Well, what do you know? It turns out the media is admitting Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government in Ukraine might have stolen Western aid, after all.
In the least shocking development since the discovery that “The Politician” in that horrid Olivia Nuzzi book is, in fact, supposed to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The New York Times belatedly discovered that NATO funds might be intertwined among the funds those in Zelenskyy’s orbit has pilfered.
As you’ve probably heard if you follow the Russia-Ukraine conflict — especially if you’re not entirely convinced that an unchecked flow of money and materiel to Ukraine isn’t the best idea — Zelenskyy and his advisers have been at the center of a massive embezzlement scheme involving the state-run nuclear energy operator. As you’ve probably heard from a usually Zelenskyy-uncritical media, too, that aid wasn’t supposed to be unchecked; we were assured that there were guardrails in the form of independent criminal investigators ensuring our money went where it was supposed to.
In a Sunday report, the Times confirmed what anyone with common sense could have probably told you: That wasn’t quite the case:
When Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Kyiv’s Western allies faced a dilemma: how to spend billions supporting a government fighting Russia without watching the money vanish into the pockets of corrupt managers and government officials.
The stakes were high because Ukraine’s vital wartime industries — power distribution, weapons purchases and nuclear energy — were controlled by state-owned companies that have long served as piggy banks for the country’s elite.
To protect their money, the United States and European nations insisted on oversight. They required Ukraine to allow groups of outside experts, known as supervisory boards, to monitor spending, appoint executives and prevent corruption.
Over the past four years, a New York Times investigation found, the Ukrainian government systematically sabotaged that oversight, allowing graft to flourish.
Huh. How ’bout that!
The article goes on to note that Zelenskyy’s government actively disbanded or weakened agencies that oversaw graft prosecutions, which had the natural effect you’d think it would: It allowed systemic corruption in defense spending, including at Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency.
From the Times:
More than a year into the war, after a scandal erupted over inflated defense contracts, donors pushed Kyiv to create an independent agency to clean up weapon purchases.
Yet, since its start in January 2024, the agency has spent at least $1 billion in European money either with an incomplete supervisory board or without one at all.
Maryna Bezrukova, the agency’s first head, said that the absence of a board during her first year in the job left her vulnerable to pressure from the Zelensky administration. She said the Defense Ministry had pushed her to approve dubious contracts, including one with a state-owned weapons factory that could not effectively produce mortar shells.
“Supervisory boards are just window dressing,” Bezrukova told the Times. “They’re not real.”
And, while the United States is backing off of its funding of the Ukraine conflict, that hasn’t stopped Kyiv from wasting what money gets thrown their way. Even with the Europeans being the biggest contributor to Ukraine’s defense now, former State Department official Tyson Barker said that “the Europeans are creating a permissive environment for this kind of backsliding.”
Again from the Times, one last snippet:
The European Commission, the administrative arm of the European Union, quietly commissioned a report this year into corruption risks in Ukraine’s energy industry. A copy of the report, obtained by The Times, warned of “persistent political interference.” The report, by the Ukrainian Facility Platform, a nonprofit research group, singled out Kyiv’s undermining of supervisory boards as a critical problem.
A spokeswoman for the European Union said officials have pressed Ukraine to reform its state-owned businesses. There’s no evidence that European Union money was misused, she said.
Yes, even now, we’re being assured that there’s no evidence that European funds aren’t being misused — because the Europeans basically aren’t looking for it. Just like the United States did under Joe Biden’s administration!
The only thing that ought to be genuinely gobsmacking about this article is the fact that anyone finds it gobsmacking. What did we think when it was first reported that the Ukrainians demanded that a call for an audit was removed from the proposed Moscow-Kyiv peace deal, to be replaced with a general amnesty on that front? Or when the Ukrainians had effectively stonewalled any attempt at imposing some kind of serious check on corruption using the war and the demands of allies as a pretext?
This is willful incompetence of the highest order: only reporting on the lack of headway President Zelenskyy has made on corruption when his government is clearly doomed and the Ukrainian president himself says he’s not running again. Despite $100-plus billion in American assistance since Russia’s 2022 invasion, there’s been minimal transparency regarding where that’s gone. It’s likely turned into windfalls for the country’s elite — who, in this case, are aligned with a leader who got into office promising to crack down on corruption. Great job, everyone who insisted there was nothing to see here.
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