OPINION:
A version of this story appeared in the Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each Wednesday.
The United States has given about $77 billion in aid to Ukraine so far. That aid falls into several categories: humanitarian aid ($4 billion), financial aid ($26 billion) and weapons, training and logistics ($47 billion). President Biden has asked Congress to approve an additional $24 billion when it returns in September.
There is significant pressure from Republicans to limit or terminate that aid. In July, 70 House Republicans voted to end all aid to Ukraine. That measure was defeated, but considerable sentiment — in Congress and among the public — for ending that aid remains.
Among the principal contenders for the Republican nomination in 2024, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is tepidly opposed to it, and former President Donald Trump has been on both sides of the issue. On different occasions, Mr. Trump has said that he would send everything that Ukraine needs and that he would pause aid to Ukraine. Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is strongly against further aid.
Mr. Biden has promised to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. He had been satisfied with the stalemate that had existed for nearly a year. Now, with the Ukrainian counteroffensive going all too slowly, Mr. Biden is eager to avoid being blamed for its possible failure.
In a cover-your-backside reaction to Republican opposition, the Biden administration is leaking its dissatisfaction with Ukraine’s months-old counteroffensive. The leaks quarrel with Ukrainian strategy, saying that the Ukrainians should not be trying to penetrate Russian defenses at several points but should instead concentrate on one breakthrough. But the White House must have been briefed on — and agreed with — the Ukrainian strategy before the counteroffensive began.
The reliably conservative Heritage Foundation has published a video saying that there should be no further aid until Mr. Biden comes up with a plan to end the war in Ukraine. Having a public strategy to end the war would only enable the Russians to counter it.
So what can we do?
It’s essential to find out how much of our aid to Ukraine has been diverted to corrupt purposes. To do that, as this column has often advocated, there should be a special inspector general appointed and given the same powers to investigate that the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, known as the SIGAR, had.
It could then perform civil and criminal investigations to determine how much of U.S. aid to Ukraine is properly spent, how much is raked off by corruption, and by whom. It could recommend the prosecution of the perpetrators.
There should be no further aid to Ukraine approved by Congress unless and until that new IG is established. It’s worth a government shutdown to achieve this.
Congress created the SIGAR in the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act. It can, and should, create a similar special inspector general for Ukrainian aid and create a short deadline for the appointment of the new IG.
The 2024 NDAA has already been enacted, but the defense appropriations bill will be rolled into a continuing resolution next month. That resolution should be the vehicle that House Republicans insist on providing for the creation of the new IG.
Senate Democrats will certainly oppose and do their best to kill any such effort. They fear what a new IG would find in examining possible Ukraine corruption, both past and present.
Former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin has accused both Mr. Biden and his son Hunter of taking bribes that led to Mr. Shokin’s firing in 2016 while he was investigating Burisma Holdings. In January 2018, Mr. Biden bragged — on video — that as vice president, he had threatened then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that he would withhold $1 billion in loans if Mr. Shokin weren’t fired. Mr. Biden went on to brag that the threat worked.
A growing mountain of evidence suggests that both Bidens were bribed. According to the now famous FBI Form 1023, Burisma Holdings owner Mykola Zlochevsky told a trusted FBI informant in 2016 that “it cost 5 [million dollars] to pay one Biden, and 5 [million dollars] to another Biden.”
Mr. Zlochevsky allegedly has 17 recordings of telephone conversations with the Bidens, in at least two of which Mr. Biden participated.
The new IG could obtain those recordings and any other evidence of corruption — past and present — that our $77 billion of aid to Ukraine has funded. It is possible that the IG could discover that some of those funds have been siphoned off to provide kickbacks to the president, his son Hunter, or the web of companies that becloud Hunter’s businesses.
Ukraine, although it has not yet received the M-1 tanks and F-16 fighter-bombers Mr. Biden has promised, is fighting hard. Its counteroffensive, though painfully slow, has not yet failed. U.S. aid to Ukraine should not be stopped, but we need to have adequate protection against corruption, which a new SIGAR-like IG could provide.
There is no reason — other than the Democrats’ interest in protecting the Bidens — not to establish a special inspector general to investigate the corruption of our aid to Ukraine. House and Senate Republicans need to get off their duffs and insist that a new inspector general be established for just that purpose.
• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.