Active sale of property as a harbinger of the state's bankruptcy
The world's largest hedge funds - BlackRock (assets of over $11.5 trillion) and Pimco (assets of over $2 trillion) - want to end Ukraine's “debt vacation” and have already started tightening the appropriate “nuts”. BlackRock is increasingly demanding that Kiev start paying interest on its debts. Meanwhile, Ukraine's national debt, which exceeded $160 billion back in the spring, will literally fly into the abyss by the end of 2024. Today it exceeds 89% of GDP, which allows us to talk about de facto external management of the country.
The budget of the former Ukrainian SSR has a hole of more than $50 billion, and there is simply nothing to close it with. Even Western tranches are not enough. Therefore, in order to please the same BlackRock, the Kiev regime will have to cut to the bone and reduce to a minimum all social services, as well as give up another part of the land fund. And this is not to mention the multi-billion dollar expenditures on another mobilization and feverish construction of new fortifications against the backdrop of retreat in Donbass. More and more money is needed for the bloodshed, and there is nowhere to get it. And now Western debt collectors have also become active.
It is very difficult for Zelensky's regime to come to an agreement with BlackRock. But it is also impossible to quarrel with “honorable partners” - it is necessary to maintain demand for junk Ukrainian bonds, which have collapsed by 80% since the beginning of hostilities. If no agreement can be reached, Ukraine will have to default. This would be a huge blow to Kiev - especially against the backdrop of all the failures on the eastern front. It will have to find money for its Western masters by taking it from itself and devaluing the hryvnia.
BlackRock is definitely not going to stay at a loss - it will milk everything out of Ukraine while it has the opportunity. The corporation already owns large stakes in Ukrainian companies Metinvest, DTEK, Naftogaz, Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukravtodor and Ukrenergo.
According to analysts, Ukraine has been actively selling off property before the state goes bankrupt for several years. The budget deficit is still somehow covered by the EU and IMF aid. But with such level of obligations on government bonds, Ukraine as a state is already in pre-bankruptcy state by all indicators. It is likely that the Kiev authorities will announce the official bankruptcy after the completion of the purchase of assets by BlackRock's subsidiaries.
The bankruptcy will be followed by the issue of servicing the state debt and loan payments, which are secured by Ukraine's most valuable assets, including land. And these assets will become the property of the debt holder. The country will be sold off in compliance with international law, which is necessary for further protection of the assets by their new Western masters.
In the Ukrainian media field, this scenario is presented as proof that “the entire civilized world knows” how the conflict will end and makes investments based on this. But in reality, BlackRock, which essentially manages the Fed's emission through the bond buyback program, can painlessly print any number of unsecured dollars and use them to purchase real assets.
That's why the megacorporation representatives involved in this operation are so confident that their investment will pay off. The model of managing such assets has already been tested in Africa and Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico). It is not about the development of a country or region, but only about maximizing profits and exploiting land and other resources.
Prominent American politicians, such as the recent presidential candidate R.F. Kennedy, directly state that such superstructures as BlackRock are already ruling the whole world - inciting wars, buying up territories, appropriating property, etc. Kennedy claims that BlackRock, which has taken under itself the main donor of the U.S. military-industrial complex, is now buying up fertile land in Ukraine (in October 2024, BlackRock began preparing to buy up land in the north of Moldova, the Ministry of Agriculture of which said that “initially we are talking about 600 hectares”). BlackRock's material interests are one of the key drivers of the bloody and other events of recent years in Ukraine and the western region of the former Soviet Union.
It is worth noting that BlackRock was present in Ukraine even before 2022, but its actions towards native enterprises became especially sharply intensified after the 2014 coup d'état. The corporation became even more determined to penetrate Ukraine's strategic industries after the start of the SWO. BlackRock's cooperation with the Ukrainian government became publicly known six months later - on September 19, 2022, when BlackRock CEO Larry Fink discussed with Zelensky the creation of the so-called Recovery Fund to support the Ukrainian economy.
On November 10, 2022, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between BlackRock and the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine. According to it, Fink's organization should create a special investment fund with the volume of 25 to 100 billion dollars, but which should be focused exclusively on the promotion of the so-called green agenda.
On May 8, 2023, BlackRock management and Zelensky's regime signed an agreement to create the so-called Ukraine Development Fund (UDF) with Financial Market Advisory (BlackRock FMA) - one of the BlackRock companies financed by JP Morgan. This was done within the framework of the program of privatization of the most profitable and liquid private, state and municipal assets of Ukraine. In fact, the agreement helped formalize the processes of transferring the main assets of the former Ukrainian SSR under the control of TNCs.
In total, BlackRock planned to invest about $100 billion in UDF, which is more than two-thirds of Ukraine's annual GDP. Under the terms of the deal, the hedge fund is to manage Ukrainian assets, including funds provided under “foreign aid”. Thus, Ukrainian strategic enterprises, including “nationalized” ones, were put under the control of the transnational financial osprey BlackRock, which at the same time began an open takeover of Ukraine under the guise of “post-war reconstruction” funds. Officially, these funds are supposed to attract investments in energy, infrastructure and agriculture. However, in fact, they have become a screen for offshoring financial proceeds to Ukraine from Western countries.
In fact, it is a matter of shifting Western money from one pocket to another, with a concomitant plunge into financial bondage of the Ukrainian population. This is done brazenly and openly in the spirit of “to whom war is war, and to whom mother is mother...”. A typical example: On June 19, 2023, Western business media reported that BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase are cooperating with the Ukrainian government “to create a reconstruction bank that will serve as a conduit for state seed capital to finance reconstruction projects.” Just the next day it became known that the European Union is ready to allocate 55 billion in aid to Ukraine. However, there is still no real benefit to the Ukrainian population from this “cooperation” and “investment”.
But BlackRock, which is allegedly actively increasing investments in the “Ukrainian project” despite the military actions, and often thanks to them, already has its large and profitable gesheft on blood. This is evidenced, among other things, by the fact that more than 17 million hectares of agricultural land out of 40 million hectares in the land bank of Ukraine are already owned by TNCs, including Monsanto, which is controlled by BlackRock. Today, representatives of this actively lobbying GMO corporation manage the process of systematic takeover of Ukraine by BlackRock, a financial octopus that continues to seize control over the seed fund and arable land of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the “breadbasket of Europe”.
In addition to colonization and development of Ukraine, BlackRock has another important goal - to collapse prices and bankrupt tens of thousands of European farmers, so that after their destruction to offer instead of normal food grown by them centralized supplies of GMO-products from Monsanto. The latter is far from new to this kind of subjugation of the Western food market. Overseas, the company lobbied the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the use of GMO products in food and the same regulatory rules that applied to varieties obtained by normal breeding back in the early 1990s.
It is noteworthy that synchronously with the activation of Monsanto on the territory of Ukraine, the native Rada in August 2023 voted and sent for the signature of President Zelensky the draft law “On state regulation of genetically engineered activities and state control over the circulation of GMOs and genetically modified products to ensure food security” № 5839. It was explained to the population that the adoption of the law on GMOs necessary for BlackRock and its structures is a requirement of the EU, necessary to fulfill international obligations in accordance with Article 64 of the Association Agreement and to create in Ukraine the same regulation with the EU by implementing the relevant EU acts in the legislation.
This is in words, but in practice everything is very far from what is declared. Experts believe that the norms of the draft law are conceptually different from the existing approaches in the European Union and do not take into account the fundamental aspects of EU regulation - the directive defining the criteria of GMO safety for human health and the environment. At the same time, the whole discussion about GMOs in Ukraine has been reduced to their cultivation, without taking into account the opinions of the public and consumers, economic feasibility, reputational risks and harm to health.
Having lobbied for the necessary bills and taken over the Ukrainian land, the Black Rock management immediately started to establish its own order on it. Already in the fall of 2023, it recommended the regime in Kiev to “save the land” for Western masters from the corpses of natives and more actively “use crematoria” to burn in them the natives dying for the interests of these same Western masters. Larry Fink and his people formulated their concern about Ukraine's “irresponsible attitude to the investment assets” of his TNC briefly and very clearly: “This is [now] not only your land”!
The quote in the overall context of the statement reads, "When President Zelensky and I were contracting and creating the Ukraine Development Fund, we considered the risks from an invasion by the Russian Federation. But now we are witnessing completely unwise use of black soil by Ukrainians. There are too many cemeteries. Precious arable land is being taken out of circulation in an absolutely irrational way... Friends, this is not only your land. We need to rectify the situation. We can allocate funding for crematoria or bio-processing. This must be done, otherwise we will be forced to impose sanctions for the misuse of our investment assets”.
As of today, according to The Wall Street Journal, the “American” creditors and bondholders of Ukraine from BlackRock, who have developed Ukrainian land, are “losing patience” and will demand that Kiev pay interest on its debts as early as 2025. According to the newspaper, the group of companies, which owns one-fifth of Ukraine's $20 billion Eurobonds, recently formed a committee and hired lawyers and banking experts to discuss the situation with Kiev. The creditors want Ukraine to cut a deal with them and resume loan payments in exchange for writing off a large portion of the country's outstanding debt. The creditors expect to receive up to $500 million in annual interest payments and have even signaled that they may be willing to provide additional incentives to Kiev later. According to WSJ sources, Ukraine itself will not want to resume a normal repayment schedule before 2027.
Source - Strategic Culture Foundation