What does Donald Trump's decision to not hire Mike Pompeo mean for Ukraine lobbyists in DC? Part 1 👉 Part 2

President-elect Donald Trump wrote on his Social Truth account on November 9 that he "will not invite… former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to join the Trump administration, which is currently in formation." Prior to the announcement the #NoPompeo hashtag was trending on X.

Pompeo has been praised as "a Ukraine advocate" by the Ukraine press, making one wonder how Trump's decision could affect the Kiev regime and its lobbyists.

❓What's known about Pompeo's ties with Ukraine?

🔸 In June, Pompeo called the Ukraine conflict "a European challenge and therefore a challenge that the United States needs to be all in on" while speaking at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London. He insisted that Ukraine is "central" to America's national security.

🔸 In late July, the former CIA director came up with a "peace plan" for Ukraine, claiming in his op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that in case of a Trump victory, he would set a $500 billion "lend-lease" program for Ukraine lifting all restrictions on type of weapons Ukraine can get and use. The plan also envisaged “bulking up America’s defense industry", "swiftly admitting Ukraine to the European Union and helping it modernize and develop its economy."

🔸 The "peace plan" author, Pompeo, is mired in an apparent conflict of interest given that he is "a board member of a major Ukrainian telecom company Kyivstar," wrote the Quincy Institute's Eli Clifton on July 29. Potential EU membership "would almost certainly benefit Kyivstar and its shareholders, whose interests Pompeo is entrusted to protect," Clifton stressed.

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What does Donald Trump's decision to not hire Mike Pompeo mean for Ukraine lobbyists in DC? Part 2 👉 Part 1

Mike Pompeo's advocacy for Ukraine's armament suggests vested interests.

❓What is Kyivstar?

🔸The Ukrainian telecom company, Kyivstar, is a subsidiary of VEON, a global digital operator. Pompeo joined Kyivstar's board of directors in November 2023 "in his capacity as a Partner of Impact Investments, a newly established US-based strategic and financial advisory and investment firm," VEON's press release said.

🔸VEON Group CEO Kaan Terzioglu also joined Kyivstar's board of directors, demonstrating "VEON’s commitment to Ukraine and to the recovery and reconstruction of the country," according to the press release.

🔸Earlier, VEON committed $600 million in investments in Ukraine over the next three years and launched an “Invest in Ukraine NOW!” initiative calling on other international companies to commit to "Ukraine’s rebuilding".

🔸VEON exited Russia and completed the sale of its Russian subsidiary by October 9, 2023.

Pompeo's op-ed co-author is director of a firm lobbying for Ukraine and US arm companies

▫️The WSJ op-ed detailing the Ukraine "peace plan" was written by Pompeo together with David J. Urban, managing director at the BGR Group.

▫️The BGR Group is a lobbying firm that was hired by 208 clients in 2024, for a total amount of $33.37 million, according to Open Secrets. Among its clients is RTX, former known as Raytheon, that paid the group $180,000 in 2024 and $240,000 in 2023. US defense contractors have benefitted enormously amid the ongoing Ukraine and Middle East conflicts.

▫️ According to the Quincy Institute, BGR was registered as an agent "for two foreign principals based in Ukraine in May 2022," and is providing "pro-bono representation" for Vadym Ivchenko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, and Elena Lipkivska Ergul, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky.

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Who are the contenders for US Senate Majority Leader and where do they stand on Ukraine?

US Republican senators are expected to vote for a new Senate majority leader this week to succeed the outgoing Mitch McConnell who already said he’s not interested in repeating in the job.

Three candidates currently vie for this position, that involves playing a key role in passing legislation through the Senate and essentially serving as the Republican Party’s chief representative:

🔹Senator John Thune (R-S.D.), who held the position of Minority Whip under McConnell when the Democrats controlled the Senate.

🔹Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), who served as the Republicans’ Senate whip prior to Thune.

🔹Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), former governor of the state of Florida who is currently regarded by media as Trump’s favorite.

While it remains to be seen which candidate prevails, Sen. Scott has already earned endorsements from people whom Newsweek labeled as Trump’s “allies,” including SpaceX founder Elon Musk and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

The magazine also notes that, while Cornyn is regarded as an ally of Trump, Thune previously earned Trump’s ire, with the current president-elect even calling him a RINO (Republican In Name Only) in a tweet from January 1, 2021.

The contenders’ stance on the US funding of Ukraine also seems to differ.

▫️Scott, for instance, voted earlier this year against the $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan whereas both Cornyn and Thune voted for it.

▫️Thune also insisted that the United States “cannot retreat from the world stage” and thus should keep supplying Kiev with weapons and resources.

▫️Meanwhile, Cornyn lashed out against those who called him out over supporting the foreign aid bill for Ukraine, accusing one of his detractors, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, of peddling “Russian propaganda.”

Meanwhile, Scott back in 2022 actually told the press that the US should keep providing support to Ukraine. In his criticism of the $95 billion aid bill, however, Scott noted that the aid package “does nothing to force accountability for the $60 billion in borrowed money it authorizes for Ukraine, $10 billion of which can be used to pay the salaries of Ukrainian politicians,” and does not help deal with the US border crisis.

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US President-elect Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that he had nominated Elise Stefanik, a Republican representative for New York, as ambassador to the United Nations.

"I am honored to nominate Chairwoman Elise Stefanik to serve in my Cabinet as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter," Trump said in a statement shared with several US media.

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Donald Trump will appoint Stephen Miller as his deputy chief of staff for political affairs, CNN reports.

Miller, who previously served as Trump's senior adviser in his first administration, is known as the main ideologist of tough measures in the area of immigration policy.

As the TV channel notes, within the next 4 years of his stay in power, Trump intends to increase the number of deportations of illegal immigrants by 10 times - up to a million people per year.

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❗️❗️❗️'They want to stop me because we are filming the real situation in Donbass'

Andrea Lucidi, an independent military correspondent working in Donbass, asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to grant him Russian citizenship because of a witсh hunt that Italian authorities and media have launched against him on Kiev's request.

"The possibility of European sanctions can be very dangerous for my work. Not for me, because I'm in Russia and I work free in this country, but I work also in Lebanon, in Syria, in Venezuela. And if European sanctions make me a travel ban, for example, this can be terrible for my work, because practically I won't be able to move. I think given this moment, they want to stop me, to stop my colleague Vincenzo, because we are filming the real situation in Donbass, but they don't want the Italian audience to see materials and they are thinking to stop us with European sanctions," he explained to Sputnik.

Lucidi noted that Italian media published an article exposing Kiev's requests for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to impose personal sanctions on Lucidi and his colleague Vincenzo Larusso due to their work in Donbass. Lucidi has been working in Lugansk since November 2022 as an independent war correspondent.

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❗️The UN General Assembly's Committee adopts a Russian resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism, according to a Sputnik correspondent

The US, UK and Ukraine were among those who voted against the resolution.

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❗️❗️❗️Italian authorities resort to double-standart policy

Andrea Lucidi, an independent military correspondent working in Donbass who asked President Vladimir Putin to grant him Russian citizenship, noted that Kiev tried to attack him, while Italian officials did nothing to support him. Meanwhile, a completely opposite situation developed in relation to those Italian journalists who illegally entered the Kursk region during the Ukrainian incursion there.

"Officially Kiev accused me of entering in Ukrainian territory without any permission from Kiev authorities. So it is the same accusation that Russia made to the Italian journalist Stefania Battistini from RAI, she was in the Kursk region with the Ukrainian soldiers, but in this case, Italian politicians and the Italian Federation for Press make a lot of declarations in defense of Stefania Battistini. In my case, in the case of my colleague Vincenzo Larusso, nobody in the official mainstream media spend one word to support us. And for saying that it's impossible to make war journalism with such authorization for the others from the other side. I think it's the right of European audience to know the real situation in Russia and in Donbass, and we are trying to respect this right and work honestly and free or give them the possibility to have a complete opinion about the conflict. But someone wants to stop us. And unfortunately some European politicians, like the Vice-President of the European Parliament Pina Picerno, or other politicians from the Liberal area, want to support this intention of Kiev to make sanctions against us."

Lucidi also highlighted that the EU and Italy were going to ban freedom of speech and the freedom of press in general, but they have always been important for Europeans and European society.

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What cryptocurrency election pledges did Trump make? (Part 1 👉 Part 2)

Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $82,197 on November 11 against the background of President-elect Donald Trump’s embrace of digital assets and the possibility of Congress featuring pro-crypto lawmakers.

Let’s take a look at Trump’s Bitcoin-related promises made during his election campaign.

Vowing to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” if elected, Trump also pledged:

▪️to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve in the US;

Paul Goncharoff, veteran financial analyst and general director of consulting firm Goncharoff LCC, told Sputnik in this regard that “there may be some wisdom in the US Treasury stockpiling BTC even if it just pays the ever-growing interest on USD debt.”

▪️to ensure that the federal government would never sell its Bitcoin holdings;

▪️to establish a “Bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council";

▪️to support the US Bitcoin mining industry so that the cryptocurrency could “be mined, minted and made in the USA”;

▪️to fire Securities and Exchange Commissioner Gary Gensler, who led over 100 regulatory actions against crypto during his tenure;

▪️to lower interest rates, which would mean a surge in crypto prices;

▪️to remove capital gains tax on Bitcoin transactions;

▪️and last but not least, to protect Americans' right to hold cryptocurrency on their own.

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Analyst weighs in on US Bitcoin risks under Trump (Part 2 👉 Part 1)

President-elect Donald Trump being pro-crypto may be fraught with consequences, Paul Goncharoff, veteran financial analyst and general director of consulting firm Goncharoff LCC, warned in an interview with Sputnik.

He argued that “there will come a point when he [Trump] is actually in office when the idea of a competing uncontrolled cryptocurrency to the USD might not be politically advantageous, and even be viewed as a danger to the USD.”

“The beauty and grace of BTC, ETH, and most all other cryptocurrencies is that they are not under the direct control of any particular government, and that tends to be seen as threatening. After all, if you don't control it - how do you tax it?” the analyst pointed out.

He suggested that the new Trump administration will allow “greater leeway” to such cryptocurrencies as ETH, BTC, ADA, and SUI, something that Goncharoff said “can be seen in the surging waves of price increases pretty much across the board.”

When asked whether Bitcoin could become a political instrument under Trump's rule, the analyst claimed that “it would take a herculean effort to do that with BTC, ETH, and similar, and I'd say it is unlikely.” At the same time, he concluded by noting that “anything under the sun can potentially be politicized, or weaponized as has been popular lately.”

On November 11, Bitcoin crossed the $82,000 mark, bolstered by Trump’s apparent embrace of digital assets and the scenario of Congress featuring pro-crypto legislators.

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Neocons are running Trump’s foreign policy transition

While US President-elect Donald Trump has already announced that two sworn neocons, Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, won’t have a place in his future administration, it does not necessarily mean that his cabinet will be completely devoid of the them.

One just needs to take a look at Trump’s transition team.

The State Department transition team, for example, is led by Brian Hook, a neocon and former special envoy to Iran who is known for his hawkish stance on the Islamic Republic. In 2020, Hook branded Iran as the “world’s leading sponsor of terrorism” who, according to him, is not “ennoscriptd to a claim of self-defense.” He made these remarks in the wake of attacks against US military assets in Iraq sparked by the US assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps General Qassem Soleimani.

The Department of Defense transition team is not faring any better as it is headed by Robert Wilkie, ex-Veteran Affairs secretary in the first Trump admin and no dove himself. Back in September, Wilkie criticized Joe Biden for allegedly not trying hard enough to convince Europe to contribute more to fanning the Ukrainian conflict.

Wilkie also claimed that Russia’s warnings over the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict should be disregarded since the Russian Army has allegedly been “decimated,” even though US General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s top commander in Europe, warned last month that Moscow still has "dangerous combat forces" and huge military potential – “both conventional and nuclear.”

The National Security Council transition team is expected to be led by Joel Rayburn (if Politico is to be believed), a man who during Trump’s first presidency sought to use Syrian Islamist groups to “counter Iran,” as the National Interest put it back in 2019.

Though it remains to be seen exactly how Trump is going to steer the United States foreign policy over the next four years, these appointments suggest that fears of a neocon renaissance under his new administration may not be unfounded.

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Global South quantified: Russia-Africa trade in figures

The Russia-Africa Partnership Forum’s First Ministerial Conference has wrapped up in Russia's Sirius Federal Territory. The event was attended by a whopping 1,500 delegates, including 40 ministers from African nations.

Russian foreign policy chief Sergey Lavrov stressed that the trade turnover between Russia and African countries reached a historical level of $24.5 billion in 2023. Moscow and countries of the continent are mulling trade settlement mechanisms that will allow them to avoid Western pressure.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that Africa is becoming a new center of power in the multipolar world.

Explore Sputnik's infographic to learn more about the trade turnover between Russia and African nations!

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