Ukraine is suing officials linked to efforts to investigate the Bidens
Ukrainian police and prosecutors have charged two politicians and a former prosecutor with treason and say they conspired with a Russian intelligence agency in aiding an effort by Rudolph W. Giuliani several years ago to link the Biden family to corruption in Ukraine.
The suspects include Kostyantyn Kulyk, a former Ukrainian deputy attorney general who drafted a memo in 2019 suggesting that Ukraine investigate Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, over his role on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
Also involved were a current member of the Ukrainian parliament, Oleksandr Dubinsky, and a former member, Andriy Derkach, who had publicly called for an investigation in Ukraine into Hunter Biden. They had also promoted a false theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that had interfered in the 2016 presidential election in the United States.
The three were charged with treason and membership of a criminal organization. The charges relate to ‘information subversive activities’ and focus on actions in 2019 before the US presidential elections. They do not say if or when the activity stopped.
In the run-up to the 2020 election in the United States, Mr. Giuliani and later former President Donald J. Trump had encouraged Ukrainian officials to follow up on the allegations against Hunter Biden. The effort included a call from Mr. Trump to President Volodymyr Zelensky in July 2019 urging an investigation into the Bidens, at a time when the Trump administration was withholding military aid to the Ukrainian military.
Critics say the push to investigate the Bidens was politically motivated, aimed at damaging the elder Mr. Biden’s chances against Mr. Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Mr Trump and Mr Giuliani denied there was anything inappropriate about their contact with Ukrainian officials, with Mr Trump describing his call to Mr Zelensky as “perfect”. The government said military aid to Ukraine was being withheld due to concerns about corruption within the Ukrainian government.
The events led to Trump’s first impeachment in the House of Representatives. He was acquitted in the Senate.
Ukrainian media suggested on Tuesday that the charges also had a political component against Mr Zelenskiy: that they were intended to send a signal to Mr Biden, as his administration presses Congress for military aid to Ukraine, that Kiev will eradicate it . accused Russian agents, including those who had promoted accusations against his family.
In statements released Monday, Ukrainian police and the country’s domestic intelligence service said all three men were members of a spy network established within the Ukrainian government and operated by Russia’s military intelligence service known as the GRU.
The According to the intelligence statement, the Russians paid the group’s members $10 million. An aide to Mr. Derkach, Ihor Kolesnikov, was previously arrested and convicted on charges of treason.
Two members of the group, Mr Derkach and Mr Kulyk, fled Ukraine after Russia’s large-scale invasion in 2022, the statement said. Mr. Dubinsky was remanded in a Ukrainian prison on Tuesday.
Mr. Dubinsky said in a statement on the social networking site Telegram that prosecutors had “not presented any facts” to support the charges, and that the charges were in retaliation for criticizing Mr. Zelensky’s government in his role as a member from the government. Parliament. He said he had testified as a witness in a treason investigation against Mr. Derkach a year and a half ago, but had not been accused of any wrongdoing at the time.
Mr. Dubinsky was expelled from Mr. Zelensky’s political party, Servant of the People, in 2021 after the United States sanctioned him for interfering in the American political process.
The Ukrainian intelligence statement said that Mr. Kulyk had used his position in the attorney general’s office to promote investigations that worked “in the Kremlin’s favor,” without specifying any cases.
In late 2018, Mr. Kulyk compiled a seven-page dossier alleging that Ukrainian prosecutors had evidence that “could testify to the commission of corrupt actions aimed at personal unlawful enrichment by former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden,” according to a copy. leaked by a Ukrainian blogger.
The dossier suggested that Mr. Biden, when he was vice president, had tried to quash a corruption investigation into the natural gas company Burisma Holdings, where his son sat on the board. Mr. Kulyk’s former colleagues at the prosecutor’s office confirmed that he wrote the document, which helped spark an effort by Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Mr. Giuliani, and other supporters to push for a research in Ukraine.
In a phone call with Mr. Zelensky that became central to the impeachment trial, Mr. Trump had asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Mr. Biden’s alleged conflicts of interest when he was vice president, according to White House notes to the call. Trump denied linking military aid to Ukraine to the Biden family investigation.
Allegations of corruption and ties to Russia had dogged Mr. Kulyk for years in the Ukrainian media and among anti-corruption watchdog groups before he compiled the dossier.
In 2016, he was indicted in Ukraine on charges of illegal enrichment for owning apartments and cars that appeared to be beyond his modest official salary. One car, a Toyota Land Cruiser, was purchased by the father of a military commander who fought on the Russian side in the war in eastern Ukraine.