The Plunder of Ukraine: A Story of Debt, Greed, and Betrayal

As war rages, Ukraine faces a second invasion—one of debt, privatization, and resource plunder. Under the guise of aid, global powers are seizing its land and wealth, threatening its future.

Open pit mine. Credit: Evgeny_V via Shutterstock

The systematic plundering of Ukraine by international financial institutions and governments is underway.  As history has shown in countless other countries, predatory terms will cripple Ukraine’s future, a continuation of war, by other means. This is colonization in action—not through military conquest, but through economic enslavement, that will bind Ukraine in perpetual debt and subjugation.

Ukraine is home to some of the world’s richest agricultural land and vast mineral deposits, including critical rare earth elements. Today, it is being sacrificed to the international community, its natural wealth placed on the altar of global capital. Her fertile land, water, and fragile ecosystems stand on the brink of exploitation—viewed not as living, sustaining forces, but as mere "natural resources" for extraction, debt collateral for creditors, and fuel for industrial appetites.

We will hear the familiar rhetoric of "green energy," "sustainability," and "digital transformation," but behind these words lies a brutal reality: a feeding frenzy cloaked in the language of progress. The word we should be screaming is STOP!

Ukraine is at a crossroads, trapped between war, crushing debt, and mounting pressure to privatize its land and resources. Its agricultural wealth and critical minerals make it a prime target for financial and corporate extraction. International predators are circling.

At the center of this crisis is a proposed U.S.-Ukraine rare earth minerals deal worth, we are told,  up to $500 billion—a deal that would place a significant share of Ukraine’s resources under U.S. control, under the guise of post-war reconstruction and repaying Ukraine for America’s war-time assistance.

The battle for Ukraine’s sovereignty is not only being fought on the battlefield—it is being waged in boardrooms, debt agreements, and privatization schemes. If this course is not challenged, the lasting economic servitude will compound the war’s physical destruction.

My Personal Connection to Ukraine

Ukraine holds a deep and inexplicable place in my heart, shaped in part by the hauntingly beautiful documentary The Babushkas of Chernobyl. This film tells the story of courageous women who, despite health warnings, returned to their homes inside the Exclusion Zone after the Chernobyl disaster. Their love for the land, their resilience, and their unwavering commitment to life left an indelible mark on me. These women embodied the land itself—bound to it as inextricably as the mycelial networks running through the soil, the women were the very nervous system of the country.

Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, one of my closest friends—a highly trained, battle-tested Marine corpsman with multiple tours in the Middle East—felt an unshakable responsibility to protect. Without hesitation, he flew directly to Ukraine to serve and defend.

While we may have differed in our approaches to the war, we each sought to contribute in the ways we knew best to protect and alleviate unnecessary suffering. He, through his actions on the front lines; me, alongside Dennis Kucinich, working to promote diplomatic solutions and prevent further escalation of the conflict. Dennis has been a vocal advocate for peace, urging negotiations to end the war and warning against the dangers of prolonged military engagement.

And yet today, the U.S.  is poised to seize control of Ukraine’s vast mineral wealth.  It is called a partnership.

The $500 Billion Question

During President Zelenskyy’s scheduled visit to Washington, a deal is set to be signed granting the U.S. access to Ukraine’s critical minerals—titanium, lithium, uranium and graphite —resources essential to aerospace, defense, and renewable energy industries. Framed by President Trump as a form of repayment for U.S. military aid, this agreement raises profound concerns about Ukraine’s economic and ecological future.

Critics warn that the unchecked extraction of these resources by foreign interests could leave Ukraine stripped of its natural wealth while bearing the environmental consequences. With no long-term security guarantees from the U.S. and increasing pressure for Europe to take on Ukraine’s defense, this deal, as presently defined, exposes a deeper, more insidious reality:

Ukraine—arguably Europe’s most resource-rich nation—has been driven into debt and is now being systematically carved up by the international community. War or no war, Ukraine loses.

Geopolitical Chess - Color Revolutions and Western Control 

The 2004 Orange Revolution marked a significant shift in Ukraine’s political landscape. Officially framed as a democratic movement, the U.S. provided approximately $65 million in the years leading up to the election to fund opposition groups and civil society initiatives. Though presented as support for free elections, this assistance was designed to move Ukraine away from adjacent Russia and closer to Western institutions like NATO and the European Union.

A decade later, the 2014 Maidan coup, supported by U.S. and European interests, removed a democratically elected president who was pursuing a balanced approach between Russia and the EU.

Since then, Ukraine has been subject to IMF-imposed austerity, agricultural land reform, and energy deregulation—all designed to open national assets to foreign ownership. Ukraine’s vast and fertile land is now in the crosshairs of multinational agribusinesses, financial institutions, and political powers eager to exploit its economic, social and political vulnerability.

The Push for Privatization: A Trojan Horse

Ukraine’s agricultural sector has long been recognized for its fertile black soil (chernozem), which has supported both large-scale grain exports and smallholder farming. In recent years, Ukraine developed a growing organic agriculture sector, exporting high-quality grains and oilseeds, particularly to European markets. However, the push for land privatization threatens to upend this progress, shifting agriculture toward the high-input, industrialized farming which characterizes Western agriculture.

For decades, Ukraine maintained a moratorium on selling agricultural land, protecting small farmers from corporate land grabs. That changed in 2021 when, under pressure from the IMF and World Bank, Ukraine lifted the ban, allowing farmland to be sold to private investors. Framed as modernization, this move has paved the way for land consolidation by foreign agribusinesses and oligarchs, endangering Ukraine’s food sovereignty and ecological balance.

The Debt Trap: A Future of Financial Dependence

The word "mortgage" comes from Old French, literally meaning "death pledge"—a trap that binds borrowers in a cycle of repayment that can last a lifetime. Ukraine’s debt burden has skyrocketed, with billions in loans from the IMF, World Bank, and Western governments.

The BlackRock-led Ukraine Development Fund alone is expected to raise at least $15 billion, adding to an already unsustainable financial load. Reconstruction costs are estimated at over $400 billion—an amount far beyond Ukraine’s revenue capacity. The result? A cycle of perpetual debt, ensuring that Ukraine remains a vassal state to Western financial interests.

The Mortgage Theory of Money Creation and Ukraine’s Financial Crisis

Ukraine operates under a debt-based monetary system where money is created primarily through loans issued by private banks. This is not a new phenomenon; the entire world has been mortgaged in this way. The African continent has been particularly prone to this model, where vast tracts of land have been leveraged as collateral for debt and financial speculation, often under the guise of development and investment.

Similarly, the process of land enclosures in Europe centuries ago set the stage for this system, as land was privatized and used to back the creation of money, disenfranchising local populations and concentrating wealth in the hands of financial elites.

The result is a cycle in which nations must continually borrow to sustain their economies, often at the cost of their sovereignty. Ukraine's current financial crisis is a direct product of this system.

Rather than addressing the structural flaws of debt-driven money creation, Western financial institutions are using Ukraine’s economic vulnerability as leverage to push for land privatization and resource selloffs. This ensures that wealth continues to flow upward to multinational corporations and financial elites while the Ukrainian people bear the costs.

The Illusion of Aid and the Reality of Exploitation

Despite promises of aid and investment, financial subjugating is being imposed on Ukraine, through privatization of land and resources, increased foreign debt, and forced economic restructuring.  None is this is designed to help Ukraine recover. It is designed to extract its wealth and ensure dependence on Western institutions for generations to come.

Countries subjected to IMF-led restructuring programs rarely recover to become independent, self-sustaining economies. Instead, they become locked into cycles of debt repayment, resource extraction, and foreign exploitation.

A Sovereign Path Forward: The NEED Act and Financial Independence

Is it conceivable that Ukraine has a path forward without being subjected to further exploitation tantamount to economic slavery?  Yes. A monetary reform bill, presented to Congress more than a decade ago, could hold a key to Ukraine’s economic freedom.

The National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act, originally introduced in the U.S. Congress, presents a compelling alternative to Ukraine’s current financial trajectory. Rooted in sovereign monetary reform, it advocates for a debt-free, publicly controlled money system that eliminates reliance on private banks for money creation.

Applying these principles to Ukraine could allow the country to achieve economic stability without resorting to land privatization or exploitative foreign investment deals. Sovereign money creation would enable Ukraine to fund its own recovery, protect its national assets, and break free from the predatory lending practices of Western financial institutions.

Ukraine’s True Battle: Sovereignty vs. Subjugation

What we are witnessing is colonization. Ukraine is being absorbed into the Western financial empire—not as an equal partner, but as a debt-ridden state forced to surrender its sovereignty in return for economic survival.

If Ukraine, or any nation, is to escape this fate, it must resist external pressures and embrace financial models that prioritize self-reliance and long-term stability. A genuine path to independence lies in rejecting the financial coercion of the West and implementing sovereign economic systems that put national well-being ahead of foreign interests.

At the heart of this plunder is the long-standing system of debt-based monetary reforms, pushed by Western creditors and financial institutions. These so-called “reforms” demand deep austerity, the privatization of essential assets, and, in this case, the opening of Ukraine’s economy to unrestricted foreign control by Ukraine’s “friends.”

History has shown this playbook before, and the results are always the same. From Latin America to Africa to post-Soviet Eastern Europe, nations subjected to these policies have not found prosperity but have instead been trapped in cycles of debt, poverty, and economic dependence. Such policies do not rebuild nations—they strip them bare, reducing them to debt slaves while their natural wealth is siphoned away by foreign interests.

The international community failed to stand for peace when it mattered most, allowing Ukraine to be drawn into war and driven into an ever-deepening financial hole. Now, they must redeem themselves—not by offering more predatory loans, not by coveting and extracting Ukraine’s resources, but by enabling true economic sovereignty for Ukraine. That means canceling odious debts, rejecting privatization schemes that benefit only foreign corporations, and ensuring Ukraine’s vast natural wealth remains in the hands of its own people. Anything less continues the war against Ukraine by other means.

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For more background on sovereign money, money as debt and the NEED Act, read my earlier article, Breaking the Debt Chains: Exposing the myths of tax, spend and borrow.