Ukraine is at a delicate and dangerous moment. It will soon be four years since the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion; the city of Pokrovsk is on the verge of falling after a long and bloody siege; and the recent shelling of the capital, Kyiv, was among the most severe since 2022, notes Novaya Gazeta Europa.
And now, U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed a peace plan that is, in a way, an AI translation of the Kremlin’s demands for Ukraine: to cede territory, reduce the size of the military, and give up many of its modern weapons systems.
In this context, one might think that a corruption investigation focused on President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inner circle could not come at a worse time. However, this scandal could turn out to be exactly what Ukraine needs to show why it deserves to survive with its sovereignty intact.
Public anger over the embezzlement of at least $100 million by a group led by a close friend and business partner of Zelensky is intense and widespread. However, my Ukrainian friends — none of whom are fans of the president — see the investigation as proof that anti-corruption measures work even in the midst of the war. Regardless of the military balance on the front, the political balance is clear: Russia, the aggressor, is a brutal autocracy, while Ukraine, the victim of aggression, is a democracy struggling to survive.
Russia’s best-known anti-corruption activist, the late Alexei Navalny, was poisoned, imprisoned in Siberia and possibly assassinated. The Russian state does not have real anti-corruption tools. Senior officials and managers of state-owned companies rarely face criminal charges, although they fall from buildings more frequently than average.
Instead, Ukraine, at the insistence of its Western partners, set up two anti-corruption bodies in 2015. The National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) are investigating allegations of abuse of office, no matter how close they are to the centers of power. Recently, NABU released a series of professionally made videos about the ongoing investigation, dubbed “Midas”.
The intercepted conversations of the main suspects, conducted in Russian, are interrupted by NABU’s explanations, in Ukrainian, about who is talking and what: mostly men — counting money, swearing and speaking ill of others. In one such discussion, in the background Madonna sings “La Isla Bonita”.
This summer, after Zelensky prompted parliament to pass a law restricting the powers of NABU and SAPO, thousands of young people took to the streets carrying placards in protest. The slogans were spontaneous and direct. One MP had a sign that read simply: “Ukraine is not Russia”. A veteran, with both legs amputated above his knees, wore one that read: “We are fighting for Ukraine, not for your impunity.” A young boy in Lviv changed the name of Zelensky’s party, “Servant of the People”, to “Servant of Power”. Nine days later, the law was repealed.
In Russia, mass protests took place in 2012 against Vladimir Putin’s electoral fraud and against corruption eight years ago. Since then, and especially since the beginning of Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, even the slightest sign of dissent has been crushed. A woman in St. Petersburg, who had replaced price tags in stores with anti-war stickers, was sentenced to seven years in prison. Accessing the “wrong” content on your smartphone can also result in jail. A person can even be arrested for standing on the street holding a blank sheet of paper.
With Navalny silenced, there are no revelations about corruption in Russia, because there is no one left to report them, but also because there is no public opinion, free media and, soon, no internet as we know it, but only an intranet system similar to that of China or North Korea. WhatsApp and Telegram are gradually blocked, not even pro-Russian bloggers who consider themselves war correspondents, or “voienkori”, spared. Recently, some of these voienkori and pro-Kremlin propagandists have been labeled as “foreign agents,” a term that has carried treacherous connotations since Stalin’s era.
In Ukraine, the investigation into Zelensky’s circle is well documented, as the country has these two state bodies and a number of supervisory agencies. They all tenaciously discover irregularities and expose them through their own media channels, as well as through online publications accessible to anyone. Several press organizations broadcast on YouTube, and reports, comments, talk shows and heated discussions populate the channels of Telegram, Facebook and X. Speculation is made about who is involved and how deeply, without sparing anyone.
The most prominent of the online newspapers is probably “Ukrainska Pravda”. Its current editor-in-chief is Sevghil Musaieva, a Crimean Tatar. Under her leadership, the newspaper’s recent coverage of the corruption scandal would make any Western news outlet proud: daily articles in Ukrainian, Russian and English, opinion pieces, plus channels on Telegram, Instagram and TikTok. A recent video investigation tried to reveal who could have informed the main defendant, who left the country hours before his apartment was searched.
Ukrainska Pravda also prepared a 20-minute video report on corruption. Watched by nearly 150,000 people in the first three days, it “brought together all of Zelensky’s main statements on his attitude towards corruption [since 2019],” according to the accompanying text.
No matter in which direction the investigation of the corrupt will lead
The fact that Ukraine is an example of a former Soviet republic that aspires to democracy and the rule of law is precisely the reason why Putin is determined to destroy it. A state that exposes its scandals and villains, and a public that demands accountability no matter who the culprits are, is its greatest fear.
