This is the third and last segment of our interview with Denys Pilash. In a way, it’s the most important, because we get to an idea for a joint campaign. That is a campaign to seize the real assets – mainly real estate – of both the Russian and the Ukrainian oligarchs and use these assets to pay for the war. This would involve a campaign around the issue of money laundering. One last point that wasn’t raised in the interview but should be considered is also campaigning to seize the assets of the war profiteers, first and foremost the oil industry. Below is the video of the interview and below that is the transcript.

Denys Pilash
What hasn’t been destroyed by by the Russian missiles is being destroyed by Ukrainian private developers….

John Reimann
While we are cheering on Ukraine’s counter offense that seems to now be getting underway, we still must remember that this is still capitalism. And the class interests still continue In this final segment of our interview with Denys Pilash, we discussed how that aspect of the war can be raised – the class interest – and specifically, what lies behind the question of money laundering, and the call to seize the assets of Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, and the possibility of a campaign around that issue,

Denys Pilash
So, we need really to coordinate a campaign that would also go beyond just the situation of the post Soviet space, because the same applies to almost any region in the world, like in the global periphery and semi periphery, oligarch capitalists, their ruling classes, they just store there, the money and wealth they have robbed a country of in tax havens and in the West. So we need to address address this issue. And really, if a campaign, we have a full scale campaign, it would be quite important.

John Reimann
You know, the United States is the largest haven for offshoring money and for money laundering, the largest. I mean, they talk about the Cayman Islands, and Switzerland and so on. The United States dwarfs all of them. And Trump himself – that’s how he made his millions was laundering money for the for the Russian oligarchs. And all the attacks on Trump in the media here never mention that, because the entire real estate industry is just rampant with money laundering, mainly for the drug cartels. So what do you say about having a joint campaign around that?

Denys Pilash
It’s a part of this global inequality when you have people with this luxury that is, in a way ridiculous, and it’s in your face. Yes. And you have billions of people who have no access to some very basic utilities, and very unequal societies, which both a majority of Western European ones and the US one. We share this feature of the societies that we have, where very rich people on the top and everyone else is struggling. So because the people were driven by this resentment against oligarchs, driven with complete rejection of the model of this peripherial oligarchy capitalist, but these demands were never articulated by the mainstream political actors in Ukraine. So in words, they all are against oligarchs. So, the Zelensky himself, who was was dependent on Kolomoisky and then tried to distance himself from this oligarch. So he now claims that he is waging some kind of campaign against the oligarchs, but in a way, yes, he does, but it’s on the behalf of a bit less of capitalist. Yes. So they try to use the situation to take down these bigger fishes that the major sharks in Ukrainian oligarchic world and then make it more pluralistic with with more players and possibly international capital also pouring in in a bigger scale. But ultimately, yes, it’s just reshuffling inside the same system. It’s something that if you explain it in a very simple terms. So yes, it’s very, very understandable for for the people on both sides of the Atlantic.

John Reimann
(I raised the issue of money laundering, and the other corruption of the entire capitalist system, and how that’s really driving millions of people.)

Denys Pilash
Everyone understands that Ukrainian, Russian and other post Soviet oligarchs came to power while the process of primitive accumulation of capital that was indistinguishable from just some criminal activity in the ’90s. So, these are people who were very tied with the underworld and these are people who actually stole state property for nothing. Yes, they they paid minimal prices in the process of privatization. That was in a way something like again looting of the entire country. So here they obtained their well, some of them like Pinchuk, who was son of son in law of President Kuchma, was the primary architect of our oligarchy capitalist system. So he has these were people that were personally some manifestation of this conjecture of political and economical power, but also, obviously criminal dealings. And lots of these people, they still go with the same, the same traits and the same way of doing business. Like in 90s. It’s very criminal ones, it can intimidate, for instance, trade union activists, with some hired up sucks. And, yeah, these are people with no moral compass. So this actually, pretty much helps them in the in the 90s. And in the private, you know, this private estate, the developers in Ukrainian cities, they are as actual masters of Kiva and other other cities. So people like, Mayor Klitschko they are just, you know, some kind of servants for these real masters. What developers do to Ukrainian cities, it’s something terrible, so it’s like, lots of people would agree that actually, even now, in the times of full scale war, these people and their capital aredoing. What what hasn’t been destroyed by by the Russian missiles, is being destroyed by Ukrainian private developers, who actually destroy some public and green spaces throughout the cities, who destroy some historical buildings, in order to build more. I know shopping malls and something where they can not so much enriched himself as dust, again, do money laundering? Yes,

John Reimann
I asked about launching a campaign to seize the real estate and other assets that you Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs have hidden in the United States and elsewhere. And linking that with the question of money laundering.

Denys Pilash
I think that this this, that you mentioned, about the tax haven aspect, and the money laundering aspect, and the general corruption aspect, these are very essential pillars of the system, that they try to reproduce also in the post war reconstruction. So we need to, by presenting our vision of socially ecological genderally just reconstruction of Ukraine, we need to like work on these lines that we already discussed. They they must be very essential part of this. So I think that this type of campaign, especially when it’s in the frame reasons, this broader framework that everyone is speaking about, like how we will rebuild Ukraine, and who will be in charge of this and who will benefit from this and what will be the social labor and other guarantees for the ordinary people, including those who will be very essential for this process, like literally is construction workers who have to be in the heart of rebuilding infrastructure and rebuilding the apartments. So this is something that we need to address and I think that it’s quite important that you

John Reimann
I mean, it’s clearly connected to rebuilding Ukraine. But in the United States, I think that it can be raised and it should be raised very much in connection to the here and now.

Denys Pilash
Absolutely. Because, as I mentioned, it’s not just about the post war reconstruction, it’s about the wartime reconstruction was a war economy

John Reimann
Right. And who is going to pay for this war?

Denys Pilash
Yes, who is paying for the wars. And so it should be like point one that you see is expropriate the assets of Russian oligarchs. And then you have the Ukrainian oligarchs. So this is something that should be put forward as number one, demand. And also, they can claim that “Oh, but we did everything. We did all the sanctions stuff,” and so on. But then you go after all these loopholes inside the systems that actually provide for the oligarchs to use them and to hide their actual, like identities? And who is in charge? And who is who controls everything? So this needs, yes, to dismantle this general money laundering schemes in the US primarily, yes, and this is something that should be a good antidote to all this trash that is talked [about] by the likes of Tucker Carlson – about how Ukrainians, you know, “the most corrupt country in the world is Ukraine.” But actually, we understand that although Ukraine has big problems is corruption and the Eastern European countries also have other problems, but the root of the global corruption of the capitalist system is inside the United States. And this specifically is a sponsor of Tucker Carlson, his friends. So, yes.

John Reimann
And like I mentioned, which, incidentally, the left entirely neglects, but like I mentioned, about Trump, having been a money launderer for many years for the Russian oligarchs. And that kind of epitomizes what’s happening in in the US real estate industry, which is tied in with the banking and finance industry, which means the heart of capitalism itself. So I think just to wind up, it would be really useful – Would you be interested in in doing an introduction in which he’s spoke about, you know, these issues in a meeting of the Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign?

Denys Pilash
yes

John Reimann
Okay. Yeah.

John Reimann
So, with that, we’d like to thank Dennis very much for your time. And if you have any, like, final words that you’d like to leave for socialists and for workers here in the United States,

Denys Pilash
My main words would be also words of solidarity, because, like everywhere in the world, those on the socialist left in the US who really believe in the principles and the ideas of democratic socialism, and or revolutionary socialism, or libertarian socialism, and who actually do it in practice, these are people who are involved in pretty everyday struggles in labor movement, in feminist movement, in environmentalist movement, and in many, many others that comprise this general anti-capitalist front of struggles. So here from Ukraine. We also want to thank for your solidarity, and assure you of our support of social struggles waged by working and oppressed people in the United States.