- Three Ukrainian men have been charged with treason in their home country.
- Prosecutors say the men were being paid off by Russian agents.
- The trio helped Rudy Giuliani and the Trump campaign investigate Hunter Biden for the 2020 election.
Three Ukrainian men — including a sitting politician — helped the Trump campaign investigate Hunter Biden before the 2020 election.
They were also working with Russian spies, Ukrainian prosecutors now allege.
Oleksandr Dubinsky, a current MP; ex-lawmaker Andriy Derkach; and former prosecutor Kostyantyn Kulyk are all facing accusations of treason, the BBC reported.
Prosecutors said the trio worked with Russian Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev, the leader of Putin’s military intelligence unit GRU, per the BBC.
In exchange for working on “information subversive activities” around the 2020 US election, the men were paid $10 million, prosecutors said, according to the BBC.
The men also took Russia’s marching orders, working to “discredit the image of Ukraine in the international arena in order to worsen diplomatic relations with the United States and complicate Ukraine’s accession to the European Union and NATO,” the State Investigative Bureau said in a statement, according to Reuters.
Dubinksy denied the allegations to Reuters, saying the charges were “based on the absolute lies of top state officials.”
In 2021, Dubinsky was kicked out of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s political party, Servant of the People, when he was sanctioned by the US for political interference, per the New York Times.
Kulyk also has a history with the law — in 2016, he was indicted in Ukraine on an “illegal enrichment” charge, per the Times. In addition to being accused of living outside his salary’s means, he owned a car that was bought by a Russian military commander’s father for him.
He also accused then-presidential candidate Joe Biden of stalling corruption accusations into his son’s behavior at the gas company he served on the board of, Burisma Holdings, per the Times.
Derkach, who served in the Ukrainian parliament for seven terms, was accused of trying to help Giuliani find discrediting information about Joe Biden.
The prosecution effort marks another key consequence of Trump’s years-long quest to attack Hunter Biden — and, as a result, discredit his father.
In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Trump relentlessly attacked Hunter Biden, baselessly accusing him of making “millions of dollars from China” and claiming he was corrupt, per the Times.
Additionally, Trump’s call to Zelenskyy asking for help investigating Hunter Biden and other Democrats was a key factor in his first impeachment in 2019.
