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Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote in his article that Russia is "open to dialogue with Ukraine and ready to discuss the most complex issues," but in reality, this is not the case.

According to an Ukrinform correspondent, Charg d'Affaires, a.i. Courtney Austrian at the U.S. Mission to the OSCE said this at a meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council.

"President Putin wrote Russia was 'open to dialogue with Ukraine and ready to discuss the most complex issues.' We regret Mr. Putin's alleged promise of open dialogue has yet to be demonstrated in reality," she said, commenting on Putin's article about Ukraine.

According to Austrian, what everyone has witnessed is "Russian obstructionism in the Trilateral Contact Group" and "its lack of transparency and deliberate peddling of disinformation at international bodies, including the OSCE."

In general, Putin's article on Ukraine contains "untruthful characterizations and assertions, calculated to provoke" and seeks "to undermine Ukraine's sovereignty and dismiss the right of the Ukrainian people to chart their own political future," Austrian said.

She also said that last week the Russian ambassador again tried to obfuscate his nation's responsibility in the conflict by claiming Ukraine has not adhered to the Minsk agreements. "He failed to recall that seven years ago in Minsk, President Putin promised the war would end, all troops would be withdrawn, and all prisoners would be released. Russia has so far not fulfilled its promise, and we continue to call on Russia to end the war it started in eastern Ukraine," Austrian said.

Commenting on Putin's piece that Russia "respect[s] the Ukrainians' desire to see their country free, safe, and prosperous," Austrian said that Putin was well aware "that aspiration cannot be fully realized as long as Russia-led forces continue to wreak havoc in the Donbas and occupy Crimea." "Indeed, the whole aim of the Kremlin's aggression in Ukraine is thwarting Ukraine's aspirations," the U.S. diplomat said.

She added that if Russia wishes to be seen as a partner, "Russia needs to act responsibly and fulfill its promises." "Under the Minsk agreements Russia committed to recalling its forces and equipment from eastern Ukraine," she said.

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Putin says open to dialogue with Ukraine, but in reality this is not the case U.S. Mission to OSCE - Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news

Ukraine took a potential landmark step toward judicial reform in mid-July when members of parliament adopted two laws that should establish credible foundations for the reboot of the countrys legal system. On July 13, the Ukrainian parliament backed legislation to relaunch the deeply compromised High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ) and the High Council of Justice (HCJ). Crucially, independent international experts will participate in the envisaged future selection process.

For the past seven years, Ukraines flawed judicial system has been the Achilles heel of the countrys reform efforts. Since the 2014 Euro-Maidan revolution, Ukraine has achieved progress in a range of reform areas including government procurement, corporate governance, banking industry transparency and the fight against corruption.

However, the dysfunctional Ukrainian court system has hung over this entire reform process like a sword of Damocles, threatening to reverse anti-corruption gains and undermine Ukraines Euro-Atlantic aspirations.

In addition to damaging the countrys reform efforts, this has resulted in significant economic costs. Ukraines inability to provide genuine rule of law reform has served to stunt GDP growth and scare away potential international investors who might otherwise have entered the Ukrainian market.

Ukraines judiciary is governed by two bodies. The HCJ is the main body in the system of judicial governance of Ukraine. It has full control over the appointment and dismissal of Ukrainian judges. Key responsibilities include protecting judges from unlawful interference by other agencies and holding judges accountable for professional misconduct, including the granting of permission to pursue criminal prosecutions against individual judges.

The HQCJ is often referred to as the human resources department for the Ukrainian judiciary. It is responsible for the selection of future judges and it vets current judges who do not meet professionalism and integrity criteria during re-attestation processes.Both of these bodies have long been seen as under the sway of existing interest groups within the judiciary. Instead of cleansing the judiciary of tainted judges, they stand accused of providing cover for them and successfully blocking all prior attempts to overhaul the Ukrainian court system.

Between 2014 and 2019, the HCJ and the HQCJ stand accused of securing the appointment of politically controlled and dependent judges to Ukraines new Supreme Court. Critics also say the two bodies failed to remove judges who persecuted protesters during the Euro-Maidan, and did not act against judges caught making false statements in their asset declarations. Meanwhile, the HCJ was involved in efforts to cover up for tainted judges and silence whistleblowers using disciplinary sanctions.

By 2019, it had become painfully clear that reforming the judiciary without changing the approach to composing these vital judicial governance bodies was impossible. The idea of a new approach was supported by reformers within government, civil society experts and Ukraines international partners. During his successful presidential election campaign in spring 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy also promised comprehensive reform of judicial governance.

Despite the fact that the recently adopted approach goes beyond established European recommendations on the judiciary, the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe positively evaluated the proposed international engagement in the cleansing of Ukraines judicial governance bodies.

These reforms are in line with the expectations of the International Monetary Fund, which made it one of the key conditionalities for their ongoing program with Ukraine. The reboot also features in the EU-Ukraine macro-financial assistance agreement, while the G-7 Ambassadors Reform Support Group included it in its roadmap for strengthening the rule of law in Ukraine.

After a number of judicial reform false starts, the engagement of foreign professionals in the selection of members of Ukraines judicial governance bodies has led many to take the recently adopted reforms particularly seriously. A similar approach has previously been used during the competition to recruit members of Ukraines High Anticorruption Court and proved effective.

For the HQCJ, three foreign experts will be part of a six-member selection panel, which will shortlist 32 candidates for 16 HQCJ offices. For the HCJ, three foreign experts will be part of a six-member Ethics Council, which will assess HCJ candidates on the basis of integrity and shortlist the best candidates. The Ethics Council will also conduct a one-time integrity screening of current HCJ members and request the appointing bodies to fire or reconfirm the HCJ members in question.

Ukraine is now in the early stages of what promises to be one of the most decisive battles for the historic transformation of the country. The new laws adopted in July are only the first step in a necessarily long and complex journey toward establishing genuine rule of law in Ukraine.

Much still has to be done in order to fully and transparently implement the adopted laws. Far too often in Ukraines reform story, legislation that looks good on paper has fallen flat when it comes to implementation. Moreover, it is also important to note that the laws themselves are not ideal and contain some flaws that opponents of reform will likely seek to exploit.

Despite these concerns, there is good cause for optimism. The recent adoption of these new laws is arguably the closest Ukraine has been to genuine judicial reform since the country renewed its independence in 1991. As Ukrainians prepare to celebrate the 30th anniversary of statehood on August 24, this reform progress is also worth toasting.

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication of the Atlantic Council that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraines politics, economy, civil society, and culture. The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff or its supporters.

The article above is reprinted from UkraineAlert with the permission of its editor. It was first published online at https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-takes-a-big-step-towards-judicial-reform/.

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Ukraine takes a big step toward judicial reform - The Ukrainian Weekly

The 5,000-year-old skeleton of a man with the fingers of a pianist has sparked a nationwide controversy in Ukraine over heritage, antisemitism and national identity.

The body was the last of 27 sets of human remains discovered this summer by Ukrainian archaeologists in a dig south of the city of Dnipro. They had been exhuming an ancient burial mound threatened by the encroachment of a housing development.

He is a mystery, explained Professor Dmytro Teslenko, 49, head archaeologist for the region, of the ancient man whose discovery has prompted a modern-day furore that began when activists denounced the dig as an assault on Ukrainian heritage.

At the base of a burial mound excavated in Ukraine was the 5,000-year-old skeleton of a mystery man in his thirties with the fingers of a pianist

YAROSLAV YAROSHENKO

The burial mound was originally made just for him, probably between 3,400-3,200BC, Teslenko continued. Yet he had not the build

Continued here:
Row over ancient tombs gets to the heart of modern Ukraine - The Times

Political conspiracy theory

The BidenUkraine conspiracy theory is a series of unevidenced claims centered on the false allegation that while Joe Biden was vice president of the United States, he engaged in corrupt activities relating to the employment of his son Hunter Biden by the Ukrainian gas company Burisma.[1] They were spread primarily in an attempt to damage Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.[2] United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that proxies of Russian intelligence promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about the Bidens "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration."[3] The New York Times reported in May 2021 that a federal criminal investigation was examining a possible role by current and former Ukrainian officials, as well as former Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who was the subject of a separate federal investigation.[4]

The conspiracy theory alleges that then-Vice President Biden withheld loan guarantees to pressure Ukraine into firing a prosecutor to prevent a corruption investigation into Burisma and to protect his son. Although the United States did withhold government aid to pressure Ukraine into removing the prosecutor,[5] this was the official and bipartisan policy of the federal government of the United States, which, along with the European Union, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, believed the prosecutor to be corrupt and ineffective, and too lenient in investigating companies and oligarchs, including Burisma and its owner.[6][7]

In October 2020, during the last weeks of the presidential election, the New York Post published an article, with the involvement of Donald Trump's personal attorney Giuliani and former chief strategist Steve Bannon, about a found laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden which contained an email, whose authenticity has never been verified, that appeared to reference a meeting between Joe Biden and a Burisma executive in 2015.[5] The article's veracity was initially strongly questioned by most mainstream media outlets, analysts and intelligence officials, and no evidence validating the email has emerged.[8][9][10] Hunter Biden has stated that he is unsure whether the laptop was his.[11]

Hunter Biden is a lawyer whose career previously included a period as an executive vice-president at MBNA and three years at the United States Department of Commerce. He then worked as a lobbyist until 2006, when George W. Bush appointed him to the board of directors of Amtrak. Hunter Biden resigned from Amtrak in February 2009, shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama, when his father Joe Biden became vice-president. He resumed lobbying, and was counsel at the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, until the Ukrainian oil and gas firm Burisma Holdings hired him in April 2014.[12] As Hunter Biden had no prior experience in Ukraine or the energy sector, some viewed this as a likely attempt to buy influence via his father. Hunter Biden's employment was described by commentators as creating a conflict of interest, and advisors to the Obama administration considered the situation awkward.[13]

The conspiracy theory holds that Burisma used Hunter Biden's position to influence then-vice president Joe Biden, who subsequently conditioned the release of $1billion in US government aid on a requirement that Ukraine fire its prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin (who had held this post from February 2015[14] until March 2016[15]), to prevent the company from being investigated for corruption. This narrative is inconsistent with contemporaneous reports and has repeatedly been found to be false.[1] No evidence has been found showing Hunter Biden engaged in influence peddling with his father.[16] While Vice President Biden did withhold $1billion in government aid to Ukraine in 2015, this was done as part of a wider American and international policy to induce Ukraine to remove Shokin, not to prevent an investigation into Burisma. Shokin, viewed by the American government as both corrupt and ineffective, had failed to launch a serious investigation into the affairs of the country's corrupt oligarchs, including Burisma's founder Mykola Zlochevsky.[5] The Ukrainian prosecutor's office continued to examine Burisma under Shokin's successor, Yuriy Lutsenko, but Lutsenko clarified that the cause of concern was a transaction unrelated to Hunter Biden and stated that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by either Hunter or Joe Biden.[13][17]

Shokin was appointed by, and loyal to, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. Representatives of the EU and the United States pressed Poroshenko for his removal[18] as did the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.[19][20] An overwhelming majority vote in the Ukrainian Parliament in March 2016 led to Shokin's removal from office[21] after an investigation into extortion of another company led to associates who were found in possession of diamonds, cash and other valuables[22] as well as documents and passports belonging to Shokin.[23]

Reports of a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, where then-President Trump demanded an investigation of Burisma and Hunter Biden in exchange for the release of congressionally mandated financial and military aid to Ukraine, triggered Trump's first impeachment. During the hearings and trial of President Trump in 2019-20, he and his allies repeatedly alleged that Joe Biden and his son were engaged in corrupt activities in Ukraine.[24] Trump said he planned to make it a major issue during the 2020 United States presidential race,[25] while a Republican-controlled Senate committee carried out an investigation into the allegations in spring 2020.[26] The investigation by the Republican-controlled Senate Homeland Security and Finance Committees concluded in September 2020 that Hunter Biden "'cashed in' on his father's name to close lucrative business deals around the world" but that there was no evidence of improper influence or wrongdoing by Joe Biden.[27]

Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, spearheaded an effort to gather information in Ukraine to advance the allegations, and Attorney General William Barr confirmed that the Justice Department had created an "intake process" to review Giuliani's findings.[28] Giuliani and his associates worked with individuals linked to Russian intelligence and organized crime, including Andrii Derkach and Dmytro Firtash.[29][30] Derkach released snippets of a supposed conversation between Joe Biden and Poroshenko, in which Biden linked loan guarantees to the ouster of the country's corrupt and ineffective prosecutor general.[5] The recordings, which were not verified as authentic and appeared to be heavily edited,[31] did not provide evidence to support the ongoing conspiracy theory that Biden wanted the prosecutor fired to protect his son.[32] In June 2020, Poroshenko denied that Joe Biden ever approached him about Burisma and characterized the recordings as fake.[30][33] In September 2020, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned Derkach, stating he "has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services". The Treasury Department added that Derkach "waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election," including by the release of "edited audio tapes and other unsupported information with the intent to discredit U.S. officials".[34][35]

In late 2019, it was revealed that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which Giuliani had once led, was investigating him for multiple felonies relating to his activities in Ukraine.[36][37] Intelligence officials warned Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate committee investigating the Bidens, that he risked spreading Russian disinformation.[38] The Washington Post reported in October 2020 that American intelligence agencies warned the White House in 2019 that Giuliani was the target of a Russian influence operation, and National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien warned President Trump about accepting what Giuliani told him. American intelligence monitoring Russian assets intercepted Giuliani communicating with them.[39] According to officials interviewed by The Daily Beast, then-National Security Advisor John Bolton told his staff not to meet with Giuliani, as did his successor Robert C. O'Brien, because Bolton had been informed that Giuliani was spreading conspiracy theories that aligned with Russian interests in disrupting the 2020 election. These officials were also concerned that Giuliani would be used as a conduit for disinformation, including "leaks" of emails that would mix genuine with forged material to implicate Hunter Biden in corrupt dealings.[40] Interviewed by The Daily Beast, Giuliani would later declare that Derkach's being sanctioned was the result of a conspiracy led by George Soros and that "the chance that Derkach is a Russian spy is no better than 50/50".[41]

Ukrainian businessman Hares Youssef told The Times that an associate of Dmytro Firtash asked Youssef to lie about Hunter Biden's business dealings to damage Joe Biden's presidential campaign, in exchange for a United States visa.[42]

On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published articles containing purported emails of unknown authorship which suggested that Hunter Biden provided an "opportunity" to Vadym Pozharskyi, an advisor to the board of Burisma, to meet his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden.[43][44][45] Joe Biden stated in September 2019 that he had never spoken to his son about his foreign business dealings.[46] His presidential campaign denied such a meeting took place and stated the New York Post had never contacted them "about the critical elements of this story".[47] Michael Carpenter, Vice President Biden's foreign policy adviser in 2015, told The Washington Post that he had accompanied Biden during all of his meetings about Ukraine and that, "He never met with [Pozharskyi]." He added, "In fact, I had never heard of this guy until the New York Post story broke."[5] One of the purported emails showed Pozharskyi saying he would share information with Amos Hochstein, a State Department advisor close to Vice President Biden, though Hochstein stated, "The Republican Senate investigation subpoenaed all my records, including emails and calendars and found no mention of this man. I led the US energy efforts in Ukraine and never even heard of him before yesterday."[48] The New York Post published images and PDF copies of the alleged emails, but their authenticity and origin have not been determined.[49]According to an investigation by The New York Times, editors at the New York Post "pressed staff members to add their bylines to the story", and at least one refused, in addition to the original author, reportedly because of a lack of confidence in its credibility. Of the two writers eventually credited on the article, the second did not know her name was attached to it until after The Post published it.[8] In its opening sentence, the New York Post story misleadingly asserted "the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating" Burisma, despite the fact that Shokin had not pursued an investigation into Burisma's founder.[5] The opening sentence also misleadingly stated that Hunter Biden introduced his father to Pozharskyi, but the purported email from Pozharskyi only mentioned an invitation and "opportunity" for the men to meet.[50][51]

Rudy Giuliani provided the materials to the paper after they were allegedly found on a MacBook Pro left at a Delaware computer repair shop owned by John Paul Mac Isaac. Mac Isaac contacted Giuliani, who he said was his "lifeguard"voicing credence to the conspiracy theory that the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign was behind the murder of campaign worker Seth Rich.[52] Steve Bannon informed the New York Post of the laptop,[53] and he and Giuliani delivered a copy of the supposed laptop hard drive to the publication.[54] Weeks before, Bannon had boasted on Dutch television that he had Hunter Biden's hard drive.[54] Giuliani was later quoted as saying he hawd given the copy to the New York Post because "either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out".[8]According to the New York Post story, an unknown person left the computer at the repair shop to repair water damage, but once this was completed, the shop had no contact information for its owner, and nobody ever paid for it or came to pick it up.[55] Criticism has been focused on Mac Isaac over inconsistencies in his accounts of how the laptop came into his possession and how he passed it on to Giuliani and the FBI.[55][52] When interviewed by CBS News, Mac Isaac offered contradictory statements about his motivations.[56] Thomas Rid, a political scientist and disinformation expert at Johns Hopkins University, noted that the emails could have been forged or that forged material could have been mixed with genuine materials, a "common feature" of disinformation operations.[57] The Daily Beast reported that according to two "individuals with direct knowledge", multiple senior officials in the Trump administration and reelection campaign were aware of the laptop hard drive "several weeks" prior to the New York Post story.[58] Giuliani later confirmed to The Daily Beast that he had informed Trump about the material before the New York Post story.[41]

The New York Post reported it had been shown an image purporting to show a federal subpoena that resulted in the computer and an external hard drive being seized by the FBI in December 2019.[5][failed verification] NBC News reported the FBI had acquired the devices via a grand jury subpoena, though it was unclear if this was the subpoena cited by the New York Post, and was investigating whether the contents were linked to a foreign intelligence operation.[59] The Associated Press confirmed the existence of the FBI investigation into possible foreign-intelligence activity.[60] Citing a "US official and a congressional source briefed on the matter", CNN reported the FBI was specifically investigating possible connections to ongoing Russian disinformation efforts against Biden.[48]

Material similar to the alleged hard-drive contents was reportedly circulating in Ukraine during 2019. One individual interviewed by Time magazine stated that he had been approached in late May 2019, and a second person stated that he had been approached in mid-September. The seller, according to the second individual, wished to sell compromising information about Hunter Biden to Republican allies of Donald Trump for $5million. "I walked away from it, because it smelled awful", he told Time. Igor Novikov, a former advisor to the Ukrainian president and a disinformation researcher, said that the market for kompromat (damaging material) had been very active in the past year in reaction to political events in the United States, with political operatives rushing to respond to Giuliani's call for damaging information on the Bidens. Novikov characterized the materials available on the market as "extremely hard to verify, yet very easy to fake". On October 19, Derkach posted on social media that he had a second Hunter Biden laptop, stating, "The facts confirming international corruption are stored on a second laptop. These are not the last witnesses or the last laptop."[61] Lev Parnas told Politico that Giuliani had been told about compromising material regarding Hunter Biden on May30, 2019, during a visit with Vitaly Pruss, an associate of the corrupt oligarch Zlochevsky.[62]

Earlier in the month and before the Post's report, a White House lawyer and two others affiliated with Trump had already pitched a story about Hunter Biden's business dealings in China to The Wall Street Journal, which the Trump affiliates saw as an ideal outlet for its combination of conservatism and industry credibility. While the Journal conducted due diligence and unbeknownst to the Trump affiliates, Giuliani and the Post published a version of the story with unclear provenance that alleged but did not prove Joe Biden's involvement in his son's affairs. Bannon had anticipated the Journal story would appear on the 19th, and Trump told reporters to expect a major story in the Journal. Internally, the insinuation that their journalism was affiliated with or on behalf of Trump irritated the Journal editors. Tony Bobulinski, a business partner of Hunter Biden who was interviewed for the Journal's report, was spooked that the Journal would not run the piece and issued his own statement on the 21st, which Breitbart News published unedited. At the next day's presidential debate, Trump made vague reference to the emails and hosted Bobulinski as his special guest. After the debate, the Journal published its brief story that Bobulinski and corporate records assessed by the Journal "show no role for Joe Biden".[63]

After a scandal narrative failed to gain traction in the mainstream press, conservative media and personalities pivoted to a "meta narrative" that the press, social media platforms and the "deep state" were suppressing news of the scandal. This was one of many instances during the 2020 campaign where conservatives accused tech companies of aiding Biden's campaign by suppressing negative coverage of him.[64] During an April 3, 2021 interview with CBS News Hunter Biden stated that he did not know whether the laptop in the New York Post story was his but that it could have been. He said that his laptop could have been stolen or hacked, or the information in the New York Post story could have been from Russian intelligence.[11]

The New York Times reported in May 2021 that federal investigators in Brooklyn began a criminal investigation late in the Trump administration into possible efforts by several current and former Ukrainian officials to spread unsubstantiated allegations about corruption by Joe Biden. Investigators were examining whether the Ukrainians used Giuliani as a channel for the allegations, though he was not a specific subject of the investigation, in contrast to a long-running investigation of Giuliani by the US attorney's office in Manhattan.[4]

On October19, a group of over 50 former senior intelligence officials, who had served in the Trump administration and the three previous, released an open letter stating that the release of the alleged emails "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation".[10][65]

During an interview with Fox News on October19, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said the laptop was "not part of some Russian disinformation campaign" and accused Adam Schiff of mischaracterizing the views of the intelligence community by describing the alleged emails as part of a smear campaign against Biden.[66] Schiff's spokesman accused Ratcliffe of "purposefully misrepresenting" the congressman's words.[67] Ratcliffe is considered a Trump loyalist,[68] and a number of commentators had expressed concerns previously over his partiality.[69][70] The New York Times reported that no solid evidence had emerged that the laptop contained Russian disinformation.[2] An FBI probe seeking to determine whether the laptop was part of a foreign intelligence operation is still ongoing.[48][59] Several security officials criticized Ratcliffe for appearing to pre-judge its outcome.[71] The FBI has publicly stated they had "nothing to add" to Ratcliffe's remarks in response to a request for more information made by Sen. Ron Johnson.[72]

A United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that proxies of Russian intelligence had promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about the Bidens "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration".[3][73]

Twitter and Facebook both implemented measures on their platforms to prevent sharing of the New York Post article. Twitter first deprecated the story (prevented its algorithm from highlighting it due to its popularity) but eventually banned links to the story from being posted.[47] It did so according to their Hacked Materials Policy and Facebook per a policy that "in many countries, including in the U.S., if we have signals that a piece of content is false, we temporarily reduce its distribution pending review by a third-party fact-checker."[74][75][76] The Hill reported on the Facebook action, "it is unclear what 'signals' triggered the limit on the New York Post article".[74] Twitter briefly locked President Donald Trump's presidential campaign Twitter account for sharing a controversial Hunter Biden video earlier on October15. The account was unlocked later that day.[77] Between October14 and23, the original New York Post story received over 54million Facebook views.[78]

Commentators from varied political backgrounds criticized the actions taken by Facebook and Twitter, arguing that they could have amplified disinformation thanks to the Streisand effect.[47] Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey noted, "Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great", adding that "blocking URL sharing via tweet or [direct message]" without explaining the context was "unacceptable".[79]

President Donald Trump tweeted twice on October14 in response to Facebook and Twitter's actions: "So terrible that Facebook and Twitter took down the story of 'Smoking Gun' emails related to Sleepy Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the @NYPost," and, "It is only the beginning for them. There is nothing worse than a corrupt politician. REPEAL SECTION 230!!!".[80]

Congressional Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to testify before the committee in response to their platforms' actions. Senators Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Josh Hawley announced that the committee would vote on subpoenaing Dorsey to appear on October23.[75] Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described the restrictions made by Facebook and Twitter as "absolutely reprehensible" and stated that the companies were acting as "speech police".[81]

Dorsey stated that "Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix," adding "Our goal is to attempt to add context, and now we have capabilities to do that."[82] Facebook also said that it was restricting spread pending input from third-party fact-checkers. Associated Press noted that the story had, as of October 17 2020, "not been confirmed by other publications".[82]

The Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign press secretary Jamal Brown stated that Twitter's action with regard to the New York Post story indicated that the allegations in the story were false.[83] They specifically denied that Joe Biden ever had a formal meeting with Pozharskyi, and said that if they had ever met, it would have been a brief encounter.[84]

On January 21, 2021, the day after Biden's inauguration, Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia filed articles of impeachment against Biden that cited the claims.[85] No fellow members of Congress co-sponsored the articles.

Fellow press outlets The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal stated that they could not verify the data provided by New York Post independently.[8] NBC News requested a copy of the hard drive from Giuliani, who told them that he would not provide one; they say Guiliani offered them copies of a small number of emails but would not give them the full set.[86]

David Folkenflik of NPR observed that the New York Post story asserted as facts things it presumed to be true. He also noted that the credited lead author of the story, deputy political editor Emma-Jo Morris, had virtually no previous bylines in reporting, and her most significant prior employment was a nearly four-year position as a producer on Sean Hannity's Fox News program. Hannity, a close Trump advisor, has repeatedly suggested wrongdoing by Biden in Ukraine.[49]

Vanity Fair observed the story had exposed an ongoing journalistic "cold war" within Rupert Murdoch's media empire, which includes The New York Post, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal. In particular, it described an internal rift over coverage by the Journal which published an opinion article by conservative columnist Kimberley Strassel inflating the claims, only to have the news section publish an article which "swept the legs out from under their Opinion colleague's argument" four hours later. Ryan Lizza, reporter for Politico, was quoted as saying "reporters at the WSJ, Fox News, and NYP have all come to the same conclusion about these documents but they are being drowned out by bad faith activists on the opinion side at these Murdoch companies who favor Trump's re-election."[87]

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BidenUkraine conspiracy theory - Wikipedia

Writing long, historically focused opinion pieces is an activity more characteristic of think tankers than heads of state, but Russian President Vladimir Putin is anything but conventional. Last week he published a 5,000-plus-word article that reviews the last millennium to conclude that Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians share a common history, faith and destiny.

In Mr. Putins view, Western powers have tried for centuries to separate them, but those efforts are doomed to fail. He argues that the anti-Russia project has been rejected by millions of Ukrainians in Crimea, the Donbas and elsewhere. The Russian president believes that after centuries of common development and trade, the Ukrainian economy simply cannot flourish without close integration with Russia. Without his country, Ukraine will flounder, despite the occasional aid it receives from its Western paymasters, Mr. Putin writes. Even before the pandemic, Ukraines gross domestic product per capita was below $4,000. This is less than in the Republic of Albania, the Republic of Moldova, or unrecognized Kosovo. (Moscow doesnt recognize Kosovos independence from Serbia.) Nowadays, Mr. Putin writes, Ukraine is Europes poorest country.

Some observers dismissed the essay as an empty propaganda ploy aimed at distracting Russian public opinion in the face of a surging pandemic. Others saw it as an announcement that Russia will escalate its support for the pro-Moscow forces in the smoldering conflict in eastern Ukraine. Since deception and surprise are fundamental tools of Mr. Putins statecraft, anything is possible, but Western powers would be well advised to take the essay seriously. The Russian presidents policies will always and inevitably reflect his calculations about the opportunities and risks he faces at any given moment, but his strategic objectives are unmistakable. Mr. Putins quest to rebuild Russian power requires the reassertion of Moscows hegemony over Belarus and Ukraine.

In Belarus, where the Kremlin enabled the embattled government to survive months of pro-democracy protests and Western sanctions, Mr. Putin has crushed any hopes President Lukashenko had of escaping Moscows embrace. Ukraine is a tougher nut to crack. But the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is moving inexorably toward completion, weakening Ukraines influence over European policy making. Infighting and disorganization also continue to prevent the European Union from becoming a significant geopolitical actor. Amid all this, Mr. Putin has served notice that he will patiently but relentlessly pursue his strategic goals at Kyivs expense.

The best way to think of Russia these days is as being constrained but not contained. That is, the West has failed abysmally to develop a coherent policy to stop the Kremlins attacks on its neighbors or its opposition to the EU and the American-based world order. Sanctions dont deter Mr. Putin; the West is hopelessly disunited on Russia policy, and the resulting incoherent policies offer Moscow opportunities from the Middle East to Myanmar to advance its foreign-policy agenda and bolster its commercial interests. Under these circumstances Russia will continue to test the West, and Mr. Putin will look to victories abroad to bolster his standing at home.

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Why Putin Still Covets Ukraine - The Wall Street Journal