The corruption scandal that has erupted in Ukraine in recent weeks may, it seems, become a turning point that will either bury V. Zelensky's authority, career, the Ukrainian government, the country's hopes for European integration, wipe out the remnants of international support, and allow the Kremlin to take advantage of the whole situation, or become an opportunity to fundamentally cleanse itself. At least in the president's immediate environment, where the stench of corruption reeks.

And from the reactions of Ukrainians, it doesn't seem like there is much optimism in the country about this scandal, which has embroiled people close to V. Zelensky, members of the government.

Moreover, this is not the end: the 15-month-long investigation by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), eloquently named"Operation Midas", so far allows us to see only the tip of the iceberg - over a thousand hours of recordings, bundles of cash, stacks of other evidence, an expanding circle of suspects, a series of dismissals. It is obvious that this is only the beginning of a scandal that is very unpleasant for V. Zelensky himself and for all of Ukraine.

More serious, more decisive answers and actions or promises than those that have already been made public are expected from both the president and other institutions. After all, sluggish reactions, abstract promises, a desire to turn the topic in another direction, key suspects who learned about the investigation in advance and fled Ukraine in time - all this and even more seem disgusting, disappointing, and make both Ukrainians and their partners abroad angry or give up.

One thing is clear - it is impossible to leave such a scandal alone. Someone must or will have to take responsibility, and not just the ringleaders - the final stop of the scandal will be in the Ukrainian presidency and whether Ukraine still has any hope of survival will depend on V. Zelensky's behavior in the coming weeks.

Image and reality of the circle of friends

All of this may sound overly dramatic and overly salty, but such an impression is false, especially considering the favorable context that still surrounded the Ukrainian leader. It is no secret that for many Ukrainian supporters, V. Zelensky is still an inseparable symbol of the fight for freedom, uniting a society divided before the war, rallying foreign support, and representing his country in difficult times.

The true leader of the free world is brave, smart, inspiring, and has withstood both Russian attacks and pressure from the US administration. But it has been proven time and again that image is only one side of the coin. The long-awaited protests in Ukraine in July over a controversial law drew attention to domestic problems that are essentially united by one word: corruption.

It was V. Zelensky who initially supported the initiative to abolish SAPO and NABU, which, founded and funded by Western partners, are independent institutions investigating corruption cases. No matter how high they are, because corruption is extremely high in Ukraine.

"All positive anti-corruption decisions in Ukraine were related to external pressure, it was not a desire to fight corruption that had developed within Ukraine," said then Žydrūnas Bartkus, the former head of the Lithuanian STT, who is currently an international anti-corruption expert.

Following the huge public outcry and protests, attention turned to influential figures in Zelensky's circle - Oleksiy Chernyshov, who was named a suspect in the investigation, the president's close friend and even closer"Green Cardinal" - the so-called head of the Ukrainian presidential administration Andriy Yermak, who is also called the vice president due to his influence on Zelensky.

It was already recalled that V. Zelensky especially values personal connections and trusts only people in his closest circle, especially childhood friends or people from the production company"Kvartal 95". This is exactly what business partner and former co-owner of"Kvartal 95" Timuras Mindičius is like.

It was the audacity of his scheme, involving the state-owned company Enerhoatom, that stunned Ukrainians: when Russia intensified its campaign of drone kamikaze strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure last year and Ukrainian officials asked for support abroad, including in Lithuania, by showing how power plants and substations could be protected, Mindičius’ group blocked the security installations because they wanted to negotiate that construction companies would pay bribes of 15 percent instead of 10 percent. In other words, bribes were not only the norm, but they were also expected to be higher, delaying the pace of construction. And he succeeded.

But if T. Mindičius is at the epicenter of the corruption scandal - all 100 million laundered dollars are his idea, but he could not have acted alone.

The scandal mentions the names of former Energy Minister Ihor Mironiuk's advisor and Enerhoatom's executive security director Dmytro Basov. Suspicions have also been brought against businessmen Oleksandr Tsukerman, Ihor Fursenko, Lesia Ustimenko, and Lyudmila Zorina. But what of all these mentions, connections, resignations and dismissals, searches and arrests, if everything seems to be well overdue?

After all, not only was T. Mindičius himself possibly warned by SAPO about the investigation, its imminent end, and unfavorable results, but someone also organized his departure from the warring country - across the border, through checkpoints, under the guise of intelligence services and investigators.

The possibility that the president, or even more so his administration, knew nothing is now viewed with extreme skepticism in Ukraine. That is why many people are confused.

Many questions for Zelensky

Many of the corruption allegations against Zelensky have not been directly linked to him. He entered the presidency in 2019 partly as a comedian who promised to fight corruption. The hero of the popular TV series “Servant of the People,” who is also accidentally elected president after his monologue about fighting corruption, realizes after taking office that fighting corrupt officials and politicians is not so easy.

And if on the TV screen you can touch the fantasy, if in anger V. Zelensky shoots openly corrupt parliamentarians right in the hall, then the reality turned out to be much more banal - the creator of the same series, T. Mindičius, at least according to the study, was one of the most corrupt individuals. Although a decade ago he simply advised Ihor Kolomoisky, another supporter of V. Zelensky and an oligarch, for whom he poured coffee and connected a computer.

This in itself would not be surprising, as the cancer of corruption was eating Ukraine from within until the Maidan revolution, and was not eradicated after it. Neither Russia's military aggression and occupation of Crimea and part of Donbas in 2014, nor the open invasion in February 2022 eliminated the manifestations of corruption.

Corrupt border guards who stop some shipments but turn a blind eye to others, corrupt military personnel, especially those who deal with"matters" not at the front but inside the country - deciding who to throw into the war meat grinder and who to turn away for dollars and euros, put in warm places or allow to leave the country, to evade mobilization.

This is the same question that caused a wave of anxiety and doubt in July, when there was a threat to hand over the information of the NABU and SAPO Prosecutor General's Office, thereby essentially destroying them, has remained unchanged - who and how really rules Ukraine? Is V. Zelensky still in control of the situation, or does no one depend on him at all?

Why doesn't he clearly take the side of the fight against corruption, doesn't he toughen up punishments, doesn't he take the opportunity to turn such cases against his former comrades into examples, calling things by their own names?

After all, if during a war, oligarchs not only profit from deals, brazenly demand bribes, but also stop the installation of security measures, what is this, if not treason? For V. Zelensky, this may be a double betrayal - a betrayal of his comrades and the state, its interests, which is an aggravating circumstance during a war.

Instead, in the past week, Zelensky has talked more about the importance of international support, about strikes deep inside Russia, about the need to repel Russian attacks, and even considered making another visit closer to the front lines, i.e. doing everything he can to avoid the unpleasant topic. But it won't go away on its own.

Very dangerous signals within the country

Ukrainians themselves are already signaling this. Bohdan Kroteyvčius, one of the former Azov commanders and an officer who fell out with the military and political leadership but is highly respected in Ukraine, has been increasingly critical of V. Zelensky himself for some time, whom he has previously defended during previous scandals outside the war.

According to B. Krotevyčius, until the real perpetrators of the scandal receive real punishment - and such punishments are often not met in Ukraine, even after charges are filed - all statements will be considered populism. Moreover, if there are no changes in the presidential administration and military leadership, according to B. Krotevyčius, there is a threat to the country's sovereignty.

Let these be the words of one officer - dramatic and addressed primarily to A. Yermak and the Ukrainian military leadership - the commander-in-chief of the army, General Oleksandr Syrsky, chosen and retained by V. Zelensky, has already disappointed Ukrainians and allies more than once. But the general disappointment of Ukrainians has been felt more in recent weeks than at any time during the past few years of the war.

Why should young or older Ukrainians join the battles, continue the fight, be mobilized, if such injustice and corruption continue to exist in the country, if for the cunning people around the president, war is just a business and an opportunity, and even if caught, they manage to get away with it?

If the war is against the occupiers - against Russia, which is a greater evil, but betrays its own and behaves no better, what is the motivation to continue fighting? If such presidential dragoons behave like Kremlin oligarchs, then what is the difference between them and what is the price of such betrayal worth? And even more, B. Krotevyčius's last advice to V. Zelensky sounds eloquent.

"Either you save your corrupt pro-Russian friends, or you save the state - there is no third choice. The second path is the most painful, but if the question of the survival of the state is at stake, the first path will not work. Then the people will have every right to take responsibility into their own hands," warned an influential military official.

What such allusions to the"right to take responsibility into one's own hands" mean can only be guessed at. But history is full of examples when a wave of discontent arises in a war-weary, war-stricken country, where there are many experienced, dissatisfied, and disillusioned soldiers who see what is happening on the home front, and then it is either calmed down or breaks through all the dams.

Russia undoubtedly realizes this and may try to take advantage of the situation, for which the turmoil in Ukraine would provide a unique opportunity - one that it has not had since the beginning of the open invasion.

This would be the opportunity that the Kremlin dreamed of while planning the operation to invade Ukraine – at the end of 2021, Moscow believed that V. Zelensky, who was unpopular in Ukraine at that time, would not last long, that no one would defend the corrupt environment surrounding him, and that everyone would run away. The Kremlin was wrong then. But now that unity that held Ukrainians together at a critical time, at the beginning of the Russian invasion, is now shaking more than at any time in the past 3 years. Therefore, this is another time of critical turning points for Ukraine.