Friedman is not the first one. He has already won a prestigious Pulitzer Prize three times: twice for his foreign reporting and once for his opinion pieces in ‘The New York Times’.
In a column he wrote this week about the controversial visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, the war in Ukraine was also mentioned. According to him, that war is far from over and there is a “deep mistrust” from the US towards Zelensky.
“In private conversations, US officials are far more concerned about the leadership in Ukraine than they openly reveal,” Friedman writes. “There is a deep mistrust between the White House and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky — considerably deeper than is reported.”
He refers, among other things, to the “strange things” that are happening in Kiev. Zelensky, for example, suddenly dismissed two key figures from his security services on 17 July. They were Ivan Bakanov, who has headed the Ukrainian secret service since 2019, and Irina Venediktova, who was the Attorney General. Venediktova also led the investigation into more than 18,000 cases of alleged war crimes.
A reason for the double resignation was never given. “As if we don’t want to look too deep under the hood in Kiev for fear of what corruption or antics we might see,” Friedman said.