Posted by January 07, 2025 UP DATED BY WATCHERS AUGUST 2025
THERE IS FIVE YEARS BETWEEN THIS PHOTOS
Who is Alexander Dubinsky? He was born in Kyiv in 1981 into a family of engineers. He holds four higher education degrees: in engineering, taxation, economics, and public administration. While studying, he was also involved in business in the field of radio electronics. In 2004, he began his career as a financial journalist at Economic News, the first daily business newspaper in Ukraine. From 2006 to 2008, he was recognized as the best financial journalist in Ukraine for three consecutive years.
In 2009, Dubinsky transitioned into management, first leading a general interest weekly, and in 2010, he was offered the opportunity to create the first investigative journalism program in Ukraine at the 1+1 TV channel. He became the creative producer of the program and later its host. Under his leadership, the news programming on 1+1 developed and was repeatedly recognized as the best in Ukraine.
Start of the political career
In 2019, Alexander Dubinsky began his political career by supporting Volodymyr Zelensky as a presidential candidate. At the same time, he became one of the most outspoken critics of then-president Petro Poroshenko. Dubinsky’s publications and investigations exposing Poroshenko’s activities played a significant role in Zelensky’s victory. That same year, Dubinsky became a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, winning a seat in the district of Poroshenko’s long-time ally and leader of his parliamentary faction, I. Kononenko.
In Zelensky’s team, Alexander took the position of deputy chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Financial, Tax, and Customs Policy. He quickly became one of the most popular politicians in the country. At the same time, Dubinsky positioned himself as an internal whistleblower, accusing individual members of the “Servant of the People” faction and government members of corruption. Fighting corruption, including holding Poroshenko and his entourage accountable, remained his key priority.
In 2019, Zelensky asked Dubinsky to take part in the creation of a parliamentary investigative committee to investigate international corruption. In the course of working on this important project, Dubinsky joined a press conference where he revealed budgetary theft from the Ukrainian state budget through a scheme involving state bonds and manipulations with oil and gas extraction permits. As an example, he cited the scheme organized by former ecology minister Zlochevsky through the Burisma company. The money siphoned from the Ukrainian budget through this company was used to buy political influence from Hunter Biden, influencing his father, US Vice President Joe Biden, in 2019.
In 2020, Zelensky asked Dubinsky to continue investigating the corruption of the Biden family and take part in press conferences where recordings of conversations between Joe Biden and Petro Poroshenko were to be presented. The goal was to hold Poroshenko accountable for state treason and international corruption. However, Dubinsky refused to participate in these events and declined the offer to head the parliamentary commission on the matter, which was created without his involvement. Dubinsky warned Zelensky and his office head Ermak that this could be seen as interference in the US presidential elections.
Despite his refusal, Dubinsky continued his anti-corruption work both internationally and nationally. His efforts earned him strong support among voters. In early 2020, he was appointed head of the election campaign in the Kherson region, and in the summer, he became the head of the party in the Kyiv region. With a 11% rating, Dubinsky was considered a potential candidate for mayor of Kyiv from the presidential party, but Zelensky asked him to withdraw in favor of another candidate approved by the party.
In the local elections in October 2020, Dubinsky secured the best result for the president’s party across Ukraine. However, after Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential election in November, Zelensky shifted political alignment towards the Democratic Party of the United States, closed probe in Ukraine against Joe Biden, and ceased communication with Dubinsky.
Soon, a media campaign to discredit Dubinsky began.
In January 2021, based on a denunciation from a Soros-funded NGO cooperating with Zelensky’s Office, Dubinsky was sanctioned with politically motivated OFAC sanctions for “public association (appearing at a press conference) in 2019 with Derkach.” For Dubinsky, it was immediately clear that these sanctions were revenge from the Biden administration for his participation in the press conference about corruption schemes involving Burisma. It was also clear that these sanctions were coordinated with Zelensky and Ermak, who at that time had close ties with Biden’s circle. Zelensky publicly threatened Dubinsky with criminal prosecution. Here’s an interview published on the official website of the President’s Office where Zelensky speaks about threats to Dubinsky. It’s also a fact, that Dubinsky is sanctioned in Russia by Russian government from 2021.
In January 2021, Zelensky (right during his birthday celebration) called Dubinsky to the stage and in front of the whole faction demanded that he resign from all party positions and leave the faction, to which Dubinsky publicly refused.
Just a few days later, a probe was opened against Dubinsky on suspicion of tax evasion dating back to 1998 when he was 17. The procedure for his expulsion from the faction also began. In March 2021, Dubinsky publicly presented his version of the events at a press conference and became a staunch opponent of Zelensky.
In the summer of 2021, the leader of the “Servant of the People” faction, David Arakhamia, proposed a deal to Dubinsky: either stop criticizing Zelensky and the statements regarding the Ukrainian origin of the Biden-Poroshenko recordings, or he would be accused of state treason. At the same time investigations by US senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley into Antony Blinken lying to Congress about his communications with Hunter Biden was started in the U.S. This investigation also would raise questions about Blinken’s involvement in organizing a letter from 51 former US intelligence officials, which began the narrative that Hunter Biden’s work with Burisma was Russian disinformation. According to the report, published in July of 2023 by House of Representatives, this letter was an attempt to discredit the real data from Hunter Biden’s laptop, which contained information about Burisma, and present it as part of Russian disinformation. The report opened the truth how Blinken was coordinating the publication and preparation of this letter.
The situation became more complicated when, against the backdrop of a House of Representatives investigation, it became clear that the main goal of the US Democratic Party was to stop the development of the Burisma issue and present it as a Russian intelligence disinformation. Dubinsky’s public statements that the corruption investigations involving the Bidens in Ukraine had no ties to Russia – threatened to undermine this narrative.
The convenient moment to strengthen this narrative was provided by the war between Russia and Ukraine. In this situation, the topic of Burisma and the data from Hunter Biden’s laptop became a useful tool for solidifying the “Russian trace” version and discrediting Donald Trump.
How Ukraine concealed the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop and Burisma
In the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a secret prison called the “gym” was organized in the central headquarters of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), under the leadership of SBU chief Ivan Bakanov (Zelensky’s childhood friend and business partner from the “Kvartal-95” studio) and his first deputy Vasyl Maluk. The existence of this prison was later confirmed by the United Nations report on human rights.
Here are excerpts from the UN report:
Who Watches the Watchers? 