Ukraine accused the president-elect’s choice for cabinet of being on the Kremlin’s payroll
Marc Bennetts
November 14, 2024
The Times
Donald Trump’s pick for US national intelligence chief was accused by Ukraine of being on the Kremlin’s payroll after the start of Russia’s invasion. Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who quit the party and endorsed the Republican Trump, claimed that Washington and Nato provoked Russia into launching the biggest war in Europe since 1945. “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/Nato had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of Nato, which would mean US/Nato forces right on Russia’s border,” Gabbard wrote on X on the first day of the Russian invasion in 2022.
Nato has said only that Ukraine will be granted membership of the western military alliance at some point in the future, but has not given a timeline.
Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation alleged that Gabbard had been taking “the Kremlin’s money” to spread disinformation. The centre, which was established by President Zelensky, is part of Ukraine’s national security and defence council in Kyiv. It did not provide evidence for its claim.
Its allegation, which was published online in 2022, appears to have been deleted by the centre immediately after Trump announced Gabbard as his new US intelligence chief. The claim could threaten relations between Kyiv and Washington if Gabbard is confirmed for the post by the Senate.
The Kremlin demanded before its invasion that Nato remove troops and missile defence systems from countries in eastern Europe that joined the alliance after 1997. It also said its invasion was aimed at preventing the “genocide” of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
However, more people died in the region on the first day of the invasion than from hostilities in the twelve months leading up to the war. President Putin also claimed that Ukraine had no right to exist as an independent state.
Gabbard was also accused of being a threat to Ukraine’s national security and a “victim” of Russian propaganda by Myrotvorets, a nominally independent Ukrainian website that is said to have close ties to the country’s security services.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News presenter, Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd singer, and Svetlana Alexievich, a Nobel prizewinning Belarusian writer, have also been named as enemies of Ukraine by the website, which lists the names of hundreds of thousands of people.
Some identified by Myrotvorets, which translates as “Peacekeeper”, have been assassinated, and it has been referred to as a “kill list”. Among them was Daria Dugina, the daughter of Alexander Dugin, an ultra-nationalist Russian writer, who was killed last year in a car bombing near Moscow. Dugina’s photograph on Myrotvorets was subsequently stamped with the word “Liquidated”.
Following the start of Russia’s invasion, Gabbard urged President Biden, Putin and Zelensky to “embrace the spirit of aloha”, embodying love and peace, and agree that Ukraine would be a neutral state. In separate comments, she accused Washington of seeking regime change in Moscow, a remark that led to her being described by Russian state television as “our girlfriend” and a Russian “agent”.
In another social media post, Gabbard, who served in the US military in Iraq, said there were more than 25 United States-funded “bio labs” in Ukraine that could, if breached, spread deadly pathogens across the world. The comment was seen as promoting a debunked Kremlin claim that biological weapons were secretly being developed in Ukraine with the support of the US.
Gabbard said later that she had not been referring to biological weapons, but to US-funded laboratories in Ukraine that carried out research into disease threats.
Senator Mitt Romney has accused Gabbard of “parroting fake Russian propaganda”, while Hillary Clinton described her as a “Russian asset” during her 2016 presidential campaign. In 2017, while in Congress, Gabbard took a secret trip to Syria to meet President Assad, the Kremlin-backed dictator.
Marc Bennetts has been covering Russia and the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine, for The Times and Sunday Times since 2015. He has reported from all across Russia, from Chechnya to deepest Siberia. He has also reported from Iran and North Korea. Marc is the author of two books: I’m Going to Ruin Their Lives, about Putin’s crackdown on the opposition, and Football Dynamo, about Russian football culture. He is now writing a thriller, set during the polar night in Russia’s far north.