “revenge of Yermak-Zelensky for the testimony I gave to the NABU about the involvement of them, and a number of other top state officials… in the attempt to legalize the Biden-Poroshenko vote tapes through the creation of a special investigative commission of the parliament…”
He adds: “…I will insist on cross-examination between me and Zelensky, between me and Yermak, Shefir, Kyrylo Tymoshenko. Because these people were present in the Office of the President during the issuance of, in my opinion, illegal and threatening to national security instructions to legitimize the tapes with the voices of Biden and Poroshenko, which were published later by Derkach…”.
Dubinsky’s statements are confirmed from other sources. Journalists recalled that in 2019-2020, part of Zelensky’s entourage supported the idea of launching a corruption investigation with Hunter Biden (Igor Kolomoisky), and the other part was against (Prosecutor General Ryaboshapka). They also pointed that the Ukrainian authorities took no action against Andriy Derkach, when he made the tapes public in 2020. On the contrary – the “servants of the people” even proposed to create an investigative commission in Parliament with the aim of discrediting Poroshenko. However, Biden’s victory forced Zelensky’s office to hastily abandon its plans, to which Oleksandr Dubinsky became a victim.
The importance of Oleksandr Dubinsky’s statements is extremely high. It was he who confirmed that the “Derkach tapes” are considered in Kyiv and Washington as evidence of exceptional importance, which could disrupt the political careers of both Joe Biden and his Ukrainian protégés.
One need only recall the topics of those conversations – interference in the US presidential election on the side of Hillary Clinton, provocation of criminal prosecution against Paul Manafort, groundless dismissal of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin (who came too close to Biden in the Burisma investigation), Biden’s interest in nationalization of Privatbank. Therefore, the current prosecution of Dubinsky – right after the release of all the defendants in the Burisma case – is just another confirmation of the importance of the “tapes” and other information that Andriy Derkach made public in his time.