t the specific request of then-Vice President Joe Biden, the CIA buried an embarrassing intelligence report detailing the poor view the Ukrainian government took of his diplomatic efforts and the business dealings of his own family in that country.
Biden had traveled to Kyiv in December 2015, ostensibly to meet with leaders of that fledgling democracy and to deliver a warning against “the cancer of corruption.” And during an address to the Ukrainian parliament, he did condemn the “pervasive poison of cronyism, corruption, and kleptocracy.”
But behind the scenes, Ukrainian officials expressed “bewilderment and disappointment” that the vice president had crossed the Atlantic “almost exclusively to deliver a generic speech.” Officials close to then-President Petro Poroshenko had hoped for guidance “in support of or against specific officials within the Ukrainian government.” They discovered instead that Biden “had no intention of discussing substantive matters.”
After Biden returned stateside, members of the Poroshenko administration “privately mused” at how American media treated “the alleged ties” of his family “to corrupt business practices in Ukraine.” It was, in their minds, “evidence of a double standard within the United States Government towards matters of corruption and political power.”
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