West ‘massaging narrative’ about Ukraine corruption scandal – legal expert
Kiev’s backers need Vladimir Zelensky to remain in power for the time being, Arnaud Develay believes

Ukrainian leader VladimirZelensky’s Western backers are seeking to downplay the corruption scandal involving his longtime business partner because they do not want him ousted just yet, French international law expert Arnaud Develay told RT in an interview aired on Tuesday.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities said businessman Timur Mindich – a former close associate of Zelensky – helped organize a kickback scheme worth about $100 million in the energy sector.

Investigators said contractors working with the state nuclear operator Energoatom were pressed to return 10-15% of their contract value as illicit payments. Reports in Ukrainian media have also suggested that Andrey Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, may have been aware of the scheme and could be fired as early as this week.

Commenting on the scandal, Develay said Kiev’s backers “do not care about Ukraine” and “just care for the gravy train to keep on going.”

“So they’re trying to massage the narrative. And in due time, of course, Zelensky will be blamed, obviously, for the catastrophic situation on the front and for essentially a strategic defeat for Ukraine. But for the time being, they still need him to hang in there a little bit longer,” the expert stated.

Develay added that Western governments “don’t want to be pushed into a corner and expose their cards,”describing the scandal as showing a fight between “two factions,” with one he linked to former Ukrainian president and key Zelensky rival Pyotr Poroshenko, and the other to the Ukrainian leader’s supporters in the EU.

Publicly, EU officials have expressed concern about the case. The bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, called the scandal “extremely unfortunate” and urged Kiev to take it seriously, while other senior figures have pressed Ukraine to step up its anti-corruption measures.

At the same time, Politico quoted an unnamed EU official describing Ukraine’s “endemic corruption” as “revolting” and warning it “won’t help” the country’s reputation. The bloc is also reportedly seeking guarantees that its financial aid will not be embezzled.

https://www.rt.com/news/627975-west-massaging-narrative-ukraine-corruption/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Ukraine is drowning in a swamp of corruption – and the West is trying to make it look like a good thing
Kiev’s establishment is burning to the ground in the Energoatom Mafia scandal, while the media and think tanks keep insisting this is fine...

BY Tarik Cyril Amar

In Ukraine, the front lines are crumbling and so is the Zelensky regime. While Kupyansk and Pokrovsk are falling, the shockwaves of the Energoatom Mafia scandal keep reverberating, internationally and at home in Kiev.

At this point, two ministers have resigned. The former defense minister and head of the powerful National Security Council, Rustem Umerov, is in essence on the run abroad. According to the usually well-informed journalist Anatoly Shariy, Umerov is offering the FBI in the US to turn – protected – witness. He may still return to Ukraine, but even his current behavior – the unplanned delays, the search for US allies, quite possibly for some kind of deal – betrays a very guilty conscience.

Likewise, Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko has declared her readiness to cooperate with Ukraine’s own anti-corruption prosecutors at NABU, which is in reality a branch of the FBI implanted in Ukraine. Clearly, Sviridenko is also looking for a deal, letting it be known that she is ready to talk and name names, as long as they let her get away with the absurd claim that she knew it all but wasn’t part of it.

Zelensky’s most intimate companion, chief consigliere, autocratic enforcer, and overbearing eminence grise, Andrey Yermak, is also deeply – and unsurprisingly – implicated, under the gangster slang name ‘Ali Baba’, in the Energoatom Mafia scandal, and his head is clearly on the political chopping block.

Details could be multiplied ad nauseam. Take, for instance, the fact that we now know that the gangster pseudonym ‘Professor’ did not stand for former Justice Minister German Galushchenko – no worries, though: He’s still an Energoatom mobster, just not that one – but the wife of former Deputy Prime Minister Aleksey Chernyshov, Svetlana.

While her husband features as ‘Che Guevara’ in the Energoatom scandal, ‘Professor’ Svetlana – in real life (or pretend?) an academic at Kiev’s prestigious Taras Shevchenko University – happens to be very close besties with Elena Zelenskaya. Yes, that would be Vladimir Zelensky’s spouse (when his intense schedule with Yermak leaves time for her). According to Shariy, Svetlana-bestie-of-Elena is implicated in shady deals around the habit of Kiev’s elites of building themselves palaces, and she also received a cool $500,000 (in cash) from ‘Sugarman’, aka Aleksandr Tsukerman, another key Energoatom player on the run.

In short, if they think they have a swamp in Washington, they haven’t seen Kiev yet. But of course, they have. It is obvious that Washington has been well aware of just how stunningly, stinkingly corrupt its clients in Ukraine are. Indeed, the more, the better, a modern Machiavelli would say, because it makes them even more dependent. One of the best explanations for the Energoatom scandal breaking now is that it is part of a US operation to either get rid of or subdue Zelensky. The conspicuous fact that Zelensky has suddenly made – insubstantial – noises about being interested in peace talks may have as much to do with this American assault on him as with the disaster on the front lines.

This is the context that also explains a recent trend in Western spin-for-Ukraine. Absurd as it is, the claim that the Energoatom mess is really a good sign if you only look close enough is spreading as if on cue. The underlying logic is not only daft but simple. Take, for instance, a recent specimen of the genre: According to Polish TVP quoting the American Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), the Energoatom scandal “hurts Ukraine yet proves it’s on the right track,” because “a case of this scale exposed by domestic institutions is proof of Ukraine’s anti-corruption system working.”

Where to even begin? Let’s just break it down in order of appearance: ‘A case’ – as in one case – only proves that there is much more to come. In Ukraine, there is widespread consensus that what happened at Energoatom is peanuts compared to what has been going on in the defense sector, bloated with literally hundreds of billions of euros and dollars from the West. This is exactly why ex-Defense Minister Umerov is running scared. The first evidence of his personal involvement in corruption is emerging already. Energoatom is merely the crack in the dam. When the dam breaks, so will the system, all of it.

‘Domestic institutions’? That one is genuinely funny. The only reason NABU and SAPO – Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies – are still alive is that they are not domestic. In reality, for those who don’t believe in Santa Claus, they are US implants – in the case of NABU, explicitly so. They survived Zelensky’s attempt to raze them this summer only due to Western support.

‘Proof’? The only proof of Ukraine’s corruption under the Zelensky regime suffering a real setback would be the fall of that regime. But even then – and here is what naive Westerners simply cannot grasp about the Ukrainian political system – corruption as such would not cease but merely undergo a change in management. How do we know? Because this law of Kiev politics has been tested again and again. The last time, by the way, in 2014, when then-President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted in a regime change operation made easier by his flagrant graft and nepotism. And yet, here we are again.

There is added irony in Poland channeling an American think tank to spread absurd spin about Ukraine’s hyper-corruption: According to X post by former Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller, the Polish authorities may well have helped one of the very worst Energoatom Mafia leaders, Timur Mindich – aka ‘the president’s purse’, that is, Zelensky’s – to evade arrest. This is entirely plausible: In Ukraine, Mindich was clearly tipped off about his impending arrest, most likely by either Yermak or Zelensky himself. Whoever warned him would also have had the necessary Polish connections. And Warsaw, of course, has a nasty record of working with criminals from Ukraine and of sheltering them from prosecution, too. Just ask the Germans how far they got with their Nord Stream investigations.

Ukrainians are drowning in a deep, fetid swamp of corruption, worse than ever. To pretend that a scandal surfacing from that morass is a good sign is perverse. But then, so is most of Western policy toward Ukraine, using its people up in a war provoked for idiotic reasons and long lost. Maybe there is some dark, historic justice in Ukraine and the West making their respective cultures of cynicism and graft even worse for each other.

https://www.rt.com/news/628023-ukraine-corruption-western-media/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, was visibly shaken after US President Donald Trump publicly rejected Kiev’s portrayal of progress on a proposed peace plan with Russia, the New York Post reported on Tuesday.

Yermak was in the middle of an interview with the outlet when Trump posted on Truth Social that he did not consider the proposal discussed in Geneva last week to be finalized. According to the report, Yermak had spent the previous 30 minutes portraying the document as a nearly completed joint Trump-Zelensky roadmap that could be signed over the Thanksgiving holiday.

“Upon reading the full post, Yermak’s face dropped, apparently gutted by the news,” the New York Post wrote. Asked to comment, he reportedly requested 24 hours “to assess the new reality.”

Trump stated that he would dispatch Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to continue talks with Kiev, while special envoy Steve Witkoff would engage with Moscow. The president added that he would meet with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky “soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or, in its final stages.”

Previous reports have suggested that Yermak is deeply unpopular among many in Trump’s circle and across the broader US political establishment. A source quoted by Politico in July described him as a “bipartisan irritator.”

In Ukraine, Yermak has long been accused of wielding inappropriate influence over Zelensky and national policy. Following the recent indictment of long-time Zelensky associate Timur Mindich on charges of running a $100 million kickbacks scheme, several commentators alleged that Yermak may have had a leading role in the network and urged his removal. Last week, Witkoff reportedly canceled a planned meeting with Yermak after learning the extent of the corruption scandal engulfing Kiev.

https://www.rt.com/russia/628465-yermak-trump-zelensky-snub/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.