‘The path to wealth is mostly illicit. It’s easy for people like me’

Since independence, Ukraine’s oligarchs have shaped its politics and economy, often with state complicity. Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to clean up the system, but even the war has only clipped their wings.

When he won the 2019 presidential election with 73% of the vote, Volodymyr Zelensky promised a new era. After decades of national politics being carved up among a group of oligarchs, he benefited from the perception that he was a decent man who had become a politician by accident, like the character he played in the hit television series Servant of the People. Six years later, he is facing his country’s biggest corruption scandal since the Russian invasion of February 2022.

In mid-November last year, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) revealed the existence of a system that extorted bribes estimated to total more than $100m from subcontractors of Energoatom, the state-owned operator of the country’s civil nuclear sector. This corruption further weakened an electricity grid which is regularly targeted by Russian bombs and already suffers from opaque governance.

The revelations cost the justice and energy ministers their jobs, and within weeks, the influential head of the presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, was gone too. The departure of Yermak, the man who also headed the Ukrainian negotiating team, further weakened Kyiv’s already precarious position in peace talks. And as Russia makes slow but steady advances in the Donbas, Ukraine is also contending with a worsening military recruitment crisis.

The country is also under pressure from the US administration, which is threatening to walk away unless a compromise is reached, based on a Russo-American plan that the Europeans, confined to the sidelines, have failed to influence. Donald Trump and his inner circle have now added corruption to their list of reasons for turning their backs on a conflict they regard as far away and unwinnable. A bipartisan majority in the US Congress approved a new aid package on 11 December, but on a scale that is largely symbolic. Ukraine is now reliant on other allies for the bulk of its support – and their confidence may be (…)

Full article: 3 880 words.

Sébastien Gobert

Sébastien Gobert is a journalist and the author of L’Ukraine, la République et les oligarques (Ukraine, the republic and the oligarchs), Tallandier, Paris, 2024.

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