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(down from $3bn in the previous period) but from around 2023 this could drop to nothing and Ukraine will have to scale back its vast pipeline network and refocus on its domestic supplies only.
In a press briefing posted on state.gov, a State Department spokesperson stated that the impetus for the move was to shore up ties with Germany, and that “all diplomatic tools” would still be used to prevent the completion of the pipeline.
Finally, Zelenskiy's campaign against the oligarchs continued after he kicked it off with his oligarch speech in March. So far the main target has been Viktor Medvedchuk, the Ukrainian opposition leader who is a close friend of Vladimir Putin. He is now under house arrest and facing a trial on treason charges that are also highly politically motivated as Medvedchuk is also Zelenskiy leading political rival and head of a legitimate opposition party in the Rada.
Oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky is also under pressure in the US which imposed sanctions on him earlier this year. Kolomoisky is also being sued by the now state-owned PrivatBank in London and Cyprus and those cases are progressing in favour of the state, but will take several years to produce results.
And Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man, has also come into the government’s crosshairs with proposals to nix cheap tariffs and tax exemptions that his System Capital Management (SCM) holding has benefited form, although in Akhmetov’s case the attack, such as it is, is limited to ending some of the advantageous rent seeking schemes and has no political element to it. A list designating 13 people as “oligarchs'' has been drawn up and Zelenskiy has promised new legislation that will codify his campaign. Ironically it seems that Zelenskiy is going through his oligarch moment in the same way that Russian President Vladimir Putin held his famous “oligarch meeting” in 2001 where he told them: keep what you have, but stop the stealing. The difference is Ukraine’s oligarchs have had an extra two decades to entrench themselves and the Ukrainian state is far weaker than the Russian state was at the time. Putin came to the president’s office from running the FSB where he had built a powerbase. Zelenskiy comes to his office from a TV studio and doesn't have the same powerbase to counter influential and deep-pocketed oligarchs.
7 UKRAINE Country Report XXXX 2018 www.intellinews.com