By Eli Clifton and Ben Freeman, The Guardian, 3/1/23

This article was co-published with Responsible Statecraft.

Some of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists are providing their services to Ukraine for free – but at the same time, they are taking in millions in fees from Pentagon contractors who stand to benefit from the country’s war with Russia.

Following Russian president Vladimir Putin’s internationally condemned decision to invade Ukraine there was an outpouring of support to the besieged nation from seemingly every industry in America. But, arguably, one of the most crucial industries coming to Ukraine’s aid has been Washington’s powerful lobbying industry.

The invasion has led some of the lobbying industry’s biggest players to do the unthinkable – lobby for free. While the influence industry may have altruistic reasons for representing Ukraine pro bono, some lobbying firms also have financial incentives for aiding Ukraine: they’ve made millions lobbying for arms manufacturers that could profit from the war.

The surge in pro-bono Ukraine lobbying

US law requires agents of foreign principals who are engaged in political activities to make periodic public disclosures of their relationship under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara). Twenty-five registrants have agreed to represent Ukrainian interests pro bono since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Before the war, just 11 Fara registrants were working on behalf of Ukrainian interests.

“I don’t recall a comparable surge in pro-bono work for any foreign principal,” said David Laufman, a partner at the law firm Wiggin and Dana, who previously oversaw Fara enforcement at the justice department.

Many of these new pro-bono Ukrainian lobbyists are pushing for greater US military support for the Ukrainian military. As one registrant explained in a Fara filing, they intend “to lobby members of the US government to increase US Department of Defense spending on contracts related to equipment and other efforts which will aid the ability of the Ukrainian military to succeed in its fight against the Russian military”.

While many of these pro-bono lobbyists may be doing this work purely out of solidarity with Ukraine, some of the firms working free of charge for Ukraine have an added incentive.

Hogan Lovells

Before winning the speakership in the new Republican Congress, Representative Kevin McCarthy warned that Republicans wouldn’t approve a “blank check” for Ukraine aid once they took power. But, just last week the GOP’s biggest fundraiser agreed to provide pro-bono assistance in loosening Congress’s purse strings when it comes to Ukraine.

On 16 February, former senator Norm Coleman, senior counsel with the law firm Hogan Lovells, filed Fara paperwork revealing that he is pro-bono lobbyist for a foundation controlled by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. Coleman oversaw the raising and spending of over $260m in funds supporting Republican congressional candidates in the 2022 midterm elections.

Coleman, who has extensive experience as a lobbyist for foreign interests via his longstanding role as an agent for Saudi Arabia, was already busy at work for Ukraine. Emails from 4 February disclosed as part of Coleman’s Fara disclosures, revealed him requesting assistance from senators Lindsey Graham and Thom Tillis’s chiefs of staff in hosting an event at the Capitol “to give members of Congress a better understanding of the horrific loss of life and the tragic agony that the people of Ukraine have experienced over the course of the last year as a direct result of Russian war crimes” and “do as much as possible to ensure continued, strong, bipartisan support for the truly heroic efforts that this administration and Congress have made to provide the essential military and economic assistance to Ukraine”.

While Hogan Lovells conducts this work pro bono, two of the firm’s paying clients, Looking Glass Cyber Solutions and HawkEye 360, have extensive defense department contracts and an interest in the conflict in Ukraine.

Looking Glass, which paid Hogan Lovells $200,000 in 2022, holds a five-year contract with the Department of Defense to “to provide tailored cyber threat intelligence data and enhance the mission effectiveness of US military cyber threat analysts and operators” and writes on its website about the role of such threats in Russia’s military strategy.

HawkEye 360, which also paid $200,000 to Hogan Lovells in 2022, similarly is a defense department contractor, specializing in detection and geolocation of radio signals. Their detection network conducted analysis in Ukraine and their website boasts of identifying GPS interference in Ukraine, appearing to be part of Moscow’s “integration of electronic warfare tactics into Russian military operation to further degrade Ukraine’s ability for self-defense”.

Hogan Lovells did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

BGR

BGR Government Affairs (BGR), a lobbying and communications firm, began working pro bono for two Ukrainian interests last May. The contracts are with Vadym Ivchenko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, and Elena Lipkivska Ergul, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

In 2022 BGR made more than half a million dollars lobbying for Pentagon contractors, some of whom are already profiting from the Ukraine war. Raytheon, for example, which paid BGR $240,000 to lobby on its behalf in 2022, according to OpenSecrets, has already been awarded more than $2bn in government contracts related to the Ukraine war.

Indeed, two days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a BGR adviser was publicly calling for increased military aid to Ukraine in the face of Putin’s recognition of the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics as independent states.

“Militarily, the United States and Nato allies need to get far more serious about helping Ukraine defend itself,” wrote Kurt Volker, BGR senior adviser and former US Nato ambassador, in an article published by the Center for European Policy Analysis (Cepa).

His article, “Buckle Up: This is Just the First Step”, was promoted on the BGR website. Cepa did not disclose Volker’s BGR affiliation in the article.

“BGR has no conflict of interest and is proud of its work on behalf of Ukraine and all of its clients,” said BGR’s president, Jeffrey H Birnbaum, in a statement responding to questions about whether their work posed any such conflict.

Mercury

Mercury Public Affairs (Mercury), a lobbying, public affairs and political strategy consultancy, began working pro bono for GloBee International Agency for Regional Development (“GloBee”), a Ukrainian NGO, in mid-March 2022. The firm made headlines for agreeing to work for a Ukrainian client pro bono. The firm’s Fara filing later in the year shows that Mercury’s work consisted of sending just four emails on Globee’s behalf in the first three and a half months of this arrangement.

Mercury, like BGR, was also working on behalf of Pentagon contractors in 2022, while working for a Ukrainian client pro bono. All told, Mercury reported being paid more than $180,000 for lobbying on behalf of Pentagon contractors in 2022.

Mercury’s work for a Ukrainian client is also notable because before the Ukraine war the firm had, for years, been working on behalf of Russian interests. This work included lobbying on behalf of Russia’s Sovcombank, as well as a Russian energy company founded by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska was recently implicated in a scheme to bribe an FBI agent that was investigating him. Mercury dropped both of these Russian clients when the Ukraine war began, but not before earning nearly $3m from these Russian interests in the five years before the firm agreed to work for a Ukrainian client pro bono, according to Fara filings.

Mercury did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Navigators Global

On 29 April 2022 Navigators Global, which describes itself as an “issues management, government relations and strategic communications” firm, registered under Fara to represent the committee on national security, defence and intelligence of the Ukrainian parliament. According to the firm’s Fara filing, they reached out to dozens of key members of Congress on behalf of the Ukrainian parliament – including eight phone calls, texts and emails with McCarthy – and contacted the House and Senate armed services committees two dozen times.

As Navigators Global was doing this pro-bono lobbying of the policymakers in Congress with, arguably, the greatest sway over US military assistance to Ukraine, the firm was also raking in revenue from Pentagon contractors. Specifically, in 2022 Navigators Global made $830,000 working on behalf of defense contractors, according to lobbying data compiled by OpenSecrets. The firms’ lobbying filings also show that their work for these contractors was directed, among other issues, at the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act, the defense policy bill that increased spending on the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative by half a billion dollars.

Navigators Global did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Ogilvy

On 26 August 2022 Ogilvy Group, a giant advertising and public relations agency, registered under Fara to work with the ministry of culture and information policy of Ukraine on the ministry’s Advantage Ukraine Initiative. The initiative’s website describes it as the “Investment initiative of the Government of Ukraine”. The top listed investment option is Ukraine’s defense industry. Ogilvy is joined in this endeavor by fellow Fara registrants Group M and Hill & Knowlton Strategies, as well as the marketing company Hogarth Worldwide, which has not registered under Fara.

While the Ogilvy Group spread “the message that Ukraine is still open for business”, as its statement of work with the ministry explains, Ogilvy Government Relations was lobbying for Pentagon contractors who paid the firm nearly half a million dollars in 2022. These two Ogilvy organizations are technically separate entities. They are owned by the same parent company, WPP.

At least one of the contractors that Ogilvy Government Relations lobbies for, Fluor, would appear to directly benefit from increased US military support for Ukraine and heightened US military presence in Europe more generally. In 2020, the US army’s seventh army training command awarded Fluor with a five-year Logistics Support Services contract, which a Fluor spokesman explained, “positions Fluor for future work with the US European Command and the US Africa Command headquarters located in Germany”. Fluor paid Ogilvy Government Relations $200,000 for lobbying in 2022, according to OpenSecrets.

Ogilvy did not respond to a request to comment on the record.

As the war in Ukraine heads into its second year, US defense spending continues to balloon. Weapons and defense contractors received nearly half – $400bn – of the $858bn in the 2023 defense budget.

“There’s high demand for weapons to transfer to Ukraine and to replenish shrinking US stockpiles … contractors are seeing billions of dollars in Ukraine-related contracts.” said Julia Gledhill, who investigates defense spending at the government watchdog the Project On Government Oversight.

Link here.

By Norman Solomon, Salon, 2/21/23

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, media coverage of the war hasn’t included even the slightest mention of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Yet the war has boosted the chances that ICBMs will set off a global holocaust. Four hundred of them — always on hair-trigger alert — are fully armed with nuclear warheads in underground silos scattered across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming, while Russia deploys about 300 of its own. Former Defense Secretary William Perry has called ICBMs “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world,” warning that “they could even trigger an accidental nuclear war.”

Now, with sky-high tensions between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, the chances of ICBMs starting a nuclear conflagration have increased as American and Russian forces face off in close proximity. Mistaking a false alarm for a nuclear-missile attack becomes more likely amid the stress, fatigue and paranoia that come with protracted warfare and maneuvers.

Because they’re uniquely vulnerable as land-based strategic weapons, with the military precept of “use them or lose them,” ICBMs are set to launch on warning. So, as Perry explained, “If our sensors indicate that enemy missiles are en route to the United States, the president would have to consider launching ICBMs before the enemy missiles could destroy them. Once they are launched, they cannot be recalled. The president would have less than 30 minutes to make that terrible decision.”

But rather than openly discuss — and help to reduce — such dangers, U.S. mass media and officials downplay or deny them with silence. The best scientific research tells us that a nuclear war would result in “nuclear winter,” causing the deaths of about 99 percent of the planet’s human population. While the Ukraine war is heightening the odds that such an unfathomable catastrophe will occur, laptop warriors and mainstream pundits keep voicing enthusiasm for continuing the war indefinitely, with a blank check for U.S. weapons and other shipments to Ukraine that have already topped $110 billion.

Meanwhile, any message in favor of moving toward real diplomacy and de-escalation to end the horrendous conflict in Ukraine is apt to be attacked as capitulation, while the realities of nuclear war and its consequences are papered over with denial. It was, at most, a one-day news story last month when — calling this “a time of unprecedented danger” and “the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been” — the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that its “Doomsday Clock” had moved even closer to apocalyptic midnight: just 90 seconds away, compared to five minutes a decade ago.

A vital way to reduce the chances of nuclear annihilation would be for the United States to dismantle its entire ICBM force. Former ICBM launch officer Bruce G. Blair and Gen. James E. Cartwright, a former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote: “By scrapping the vulnerable land-based missile force, any need for launching on warning disappears.” Objections to the United States shutting down ICBMs on its own (whether or not reciprocated by Russia or China) are akin to insisting that someone standing knee-deep in a pool of gasoline must not unilaterally stop lighting matches.

What is at stake? In an interview after publication of his landmark 2017 book “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner,” Daniel Ellsberg explained that nuclear war “would loft into the stratosphere many millions of tons of soot and black smoke from the burning cities. It wouldn’t be rained out in the stratosphere. It would go around the globe very quickly and reduce sunlight by as much as 70 percent, causing temperatures like that of the Little Ice Age, killing harvests worldwide and starving to death nearly everyone on Earth. It probably wouldn’t cause extinction. We’re so adaptable. Maybe 1 percent of our current population of 7.4 billion could survive, but 98 or 99 percent would not.”

However, to Ukraine war enthusiasts proliferating in U.S. media, such talk is notably unhelpful, if not perniciously helpful to Russia. They have no use for, and seem to prefer silence from, experts who can explain “how a nuclear war would kill you and almost everyone else.” The frequent insinuation is that calls for reducing the chances of nuclear war, while pursuing vigorous diplomacy to end the Ukraine war, are coming from wimps and scaredy-cats who serve Vladimir Putin’s interests.

One corporate-media favorite, Timothy Snyder, churns out bellicose bravado under the guise of solidarity with the Ukrainian people, issuing declarations such as his recent claim that “the most important thing to say about nuclear war” is that “it’s not happening.” Which just goes to show that a prominent Ivy League historian can be as dangerously blinkered as anyone else.

Cheering and bankrolling war from afar is easy enough — in the words of Andrew Bacevich, “our treasure, someone else’s blood.” We can feel righteous about providing rhetorical and tangible support for the killing and dying.

Writing in the New York Times on Sunday, liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof called for NATO to further escalate the Ukraine war. Although he noted the existence of “legitimate concerns that if Putin is backed into a corner, he could lash out at NATO territory or use tactical nuclear weapons,” Kristof quickly added reassurance: “But most analysts think it is unlikely that Putin would use tactical nuclear weapons.”

Get it? “Most” analysts think it’s “unlikely” — so go ahead and roll the dice. Don’t be too concerned about pushing the planet into nuclear war. Don’t be one of the nervous nellies just because escalating warfare will increase the chances of a nuclear conflagration.

To be clear: There is no valid excuse for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its horrific ongoing war on that country. At the same time, continually pouring in vast quantities of higher and higher tech weaponry qualifies as what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.” During his Nobel Peace Prize speech, King declared: “I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction.”

Yahoo News!, 3/16/23

Erik Møse, Chair of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UN HRC) Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, said during a press conference on 16 March that the Commission’s investigation into human rights violations in Ukraine has not found evidence that Russia committed genocide in Ukraine.

Source: Interfax-Ukraine, citing Møse’s statement during a UN HRC press conference

Quote from Møse: “We have not found that there has been genocide within Ukraine.”

Details: Møse said that during the investigation the Commission has noted “that there are some aspects which may raise questions with respect to that crime… [i.e., the crime of genocide – ed.] but we have not yet put in any conclusion here”.

Background: 

• On 7 December 2022, the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations endorsed a resolution recognising Russia’s actions in Ukraine as genocide.
• On 8 December 2022, Canada and the Netherlands filed a joint declaration of intervention in the International Criminal Court case concerning Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Ukraine v. Russian Federation).
• On 4 March 2023, Vsevolod Kniazev, Chairman of Ukraine’s Supreme Court, said that Ukrainian courts would soon begin to hear criminal proceedings on war crimes committed by the Russian Federation concerning the genocide of the Ukrainian People.

***

However, the UN did find evidence of war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine as Democracy Now! reported:

In Geneva, the U.N.-mandated Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said Thursday Russia has committed wide-ranging war crimes in Ukraine, including possible crimes against humanity. Erik Møse is chair of the commission.

Erik Møse: “The commission has concluded that the Russian authorities have committed numerous violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, in addition to a wide range of war crimes, including the war crime of excessive incidental death, injury or damage, willful killings, torture, inhuman treatment, unlawful confinement, rape, as well as unlawful transfer and deportation.”

**

On Friday, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Putin. According to a report from Euronews:

The International Criminal Court says it has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine. 

The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

It also issued a warrant Friday for the arrest for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation on similar allegations.

A Kremlin spokesperson called the arrest warrant “outrageous and unacceptable”, and labeled the ICC’s decisions as “legally void.” 

Oakland Institute, 2/21/23

Download the report: https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/takeover-ukraine-agricultural-land.pdf

-One year into the war, a new report reveals how oligarchs and financial interests are expanding control over Ukraine’s agricultural land with help and financing from Western financial institutions.

-Aid provided to Ukraine in recent years has been tied to a drastic structural adjustment program requiring the creation of a land market through a law that leads to greater concentration of land in the hands of powerful interests.

-Ukraine’s crippling debt is being leveraged by financial institutions to drive post-war reconstruction towards further privatization and liberalization in several sectors, including agriculture.

-Ukrainian civil society, academics, and farmers are demanding the suspension of the land law and of all land transactions; and calling for an agricultural model no longer dominated by oligarchy and corruption.

Oakland, CA — One year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a new report from the Oakland Institute, War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land, exposes the financial interests and the dynamics at play leading to further concentration of land and finance.

“Despite being at the center of news cycle and international policy, little attention has gone to the core of the conflict — who controls the agricultural land in the country known as the breadbasket of Europe. Answer to this question is paramount to understanding the major stakes in the war,” said Frédéric Mousseau, Oakland Institute’s Policy Director and co-author of the report.

The total amount of land controlled by oligarchs, corrupt individuals, and large agribusinesses is over nine million hectares — exceeding 28 percent of Ukraine’s arable land. The largest landholders are a mix of Ukrainian oligarchs and foreign interests — mostly European and North American as well as the sovereign fund of Saudi Arabia. Prominent US pension funds, foundations, and university endowments are invested through NCH Capital, a US-based private equity fund.

Several agribusinesses, still largely controlled by oligarchs, have opened up to Western banks and investment funds — including prominent ones such as Kopernik, BNP, or Vanguard — who now control part of their shares. Most of the large landholders are substantially indebted to Western funds and institutions, notably the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank.

Western financing to Ukraine in recent years has been tied to a drastic structural adjustment program that has required austerity and privatization measures, including the creation of a land market for the sale of agricultural land. President Zelenskyy put the land reform into law in 2020 against the will of the vast majority of the population who feared it would exacerbate corruption and reinforce control by powerful interests in the agricultural sector. Findings of the report concur with these concerns. While large landholders are securing massive financing from Western financial institutions, Ukrainian farmers — essential for ensuring domestic food supply — receive virtually no support. With the land market in place, amidst high economic stress and war, this difference of treatment will lead to more land consolidation by large agribusinesses.

The report also sounds the alarm that Ukraine’s crippling debt is being used as a leverage by the financial institutions to drive post-war reconstruction towards further privatization and liberalization reforms in several sectors, including agriculture.

“This is a lose-lose situation for Ukrainians. While they are dying to defend their land, financial institutions are insidiously supporting the consolidation of farmland by oligarchs and Western financial interests. At a time when the country faces the horrors of the war, the government and Western institutions must listen to the calls made by the Ukrainian civil society, academics, and farmers to suspend the land law and all land transactions. The necessity to prioritize an agricultural model no longer dominated by oligarchy and corruption, where land and resources are controlled by and benefit all Ukrainians, is the way forward for post war reconstruction,” Mousseau concluded.