Ukraine indicts 3 linked to Biden probe
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian police and prosecutors have accused two politicians and a former prosecutor of treason, saying they colluded with a Russian intelligence agency in aiding an effort by Rudy Giuliani several years ago to tie the Biden family to corruption in Ukraine.
Those accused include Kostyantyn Kulyk, a former Ukrainian deputy prosecutor general who had drafted a memo in 2019 suggesting that Ukraine investigate Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, for his role serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
Also implicated were a current member of Ukraine’s parliament, Oleksandr Dubinsky, and a former member, Andrii Derkach, who had publicly advocated for an investigation in Ukraine into Hunter Biden. They had also promoted a spurious theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that had meddled in the 2016 presidential election in the United States.
The three were indicted on charges of treason and belonging to a criminal organization. The charges refer to “information-subversive activities” and focus on actions in 2019 before the U.S. presidential election. They do not say if or when the activity stopped.
In the run-up to the 2020 election in the United States, Giuliani and later President Donald Trump encouraged Ukrainian officials to follow up on the allegations against Hunter Biden. The effort included a phone call by Trump to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in July 2019 urging an investigation into the Bidens when the Trump administration was withholding military aid for the Ukrainian army.
Trump and Giuliani denied that there was anything inappropriate about their contact with Ukrainian officials, with Trump describing his phone call to Zelenskyy as “perfect.” The administration said military aid to Ukraine was withheld over concerns about corruption in the Ukrainian government.
The events led to Trump’s first impeachment in the House of Representatives. He was acquitted in the Senate.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian media suggested that the indictments also had a political component for Zelenskyy: They were intended to send a signal to Biden now, as his administration is pressing Congress for military assistance to Ukraine, that Kyiv will root out accused Russian agents, including those who had promoted accusations against his family.
In statements released Monday, Ukrainian police and the country’s domestic intelligence agency said all three men were members of a spy network established inside the Ukrainian government and handled by Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU.
The intelligence agency’s statement said the Russians paid members of the group $10 million. An aide to Derkach, Ihor Kolesnikov, was detained earlier and convicted on treason charges.
Two members of the group, Derkach and Kulyk, fled Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the statement said. Dubinsky was remanded to pretrial detention in a Ukrainian jail Tuesday.
Dubinsky, in a statement posted on the social networking site Telegram, said the prosecutors had “not presented one fact” to support the accusations and that the charges were retribution for criticizing Zelenskyy’s government in his role as a member of parliament. He said he testified a year and a half ago as a witness in a treason investigation of Derkach but at the time he had not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Dubinsky was expelled from Zelenskyy’s political party, Servant of the People, in 2021 after the United States sanctioned him for meddling in the American political process.
The Ukrainian intelligence agency’s statement said Kulyk had used his position in the prosecutor general’s office to promote investigations that worked “in favor of the Kremlin,” without specifying any cases.