The son of the ex-US president acknowledged he had been “naïve” about the level of kleptocracy in the country
Ukraine is a “viper’s den” rife with corruption, Hunter Biden, the son of former US President Joe Biden, has said, as he reflected on his time as a board member of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Hunter Biden was hired by Burisma in 2014 when his father served as vice president in the Obama administration, leaving the post in 2019. He reportedly earned approximately $1 million annually, with critics pointing out that he lacked any experience in the energy sector and was effectively “cashing in” on his father’s prominent position.
In an interview on The Shawn Ryan Show aired on Monday, Hunter expressed regret about his involvement in Ukraine’s affairs. “It was a mistake because I was very, very naive about what a viper’s den Ukraine is“.
What an absolute… level of corruption that [is] still staggering because they’re part of a kleptocracy,” he added.
He went on to explain that he believed his tenure in Burisma to be a blunder, “not because of anything that I did that I am embarrassed about or in any way whatsoever feel conflicted about as it relates to what I did for Burisma. But because of the political position that it put us all in.”
The Biden family has long been entangled in controversy over Burisma, with The New York Times reporting last August that Hunter Biden sought assistance for the company from the US ambassador to Italy in 2016. Hunter’s legal team described the outreach as a “proper request,” stressing that it did not lead to any projects.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden publicly acknowledged that he was responsible for the dismissal of Ukrainian Prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the company, by threatening Kiev to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees unless the official was fired.
Ukraine has long been reeling under endemic corruption, with the problem only exacerbating after the escalation of Kiev’s conflict with Moscow in 2022. A poll by Info Sapiens this spring suggested that almost 80% of Ukrainians deem the graft a very serious issue, while the EU has designated corruption as one of the key obstacles towards Kiev’s membership in the bloc.
