U.S. officials routinely portray Ukraine as a democratic ally and the symbol of an existential fight between freedom and authoritarianism. That simplistic portrayal has intensified since Russia launched its large-scale attack in February 2022. The reality is that Ukraine is a corrupt authoritarian state similar to Russia. Not only does Volodymyr Zelensky’s government not respect civil liberties at home, but also it has tried to impinge on such liberties in the United States.
On three separate occasions since the Russia-Ukraine war began, Kyiv published an “enemies list” of critics with implicitly threatening overtones. Zelensky and his colleagues clearly have no tolerance for critics, domestic or foreign. Their willingness to target and attempt to intimidate foreign critics became abundantly clear in the summer of 2022, when Zelensky’s government’s Center for Countering Disinformation (partly funded by U.S. taxpayers) published a “blacklist” of such opponents. Numerous prominent Americans were on that list including University of Chicago professor (and the dean of foreign policy realists) John Mearsheimer, journalist Tucker Carlson, former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and Cato Institute Senior Fellow Doug Bandow. The ominous, threatening nature of the blacklist became even clearer later in 2022, when the CCD issued a revised roster (including addresses) of the top 35 targets. That narrower, high-priority list denounced those critics as “disinformation terrorists” and “war criminals.” Such conduct definitely is not that of a liberal democracy. Yet official Washington and its media echo chamber continue to ignore Kyiv’s contempt for democratic norms.
The latest attack takes the form of a report “Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the U.S. impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it.” That report’s author was the U.S. government-supported Ukraine’s “Data Journalism Agency, (TEXTY),” which is listed as an “implementing partner” of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services/TPAS Project.
A devastating analysis by the Spectator’s Ella Johnson noted that the new report listed Americans who were accused of nothing more than “impeding aid to Ukraine.” There were 391 individuals and 76 organizations on the list, including members of the conservative media and even several members of Congress.
The title of the report “oversells the product: it is a substantively thin piece, largely an excuse to smear a large group of Americans who have been skeptical of aid to Ukraine in one form or another,” Senator J.D. Vance and Representative Matt Gaetz wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “The accusations are laughable on their face,” Nation journalist James Carden, who is included on the list, told the Spectator. “And they should be treated with absolute contempt.
The Spectator reached out to several other people named on Ukraine’s TEXTY site. “All I can say is that I am proud to be on the list,” said Dr. Sumatra Maitra, senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America. “It’s clarifying to see the State Department-funded Ukrainian NGO’s showing their true colors and creating blacklists, demonstrating how utterly Soviet they still are.”
Republican representative Jim Banks of Indiana sent a letter to his colleagues on the House Appropriations Committee asking them to end U.S. support to TEXTY. In late June, the committee passed a resolution effectively defunding it, according to Fox News.
Let’s see. The State Department sends money to a Ukrainian NGO so that NGO can call out conservatives and “communists” for blocking aid to Ukraine and being “in the pocket of the Kremlin.” Carden charges, with good reason, that the whole debacle is a prime example of political duplicity. Unfortunately, the latest incident will likely not be the last.
Washington’s collaboration with Ukraine’s propaganda campaign is certain to continue, aided and abetted by a shamelessly pro-war news media. Will the American people wake up and realize that they’ve been deceived yet again about a dubious U.S. overseas intervention on behalf of an even more dubious foreign client?
It is sad that the Biden administration continues to falsely portray the corrupt, repressive Ukrainians as democratic, but it is nothing short of disgraceful to fund Kyiv’s ideological smears directed against Americans in American publications. Channeling such aid through supposedly private Ukrainian NGOs does not relieve the Ukrainian government, the Biden administration, or Ukraine’s congressional backers of their guilt.
Ted Galen Carpenter, Senior Fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, is the author of 13 books and more than 1,300 articles on international affairs. Dr. Carpenter held various senior policy positions during a 37-year career at the Cato institute. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).
