HOw The Greed And Corruption Of Zelensky And His Cronies Has Undermined Ukraine's Ability To Defend Itself

The confrontation between Vladimir Zelensky’s entourage and the anti-corruption agencies is escalating. The Ukrainian president’s shadow purse is under attack. What role do the US, Europe and Russia play in the internal political strife within the president’s office?

As we reported yesterday on November 10 this year, Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) initiated large-scale searches of a number of state organisations and companies. Operation “Midas” was 15 months in the making, with 1,000 hours of audio recordings collected during the preparation phase. The activities of a high-level criminal organisation were documented as evidence that its members had established a widespread corruption scheme to influence strategic enterprises in the public sector, particularly National Nuclear Energy Company ‘Energoatom’.

Just a few hours before the searches and arrests began, several oligarchs with links to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky left the country urgently. These included Timur Mindich and the Zuckerman brothers, Mikhail and Alexander. Clearly, they had been warned of the raids in advance.

Timur Mindich is no stranger to scandal, his involvement in skimming off ash from funds donated by the USA, UK, Germany and other NATO members were well known and his extravagances notorious. The photo below shows the golden toilet and bidet in his Kiev apartment, in which a listening device had been installed. Volodymyr Zelensky and his inner circle celebrated his birthday there during the pandemic. During the election campaign, the leadership of the Servant of the People party would sometimes gather in this apartment.

The golden toilets we mentioned in yesterday's post (picure: SouthFront press)

NABU investigators have long suspected Mindich of leading a criminal group. He is a co-owner of the ‘Kvartal 95’ company and was previously closely associated with the comedy activities of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Due to these close ties, it is reported that he is the shadow holder of the Ukrainian president’s assets. The criminal organisation’s main activity before the war was systematically receiving illegal benefits from Energoatom’s contractors, amounting to 10–15% of the contract value.

What NABU's investigation has discovered is not the expected corruption at the margins of Ukrainian government, it was corruption in the beating heart of the Ukrainian state. A €100 million racket buried inside Energoatom, the national nuclear operator, the very company responsible for keeping Ukrainians alive through winter. Contracts for nuclear shielding, grid repair, wartime fortifications, emergency infrastructure, all siphoned, skimmed, or padded for insiders tied directly to Zelensky’s orbit. This isn’t a flaw in the system, it is the system. NABU described it as a “high-level criminal organization.” 

In any other country, that phrase alone would trigger resignations at the top. In Ukraine, it triggers another round of Western funding, this time via Germany. Because as Energoatom burns under criminal investigation, as Galushchenko and Hrynchuk are forced out, and as Mindich slips out  of the back door, Berlin steps forward with a fresh €40 million for Ukraine’s energy sector. Not after reforms. Not after audits. Not after accountability. But during the scandal. Inside the scandal. Directly into the same corrupt structures NABU is now prosecuting. 

This is state-enabled money laundering, funded by German taxpayers. Berlin’s message is clear: German industry can collapse, German families can freeze, German public debt can explode, but the billion dollar wire transfers to Kiev must never stop.  One has to wonder how much of western taxpayers money sent to the crooked, crazy, neo - Nazi - Ukies is finding its way back, via a network of fixers, money launderers and shell companies registered in tax havens to the pockets of western politicians and bureaucrats. But while the money keeps flowing it's no wonder the irrational demands of Zelensky and his cronies have derailed every peace initiative.

The people in Washington and Brusels, Belgium (location of EU and NATO administrative headquarters,) told the world the Maidan coup in 2013, which deposed a corrupt but democratically elected pro - Russian government,  was about fighting corruption. They promised a new era of transparency, accountability, Western values, and rule of law. They said the revolution was a revolt against Yanukovych’s villas and golden toilets. And yet it is Volodymyr Zelensky, through his proxies, allies, and network, who has outdone in coruption and self enrichment, every corrupt predecessor combined, since Ukraine gained independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Germany’s €40 million is is evidence of complicity, proof that Western governments would rather bankroll a collapsing puppet regime than admit their frontline democracy in the proxy war with Russia is a Mafia state. The gangsters are not stealing from the state, they ARE the state.

 Meanwhile, 71% of Ukrainians say corruption has grown worse since the war began. They see the golden toilets returning, not in the mansions of 2014, but in the apartments of Zelensky’s own circle. They see casting agencies magically turned into drone manufacturers with no-bid contracts. They see ministers resign only when the evidence becomes impossible to bury. They see a revolution betrayed, not by Russia, but by those who waved its flag for Western applause. 

Independent Ukraine was not destroyed by corruption. It was built on corruption marketed as virtue, and financed by Europe’s working class. So no more lectures from Brussels about “rule of law.” No more sermons from Berlin about “fighting autocracy.” No more hollow virtue-signaling from the same governments wiring billions into offshore accounts while their own citizens freeze, their industries crumble, and their pensioners ration heat. 

Germany is collapsing its industrial base to bankroll golden toilets in Kiev. French families are tightening belts while drone contractors linked to Zelensky throw champagne-soaked galas. A Labour government (the party of the working class allegedly,) in the UK withdraws pensioners' fuel allowance but can always find money to fund Ukraine's latest insane provocation of Russia, The EU has sacrificed its farmers, its manufacturers, and its energy independence on the altar of a regime now proven to be more corrupt than the one Maidan overthrew. 

NATO leaders told you Maidan was about ending corruption. About breaking free from oligarchy. About a sovereign Ukrainian future rooted in European values, the European Union and NATO. Instead, it’s become the most expensive lie Europe has ever told itself, a lie so deep that the only way out now is to keep funding it, no matter how much it smells like decay. The curtain has fallen. The myth lies in pieces. And the  characters? They’re cashing out, stepping over the wreckage, and heading for Monaco, Abu Dhabi, The Seychelles etc.

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