US blacklists Ukrainians who aided attacks on Biden

Four Ukrainians who aided President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani in an election campaign effort to smear Democrat Joe Biden have been sanctioned by the US Treasury.

They are former Ukrainian government officials Konstantin Kulyk, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, Andriy Telizhenko, and current Ukraine lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinsky.

The Treasury said they were called part of an effort led by “Russian agent” Andrii Derkach to undermine Biden’s presidential run.

All four were in contact with or met with Giuliani in late 2019 as he sought to compile evidence that now President-elect Biden and his son Hunter were involved in corruption in Ukraine.

That effort was made just as Trump himself faced impeachment for his own allegedly corrupt use of political pressure on Ukraine’s government to provide dirt on the Bidens.

Working with already-sanctioned Derkach, the four “coordinated dissemination and promotion of fraudulent and unsubstantiated allegations involving a US political candidate,” the Treasury said.