** What also is unknown is that Zelensky has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.”

“Zelensky’s been buying discount diesel from the Russians,” one knowledgeable American intelligence official told me. “And who’s paying for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making millions” on it.

Many government ministries in Kiev have been literally “competing,” I was told, to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks. **

–A brief clip from the very useful Substack of Seymour Hersh

There are three eminent American journalists working today in a class of their own, and their names are Taibbi, Hersh, and Greenwald.

There’s a fourth name right up there, Assange, but he’s been in jail and quasi-jail for a long, long time. He’s an Aussie.

There’s the Grayzone and a group that now includes Lee Fang in an up-and-coming tier. There are expert guests like Scott Ritter and Douglas MacGregor and Robert Barnes. There are good YouTuber hosts like Sabrina Salvati and the Due Dissidence guys.

Then there’s everyone else, routinely spewing dreck and overt lies from within the corporate communication monopoly and various arguably state-funded outlets like the BBC and NPR.

If you don’t feel like reading Hersh today, the heart of the story, unattributed at least in this clip, was covered in characteristically vibrant fashion by one James Dore.