U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s report finally dropped into the waiting hands of U.S. Congress and international journalists, who immediately began combing through to see what role president Donald Trump and his team had in Russia’s meddling in U.S. elections. The report referenced hundreds of media reports, many of which were from Ukraine. And two, in particular, were from the Kyiv Post, buried on page 135 of the report’s first volume.
The first referenced story is Kyiv Hotel Industry Makes Room for New Entrants, an overview of Kyiv’s hospitality sector for the business hospitality supplement published on March 8.
The Kyiv Post story found that high-end hotels were experiencing tentative growth, driven largely by business tourism, but were quickly reaching their saturation point. The relevant segment was a description of the five-star Opera Hotel in Kyiv, which is “owned by the richest oligarch in Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov.”
The section of Mueller’s report that references the Kyiv Post details how Paul Manafort, the now-disgraced political consultant to now fugitive ex-president Viktor Yanukovych and president Donald Trump’s campaign manager, was heavily involved with Ukraine’s business elite, especially the backers of the Opposition Bloc, comprised of the parties that didn’t endorse the EuroMaidan Revolution.
“Immediately upon joining the Campaign, (Paul) Manafort directed (Richard) Gates to prepare for his review separate memoranda addressed to (Russian oligarch Oleg) Deripaska, (Rinat) Akhmetov, Serhiy Lyovochkin, and Boris Kolesnikov, the last three being Ukrainian oligarchs who were senior Opposition Bloc officials,” the report read.
Manafort worked with political consultant Richard Gates, who pled guilty of conspiracy against the U.S. during the course of Mueller’s investigation. Gates said that Manafort told him to share the Trump campaign’s internal polling data to suspected Russian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, who was then to share it with “Ukrainian oligarchs.”
“The memoranda described Manafort’s appointment to the Trump Campaign and indicated his willingness to consult on Ukrainian politics in the future,” according to the Mueller report. Later, Manafort followed up with Kilimnik to ask if he had been showing “our friends” media coverage of his role as Trump’s campaign manager. Kilimnik replied “Absolutely. Every article.”
Akhmetov, who owns massive stakes in mining and metallurgical concerns, on top of transportation and other industries, is a backer of one of the two factions of the pro-Russia opposition bloc. He once hired Manafort in 2005 to help prop up his international image.
A second Kyiv Post story referenced in the report was actually a republication of an article by Interfax-Ukraine entitled Kolesnikov: Inevitability of punishment needed for real fight against smuggling in Ukraine from June 23, 2018. In it, then opposition bloc co-chair, Borys Kolesnikov, complained that Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman’s fight against smuggling was ineffective.
