Citing the Kharkiv InformationAgency, Russian website Ukraina.ru published a story claiming that a Forbes columnist called Ukraine’s capital city Kyiv an economic black hole.
The article in question is an opinion piece by Doug Bandow and as such does not reflect the official view of the Forbes editorial team but rather the personal opinion of the author. This is Bandow’s second opinion piece in Forbes and his main argument is that Ukraine should forget about Crimea and not wait for help from the US or Europe.
Both the Kharkiv Information Agency and Ukraina.ru quote Bandow at length but one paragraph in particular is rendered completely inaccurately.
The paragraph reads “Bad behavior by Putin to be sure, and unjustified. But no one has clean hands, least of all the U.S., which bombs, invades, occupies, and divides other nations as it sees fit without concern for other nations’ interests, international law dictates, or likely consequences” is translated as “the US’s hands are especially dirty as it bombs, invades and divides other countries as it sees fit, ignoring international law and the interests of other countries”. There is no mention of Putin’s bad behavior or of everyone else’s unclean hands in the Russian version of Bandow’s opinion piece.
Doug Bandow was forced to resign from the libertarian CATO Institute after it became known that over a period of ten years he had been taking payments from a lobbyist in exchange for writing columns favorable to the lobbyist’s clients. The lobbyist Jack Abramoff was convicted of corruption and sentenced to six years in prison.
Both of Bandow’s opinion pieces for Forbes advocate dropping sanctions against Russia and remind Ukraine that it is on its own as neither the US nor Europe will hasten to help.
