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Speaker 1:Color me shocked.Speaker 2:Stay tuned to By Any Means Necessary five days a week here on Radio Sputnik. Fault lines.Lee Stranahan:We are back. Fault Lines with Nixon and Stranahan, 105.5 FM, AM 1390, in Washington DC and of course all over the internet. If you miss an episode, you can check us out on Spreaker, on Stitcher, on the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, iHeartRadio and any place great podcasts are curated.Lee Stranahan:Okay, joining us now on the line is member of the Ukrainian Parliament, journalist Serhiy Leshchenko. Good morning, Serhiy. How you doing?Serhiy L.:Good afternoon, Lee. I am in Kiev now, so we have about 2:00 PM now.Lee Stranahan:About 2:00 PM, that's right.Serhiy L.:I'm doing well, thank you.Lee Stranahan:It's very early here. Now, once again, I really appreciate you coming on the show. I've talked about you for a couple years, but the other night ... So, let's go over this a little bit. We're not going to ... Obviously, this is going to be some stuff we don't agree on, but I really don't want to focus on that this morning. Let's let it just be said that we-Serhiy L.:Yeah. Please go ahead with the questions. It's no problem. All people have different points of view on different topics.Lee Stranahan:No, that's right.Garland N.:Right. In fact, one of the things we do here on the show, you know, Lee is a more conservative on the right, I'm more progressive liberal on the left, so that's what we do.Lee Stranahan:Yeah.Garland N.:We do, you know? We're glad, certainly happy to have you on.Lee Stranahan:Let's talk about this. First off, just for people to understand the dynamics of the situation. A lot of people probably heard about you, really, the first time, when Rudy Giuliani was talking about you on Fox News. That's the primary thing I want you to be able to address this morning.Lee Stranahan:Let's just set this up a little bit. After the Maidan revolution, the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, right, Petro Poroshenko came in. I think we can agree that Poroshenko coming in did not ... was not awesome. He was not great. He was


not popular, and it did not work out particularly well for the people of the Ukraine. Is that your feeling as well?Serhiy L.:Yeah. Ukrainian people did not vote for him for the second term. He finished his presidency with a result about 20 something percent. So, it means that he lost credibility of Ukrainians, because he was president who was very controversial. He declared positive things, integration toward European institutions, fight against corruption, and more fair and more relevant society.Serhiy L.:But, in reality he was focused else on personal issues. Personal enrichment, nepotism and building the coalition of corrupt political stakeholders. Of course, Ukraine achieved some positive results under the Poroshenko presidency. I don't want to describe everything in dark colors.Lee Stranahan:Right.Serhiy L.:But, a lot of positive things also were achieved as a combination of efforts from different sides. Civil society in Ukraine is very vibrant. Investigative journalism is one of the most powerful in the Eastern Europe. Our school of investigative journalists is very good. Then we have number of reformers inside the government and parliament who paid a lot of efforts to make reform process possible.Serhiy L.:Poroshenko under this pressure ... And, also the ... Some supports from abroad. From international MITRE fund, who put necessary reforms as a conditionalities and means of support of international community. Ukraine was country moving forward, but a little bit slower than we expected.Serhiy L.:The personality of Poroshenko also very controversial because he was an oligarch on the very top level who won elections and felt strong, with a big credit of support from society. But, unfortunately he spent so many ... Let's say so many years trying to enrich himself from the politic that in the position of president he was also involved in corrupt schemes. Now we have the result from the screen.Garland N.:You know, of course one of the issues before 2014 was the issue of the direction that Ukraine was going to take regarding finances and economics. Certainly, I think some of the issues has been that the country's struggled economically. How much of an issue do you think that was in you know affecting the election and do you ... What ... Do you think it could be ... The economic problems in Ukraine can be turned around?Serhiy L.:Ukraine's slowly, but growing. We would like to come through to double, to triple our economic growth dynamic. For this we need strong economic reform program and to limit influence of the oligarch on the Ukrainian politics. Because oligarch system, it does not allow Ukraine to be dynamic economy. They enrich


themself through the politics. They built monopoly on the energy market, on the agricultural market, on different markets.Serhiy L.:And, Poroshenko instead to be status quo breaker, he decided to keep the status quo and to find ... Not even compromise, but conspiracy with some oligarchs. Especially in the energy market or public procurement and unfortunately we lost a good chance for reshuffle of the whole political system five years ago.Serhiy L.:But, still we are growing, growing, growing sets of democratic values and [inaudible 00:05:48] economy. A little bit slower than we expected, but we still ... Dynamic is positive.Lee Stranahan:Okay, now, so, I want to set that up to talk about the issue that you wanted to talk about. I wanted to make sure you're able to get your point out. Because what happened was, about a month and a half ago I would say, John Solomon, a reporter at The Hill here, who is a frequent guest on Fox News began reporting on this Ukraine DNC story a little bit. I'd been talking about it for two years, but he'd been ... He started to report on it. His source was a guy ... And, this is confusing to some people because, I'll be honest, Ukrainian names throw off Americans because there's lots of Shenkos and Chenkos, right?Serhiy L.:Yeah.Lee Stranahan:By the way pronounce your first name, because I've seen it “Serhiy” and “Sergiy.” Pronounce your first name.Serhiy L.:My name is “Sergiy.”Lee Stranahan:“Sergiy,” okay. Forgive me for getting that wrong. Serhiy Leshchenko, but the guy who's the prosecutor general is a guy named Lutsenko, right?Serhiy L.:Yeah. Correct, correct.Lee Stranahan:Okay, so I want to be clear. We're talking to Serhiy Leshchenko ...Serhiy L.:Correct.Lee Stranahan:... but Solomon started quoting this guy Lutsenko. Now, Lutsenko ...Serhiy L.:Yeah.Lee Stranahan:So, first off, who is he and how did he get into office?Serhiy L.:Mr. Lutsenko, he's a politician and he's a member of Poroshenko family. He was appointed as a prosecutor general three years ago. The problem of that he's a