During the early hours of Thursday 28th September on Radio Five Live a caller phoned in to make a comment about Russian interference with the presidential election and that Facebook claims to be neutral. Suddenly everything began to sound garbled and the program moved quickly onto news about a 163 carat diamond which was to go on a world tour to eventually be auctioned off in Hong Kong. listeners were told that they would return to the item but never did.

Because this item of news of Russian interference is so persistent and keeps returning, it also serves as a reminder about a radio program which had recordings of interviews with Ukrainian students who were being paid up to $5000 to generate stories during the time running up to the US Presidential Election.

I thought this was interesting and it kept coming to mind, firstly that the legitimately elected leader had been ousted in a coup de tat and also that UK soft power has been injected into the area. So the underlying question was is there a connection with this and could the money paid to the students be traced to the source. Of course I never really made the effort to find out but this morning I became very interested so I later did a search while travelling by bus, out of curiosity.

It seems that the Ukraine is a very poor Country and an immigrant to the UK expressed that she hates the Ukraine and never wants to return because there is nothing there for them and this emotion surprised me because otherwise she came across as very pure in heart.

So it would be easy to understand how the bright minds of the Ukraine would readily take up this offer to put their creativity to work.

Here is what I came across during the bus journey:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/16/ukraine-andrei-derkach-clinton-investigation-241704