It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
A skeptical friend reading the New York Times asked me why columnist Nicholas Kristof keeps writing columns about recurring poverty in less developed countries. My answer is simple. Because he keeps going to these remote areas populated by brutalized human beings living in dire impoverishment and sickness. At no small risk to himself (Kristof caught malaria in the Congo), he goes to where the most deprived people on Earth live for his stories. He does what few columnists are willing or able to do by exposing how children, the elderly, and entire families are dying under the most unimaginable cruelty.
I suspect that what keeps Kristof going is that he sees how inexpensively many of these mortalities and morbidities can and have been prevented. For example, a $4 vaccine can prevent cervical cancer, which kills over 900 women worldwide every day!
Knowing all this has led to his sharp denunciation of Tyrant Trump and DOGE Director Felon Elon Musk’s immediate and illegal closure of the Agency for International Development (USAID). Soon after the failed gambling czar re-disgraced the White House on January 20, 2025, the world heard Musk’s sadistic boast, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper.”
Why on Earth would these callous corporatists criminally destroy an Agency with an average budget of $23 billion a year (about 10 days of the Trump-bloated Pentagon war budget) to save the lives of millions of babies, children, women, and men? Especially when much of this spending goes right back to U.S. contractors who ship the food, medicines, drinking water, wheelchairs, medical devices, and other materials to poverty-stricken nations.
The Trump/Musk cabal sadistically exuded glee, declaring they were saving taxpayer money. The money spent by USAID is a small price to pay for preventing the atrocities they visited on those most in need of humanitarian assistance on the planet. Given the reputation of the U. S’s invasive military Empire all over Asia, Africa, and South America, war criminal Trump failed to understand the benefit that such aid – often called “soft power” – does to improve Uncle Sam’s tarnished reputation.
In his latest column, dated May 10, 2026, and titled “The Children America Abandoned,” Kristof makes the following points:
“A year after some of the world’s richest men cut aid for the world’s poorest children, …” Trump and Musk retained “some lifesaving programs, particularly for H.I.V./AIDS…” However, Trump’s “71 percent cut in humanitarian aid from 2024 to 2025…” led to the loss of “750,000 lives worldwide” in Trump’s first year, citing a study by a Boston University researcher. The prestigious British medical journal The Lancet projected that at present Official development assistance (ODA) defunding rates, 9.4 million lives will be lost worldwide, including 2.5 million among children 5 years and younger, by 2030.
While these enormous preventable death numbers may shock most Americans, it is because USAID over decades has not been encouraged by its cautious superiors in the White House to toot its own horn for fear of enraging right-wing ideologues in Congress who have long wanted foreign aid abolished.
“A few doses of a $3 malaria vaccine can now save a Congolese child’s life,” Kristof writes. Tuberculosis is a major contagious killer in Africa, mostly among children and pregnant women. A series of regular TB drugs, consistently administered by clinics, can sharply reduce this epidemic. Again, very cost-effective.
What these clenched-jawed Trumpty Muskites ignore is that catching precursors of pandemics in African or Asian countries can prevent deadly viruses and bacteria from migrating to the United States. Without funds and diligent monitoring, the current Ebola emergency in the Congo is spreading.
These are the human costs of the American people electing politicians whose military death cult keeps getting more Pentagon funding from Congress, displacing programs sustaining life. Trump’s war crimes are used to seek an increase of a staggering 50 percent budget increase or $500 billion for the Pentagon. Trump wants to use deficit financing to further bloat the Pentagon budget so he can keep cutting taxes for the super-rich, himself, and giant corporations for the next fiscal year.
In one of his previous columns, Kristof shows how the swollen, corrupt military spending on contractors can be better used in our domestic economy, repairing public services and building infrastructure. The last President to make this comparison was former five-star general President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 in an address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors (See the address.) Two recent books: Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex by William D. Hartung and The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine by Andrew Cockburn unmask the devastating impact of wasteful military spending on human needs.
The Democratic Party refuses to make the runaway military budget, now overconsuming half of the entire federal operating budget, a political campaign issue. Worse, they eagerly join the Congressional Republicans in the yearly hoopla for ever more megadollars for the Pentagon. Serious appropriations hearings in the House and Senate are a long-ago memory for this untouchable depravity of blank checks, stealing from the many unmet necessities of the American people and their children here at home, which also cost many American lives.
So, Kristof, who has written devastating critiques of Trump, ends his column with “The truth is ugly: The world’s richest men are crushing the world’s poorest children.”
Nicholas Kristof, it is time to break the unspoken reluctance of the New York Times editorial page — replete with specific editorial and op-ed denunciations of bully Trump’s many crimes —and raise the cry of IMPEACHMENT or, in the vernacular that Tyrant Trump very often uses, say “YOU’RE FIRED!” (See, the Impeachment Symposium of April 8, 2026).
As I have said many times, with Trump, IT IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE, MUCH WORSE. In addition to manipulating districts, he is openly intending worse takeovers of the November elections, having said in January, “…we shouldn’t even have an election” in November. What are our politicians and the mainstream media waiting for? It is time for them to summon the courage of their declared convictions!
P.S. Kristof’s most recent feature exposes the sexual violence by Israeli soldiers against kidnapped Palestinian men, women, and children, including training dogs to rape shackled prisoners (See the New York Times, May 17, 2026, “The Silence That Meets The Rape of Palestinians”).
Fashion capital Paris was 'epicentre' of Epstein network, new book claims
France has launched two probes into the Jeffrey Epstein affair, looking at potential crimes committed in the country or involving French nationals tied to the late American sex offender. The author of a new book tells RFI how Paris, as a fashion capital, provided a "reservoir" of the very young women preyed on by Epstein's grooming network.
Issued on: 22/05/2026 - RFI
A protest in front of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs after French prosecutors opened two investigations into the Epstein scandal, 20 February. AP - Michel Euler
France set up a special task force in February to probe alleged sexual crimes and possible financial wrongdoing committed in the country or involving French nationals who could be implicated in Epstein's crimes.
It came after the United States Justice Department released the latest batch of the so-called "Epstein files" relating to its investigation into the disgraced financier, who was found dead in his prison cell in 2019 awaiting trial for trafficking underage girls for sex.
The top Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said earlier this week that around 20 suspected victims had made themselves known after she urged potential victims to speak. Ten "new victims" had come forward, she said.
RFI spoke to investigative journalist and author Frédéric Ploquin, whose recently published book on the case Epstein: Les secrets de la filière française ("Epstein: Secrets of the French Network") argues the scandal is very much a French affair.
RFI: Frédéric Ploquin, you're best known for writing about organised crime. What drew you to the Epstein case?
FP: Because, when you get down to it, these powerful men are criminals like any other – and I decided to treat them as such. I normally write about gangsters, armed robbers, that sort of thing. But when I grasped the scale of this affair, I felt investigative journalism had a duty to these victims. It's a criminal case, plain and simple. And I treat it as one.
The book reads like a thriller – which isn't surprising, given that beyond the very large number of women who were raped, there are also deaths. It's a murky world, and the Jeffrey Epstein I uncovered is not just a sexual predator but a major international fraudster and a kind of shadow diplomat, compromising people left, right and centre. That connects with my usual territory – espionage, organised crime.
But the real reason I wrote this book is that the two main suspects – Jeffrey Epstein and Jean-Luc Brunel – both officially died by suicide, and as a result the victims, including those who had come forward to testify before French courts, were robbed of any trial. I thought: there's been no justice, these women have been left to fend for themselves, 20 years after the events, having made the effort to come forward. So I decided to make some noise.
[Editor's note: Jean-Luc Brunel was a French model scout and agent, and Epstein's key accomplice in the Paris-based sex-trafficking ring. He died by suicide in his prison cell in February 2022, just before his trial for the rape of minors and trafficking of minors for sexual exploitation, related to his work with Epstein. His lawyers stated he died by suicide not out of guilt but from a feeling of injustice.]
The apartment building on Avenue Foch in Paris owned by Jeffrey Epstein, which allegedly acted as an HQ for grooming girls. AP - Francois Mori
I also wanted to focus specifically on the French angle, because Jeffrey Epstein didn't come to Paris simply to drink good wine and visit Versailles, as some American billionaires do. He came because Paris – and this is the central argument of the book – was the reservoir, the epicentre of the whole system. They exploited Paris as the fashion capital of the world, the fact that it attracted young women – very young women – from across the globe, all of them knocking on the doors of modelling agencies, dreaming of becoming famous.
RFI: You say the victims waited 20 years. How do you explain French justice turning a blind eye for so long?
FP: It's what astonishes me most when I trace this system back over 30 years – because its roots in Paris go a long way back. When I pieced together the history, I found that 20 years ago young women had already given testimony – anonymously, including in an interview on CBS in the United States – and French justice had not seen fit to act. Nobody had, in fact.
After that, it really came down to a handful of specialist organisations – Innocence en Danger in particular – who moved heaven and earth to get a new case opened. Crucially, they gave these women – now 20 years older than when the events took place – a safe space to come to Paris, to open up and say what had happened to them, and potentially to bring Jean-Luc Brunel, the modelling agency boss at the heart of it all, to trial.
RFI: You're quite categorical that Paris was the epicentre of this organised abuse, in the toxic world of 1980s fashion – a world where wealth, you argue, was seen as a licence to commit crimes against children.
FP: Exactly. These were men drunk on their own power, they believed money could buy anything – including people's bodies. They felt untouchable, and to a large extent they were.
RFI: There were people who turned a blind eye. How did they escape scrutiny for so long?
FP: It was a whole system. You could point the finger at the fashion world, which put people like Jean-Luc Brunel on a pedestal and never asked too many questions about what was going on, never really wanted to look. Honestly, you didn't need a degree to work out that these men were preying on young women who came to Paris with their heads full of fairytales and ended up in a house of horrors.
RFI: They were easy targets...
FP: They were easy targets because they arrived with dreams and, generally, very little money. What strikes me when I go through the testimonies is that some of them barely had enough to eat when they got to Paris. So they depended on others for food, for drink... They were given free entry to nightclubs, which is precisely where they'd come across these predators. They weren't necessarily aware of what was happening to them. But when one of them woke up and realised she'd been raped – sometimes drugged beforehand – it was too late. Most of them didn't stay in Paris, the majority didn't even speak French.
RFI: You write that they didn't dare report what had happened – less out of fear than out of shame. Shame had a hold over them.
FP: A very powerful hold. When they woke up from this nightmare, they felt they'd been naive, that they'd been taken for a ride – and that created an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame. That's precisely what these predators counted on. The women went home, barely said a word to their families, and it only came out years later.
Since the book came out this week, I've already heard from two victims personally – women who have never spoken before and now want to. That tells you there's still a need to open these floodgates.
RFI: Around 10 new victims have come forward, and you mention others who have recently approached the Paris prosecutor's office. Do you want the investigation reopened, with cooperation from US justice?
FP: That's partly why I wrote the book – to pile on the pressure. There are at least two major obstacles. First, the statute of limitations. Second, during the original French police investigation – which I describe in detail – the American justice system was completely uncooperative and handed over nothing. That will be a stumbling block again, and it may need to be resolved at a higher diplomatic level, given that some very powerful people are involved.
This interview has been adapted from the original version by Veronique Rigolet for RFI's French service and has been lightly edited for clarity.
Tuesday, May 19, 2026
Trump-Xi summit sparks Taiwan headlines, but raises doubts over US grasp of bigger picture
Trump and Xi shake hands. / Donald Trump - Truth SocialFacebook
The rhetoric emerging from the May 2026 meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in the Chinese capital has generated a series of dramatic headlines in Washington. In Asia, it has barely registered.
At issue is a renewed emphasis on Taiwan and the familiar language around independence and whether or not the island of 24mn is pushing in that direction. Yet regional policymakers and analysts see little substance behind the statements made by either Trump or Xi as nothing has materially changed.
For years, US officials have been far more focussed on efforts to constrain China’s military reach, particularly its access to the Northwest Pacific, than Taiwanese moves towards independence.
Official US policy on Taiwan is built around a deliberately ambiguous framework that has remained largely consistent for decades. At its core is the so-called One China policy pushed by Beijing, under which Washington “acknowledges” China’s position that there is one China and that Taiwan is part of it, but the US has never explicitly endorsed that claim, and neither has Donald Trump. Without an act of Congress he couldn’t.
Yet, for all Trump’s bluster in recent days, Washington remains legally committed to maintaining a defensive perimeter that limits Chinese expansion beyond the first island chain – read Taiwan – and into the Western Pacific.
US doctrine has, for decades, relied on a chain of strategic positions — stretching from Japan’s Okinawa islands in the north, through Taiwan and down to the Philippines - what defence planners and think tanks have previously referred to as “unsinkable aircraft carriers”.
This is not a new concept as the US has always sought to deny China uncontested access to the North Pacific. Alongside allies in Tokyo and Manila, Taiwan is one, albeit legally unrecognised, element in that system. Taiwan is not, despite claims to the contrary by Taiwanese governments trying to ingratiate themselves to different US administrations, the objective in itself. At least not for the US. And that distinction is critical — but frequently misunderstood in Washington’s political messaging and for casual observers of the status of Taiwan vis-a-vis its role in the Beijing-Washington relationship.
Face-saving
To this end, the post-meeting statements from both China and the US are little more than the latest performance in a long-played out version of political theatre. For Trump, the optics matter – oftentimes more than the content itself. After a summit that came up woefully short on deals agreed, and yielded few tangible concessions from Beijing, Trump reiterating a hard line on Taiwan offers a domestic narrative of strength and influence.
For Xi, the calculus is similar. Reasserting China’s position on Taiwan - particularly Beijing’s opposition to a declaration of formal independence - comes at little cost, given that Taipei has never actually moved in that direction and shows no sign of doing so.
For both the US and China, this is thus a classic face-saving exercise. Both sides needed something they could present as a win, and talking tough on Taiwan is the easiest way to package that because the status quo is more often than not stable.
Indeed, Taiwan’s own political reality undercuts much of the rhetoric. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party administration in Taipei, in power since 2016, has consistently maintained that it does not need to declare independence. It already operates as a sovereign entity in practice, with its own elections, currency, military and a significant international economic presence.
The main Kuomintang (KMT) opposition party, traditionally more China-friendly, has shown no appetite for a formal declaration although some of its members at least acknowledge the island’s de facto independence.
Against that backdrop, calls to avoid independence by both Trump and Xi ring hollow. They are little more than statements aimed at external audiences, not fully versed on the political realities of East Asia. Such claims do not reflect imminent policy risk.
Goals unchanged
Because of this, what has not changed is US defence policy which continues to prioritise containment of China within the first island chain. Taiwan’s role in that framework is geographic as Trump has indicated, not ideological. It is simply a node in a broader network designed to restrict Chinese access to the Pacific.
As a number of US strategists have said in recent years, if China can break through that line, it would change the balance of power across the entire North Pacific, but while Taiwan is part of that line, the line itself is the point; as clear as it gets on why the question of Taiwan’s formal political status has always been secondary in military planning. Whether or not Taipei declares independence does not alter its geographic importance.
Crucially though, this also explains Beijing’s increased targeting of Taiwan of late. Among the components of the US-aligned chain – Okinawa, Taiwan and the Philippines – Taiwan is perceived as the most vulnerable. Japan’s strength and alliance with the US, and the presence of tens of thousands of US troops make Okinawa effectively untouchable. The Philippines, despite periodic political shifts, also remains closely tied to Washington.
Taiwan sits in between, both geographically and politically exposed even if there are always rumours and 'sightings' of US military ‘advisers’ working alongside Taiwanese forces – a concept that dates back to the mid 1880s when the north of the island was briefly invaded by French forces and at least one US Civil War veteran was recorded as aiding the locals against the invaders.
Long time observers of the region are more than aware that Trump’s approach risks missing this broader context. His emphasis on arms sales and short-term leverage plays well domestically with a populace known for its lack of international awareness, but sits uneasily with the longer-term strategic picture half a world away.
For now therefore, while the US continues to supply Taiwan with weapons, reinforcing Washington’s own defensive capacity. China continues to assert its claims. These dynamics are not new and will continue once Trump is upset by the next imagined Chinese faux pas and plays his arms-to-Taiwan card.
What has changed in the short term at least is the more explicit acknowledgement of each side’s position, without altering the underlying balance.
For some observers, this rightly reinforces doubts about US reliability in the region as was covered by IntelliNews weeks before Trump’s latest visit.
Taiwan the battleground
The core strategic reality then remains stark. In the event of a Chinese push into the Pacific, and subsequent conflict, the US would not be defending Taiwan for its political status. It would be seeking to prevent China from gaining unopposed access to Hawaii and the West coast of the mainland US. Should that happen, Taiwan would be the battleground, not the end goal – a distinction well understood in Beijing and across Asia but less clearly articulated in US political discourse.
Sunday, May 17, 2026
RAGOZIN: From reform to relapse, Ukraine’s corruption problems resurface
Most of Zelenskiy's inner circle have now been implicated in a series of large corruption schemes, but corruption has been hard baked into political systems across the FSU since the collapse of the USSR. / bne IntelliNews
Charges brought against president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s former chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, focus on four mansion houses in the luxury estate co-op called Dynasty. These are identified as R1, R2, R3 and R4 by the SAPO (anti-corruption prosecutor’s office) investigation which claims that the suspects laundered UAH460mn (close to €9mn) through this housing project.
The owners of the last three houses are easily identifiable from the released investigation materials - these are members of Zelenskiy’s immediate entourage, including Yermak. As for R1’s owner, the secret recordings leaked from investigators to their press suggested the person’s name is Vova, which is short for Volodymyr.
Anti-corruption prosecutors were careful to point out that the president Zelenskiy is not a subject of the ongoing investigation. But that’s only because presidents are immune from pre-trial investigations according to Ukrainian law. The impeachment procedure requires a two third majority in the parliament which Zelenskiy’s party currently controls.
For anyone focused on Ukraine, the Dynasty co-op immediately reminds of Mezhihyria, the infamous luxury estate of president Victor Yanukovych deposed by the revolutionaries in 2014. The second association is the Ozero (Lake) dacha co-op whose members, led by Vladimir Putin, turned Russia into their private corporation ruled by authoritarian means.
In a recent poll published by KIIS institute in Kyiv, Ukrainians placed corruption above the ongoing Russian aggression as the greatest threat to their country. This may sound irrational if you don’t understand to what extent corruption - Russian, Ukrainian and Western - was the main driving force behind the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Sybiha recently said that a day of war costs Ukraine $450mn. Multiplying this figure by the number of days the war has lasted for, one gets the figure of almost $700bn burned in this furnace over four years. A lion’s share of that money was paid by Western taxpayers.
For the last three decades, the struggle against corruption was a slogan of Western liberal world order crusaders trying to impose their values on the post-Soviet space. So how come the idolised poster boy of anti-Russian resistance, Zelenskiy, appears to be mired in the same kind of corruption that keeps driving Putin’s regime in Russia to ever greater escalation? This question warrants a closer look at the history of anti-corruption struggle in the former Soviet Union.
Wild Capitalism’s Helpmate
For Western audiences, corruption in former Soviet countries is mostly perceived as a thing of the past, perhaps even Soviet legacy. But while there was plenty of petty corruption in the USSR - little bribes and gifts people were routinely handing to traffic policemen, doctors or university professors - top-level corruption was not really a Soviet story, with the exception of specific republics, like Uzbekistan. The way ageing Politburo members lived feels, by modern-day standards, ascetic.
When in the late 1980s, Boris Yeltsin attacked them for enjoying better lifestyles, he was focusing on “privileges”, such as chauffeured cars, not on luxury mansion houses or million-dollar kickbacks. He famously boarded a trolleybus to advertise new “non-corrupt” ways he was promoting. It feels ironic now that we know the extent of corruption during the years of Yeltsin’s own rule, unimaginable in Soviet times.
Corruption as we know it today was being conceived in the late 1980s at the level of district committees Komsomol (Youth Communist League), their comically crookish ways brilliantly described in Yury Polyakov’s book District-Level Emergency, popular at the time. This is the environment which produced such personalities as the future oligarch and Putin’s nemesis, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
But it took the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991 for rampant, large-scale corruption to enter the scene - not just as a helpmate of wild capitalism, but even as a new ideology. The first pro-democracy mayor of Moscow, economist Gavriil Popov, promoted corruption as a necessary lubricant for a poorly regulated capitalist economy and called for legalising kickbacks.
The new business elite in Russia was formed out of businessmen closely connected to the government as well as organised crime. While capturing industries built by generations of Soviet people through fraudulent schemes like “loans for shares”, they were also capturing the Russian state. Despite outward adherence to democracy and universal values, their inherent instincts were predatory and authoritarian.
A good example is Pyotr Aven, minister of foreign trade in the shock therapy government of Yegor Gaidar, later one of Russia’s main oligarchs. Inspired by Reagan and Thatcher adoration club in the West, he promoted the idea of a “Russian Pinochet” - enlightened dictatorship that would resolve Russia’s economic hardships with an iron fist. After a few experiments, notably with Gen. Aleksandr Lebed, Russian reformers eventually produced what then was a suitable figure - Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile in Ukraine, state capture was conducted by the new “red director” elite composed of former Soviet industrial managers and embodied by the country’s longest-serving president Leonid Kuchma.
Corruption vs Geopolitics
Anti-corruption activism in former Soviet countries came into being as soon as corruption itself. But it was only partly organic and locally rooted. Anti-corruption activism would soon become firmly intertwined with geopolitics.
The organic component is best represented by people like Aleksey Navalny or the presently forgotten 1990s anti-corruption crusader Yuri Boldyrev. The latter’s political trajectory is illustrative of the rift inside the anti-corruption movement.
Boldyrev emerged as a pro-democracy MP in 1990 and then a state auditor in the early days of Yeltsin’s rule. In one episode of his activities at the time, he insisted that the vice-mayor of St Petersburg, Vladimir Putin, should be suspended on suspicion of corruption pertaining to foreign trade. The request was rejected by none other than Aven.
Boldyrev went on to found the liberal Yabloko party but fell out with it in 1995 due to disagreements over the capture of Soviet industries and Russia’s vast mineral resources by oligarchs and foreign corporations. He was specifically opposed to the production sharing agreements between the Russian government and Western oil/gas giants which many thought provided outright robbery of Russian hydrocarbon resources. These disagreements sent Boldyrev on the course towards embracing Russian nationalism and eventually Putinism, despite his earlier attacks on Putin.
Western corporations benefited hugely from Russia’s rampant corruption and the flight of capital in the 1990s. But as their interests began clashing with those of the emerging Russian oligarchy, Western governments began championing anti-corruption causes in Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the former USSR.
The world’s best-known anti-corruption platform funded by Western governments and charities, Transparency International, arrived in Russia in 1999. If you look at Russia headlines around that time in Western media, business news was dominated by squabbles between the Russian governments and its Western corporate partners over the product-sharing agreements as well as the privatisation of Svyazinvest, Russia’s largest telecom holding.
In both cases, Putin’s new government sought to limit Western appetites or kick Western actors out of the scramble for Russian resources altogether. In the early 2000s, the emerging confrontation gradually switched to rival Russian- and Western-backed projects for supplying gas and oil into Europe. This is how the conflict turned geopolitical. Russia wanted to supply its gas to the newly-expanded EU, bypassing transit countries, especially Ukraine. Western corporations were pushing pipeline projects like Nabucco that were aimed at bypassing the Russian pipeline system and delivering directly from countries like Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
This is the point when anti-corruption activism and geopolitics grew inseparable, with the former being increasingly weaponised by Western actors against Russia. The anti-corruption agenda dominated the Georgian Revolution of Roses in 2003 and Ukraine’s first Maidan revolution in 2004. But while in Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili’s new government did achieve a breakthrough in eliminating corruption – he sacked the entire traffic cop force and replaced it with student-hires - the Ukrainian revolution changed exactly nothing in that respect.
With geopolitics dictating the agenda and anti-corruption groups becoming overwhelmingly dependent on Western funding, the struggle against corruption became increasingly selective. Anti-corruption initiatives blasted Russian and perceived “pro-Russian” actors in former Soviet republics while turning a blind eye on shady oligarchs and outright mafiosi who were chummy with the West.
The anti-corruption struggle was so badly mired in geopolitics that by the time Navalny launched his FSK anti-corruption movement, he tried his best to avoid being seen as a Western pawn. He flirted with Russian nationalism and initially even avoided contacts with Western media. The movement he built was genuinely grassroots and organic. But the cause was already so strongly aligned with Western geopolitical interests that it was easy for the Kremlin to brand its flag-bearers as agents of the West.
The escalating conflict with the West gave Putin carte blanche to destroy Navalny’s movement and eventually kill its leader. It allowed him to consolidate the regime and outsource his domestic conflict to the neighbouring country, making him an all-round beneficiary of the continuing war.
Meanwhile, the simplistic dichotomy of corrupt Russia vs non-corrupt West, promoted by Western media, just didn’t square with people’s lived experience. Petty post-Soviet corruption which people encountered in their daily lives was largely eliminated during Putin’s years though digitalised and otherwise improved government services.
Corruption which Navalny opposed had long drifted to the highest echelons of power. It seemed grotesque by Western standards, but was it fundamentally different from the West's own corruption and what role did the West play in it becoming such a dominant phenomenon? While Western media kept drawing a primitive black and white picture, the reality felt like many shades of grey.
Corruption Export
The conflict over Ukraine exposed both the danger of unrestrained corruption on the one hand and the counter-productivity of anti-corruption activism with visible geopolitical strings attached on the other. The anti-corruption agenda was dominant at the beginning of the Euromaidan revolution, but it was soon overtaken by the geopolitical agenda of mafia state actors that were at least as corrupt as the previous regime, only more aggressive and backed by far-right thugs linked to security agencies.
Ukrainian political scientist Mikhail Minakov calls Euromaidan “a revolutionary attempt” which has never evolved into a genuine revolution, as in achieving a fundamental change of the system. The only thing that did change is the country’s geopolitical orientation.
Not only did the Western governments turn a blind eye on the aggressive redistribution of assets in the aftermath of the revolution, but they also embarked on exporting Western political corruption into Ukraine. US president’s son Hunter Biden offered his name and service to launder the reputation of Mykola Zlochevsky, a rich businessman who served as a minister in the government of the deposed president Yanukovych. President Joe Biden later forced through the resignation of Ukraine’s prosecutor-general to cover up this affair.
Biden’s arch-rival, Donald Trump, weaponised this scandal in the presidential elections of 2020, liaising with shady Ukrainian business figures and attempting to coerce the newly elected president Zelenskiy into joining the smear campaign.
That pressure may have played a significant role in Zelenskiy's abrupt U-turn on peace negotiations with Russia at the start of 2021 which coincided with Biden moving into the White House. Having reached a de-facto ceasefire by the time, Zelenskiy suddenly embarked on the Biden administration’s agenda of crossing all of Putin’s red lines - an ill-fated policy that precipitated Russia’s devastating all-out invasion of Ukraine.
That pattern of Western corruption export persists today, four years into the hot phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Just look at the other episode in the ongoing investigation of the Zelenskiy entourage. It focuses on the Ukrainian missile producer Fire Point which, as Ukrainian media allege, is linked to Zelenskiy’s key business associate Tymur Mindich. Guess who sits on its board? Former US State Secretary and CIA chief Mike Pompeo. Fire Point also enjoys a special relationship with the Danish government and runs a joint venture in Denmark.
Some commentators are trying to frame the current anti-corruption investigation almost as a triumph of anti-corruption forces in Ukraine. The investigation is being conducted by agencies created on the insistence of Western governments and with their direct involvement. But it’s hard not to notice the highly politicised nature of this affair, with charges and evidence in the form of taped conversations being presented in a strategic manner, with over-the-top dramatic effects aimed at discrediting top level suspects (like emphasising Yermak’s penchant for witchcraft) and leaked through opposition media and MPs.
Will it result in reducing corruption in Ukraine? The country’s post-Maidan history suggests it won’t. Does it serve as a means for achieving specific geopolitical outcomes? You bet.
INTERVIEW A test for Ukraine, a dilemma for Zelensky: What's at stake in the Andriy Yermak corruption probe
The arrest of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s former right-hand man Andriy Yermak Thursday in connection to a corruption scandal comes as a major test for both the Ukrainian government and the country's independent anti-corruption agencies. Yermak is accused of laundering 460 million hryvnia (more than $10 million) in dirty money through an elite real estate project outside of Kyiv – and of having used a secret phone to consult an astrologer on key government appointments.
You’d think the fortune teller would have tipped him off. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s former chief of staff Andriy Yermak, who for years made key government appointments, drafted potential peace plans and held back-channel talks with both Washington and Moscow, was taken into pre-trial detention Thursday on money-laundering charges after a three-day hearing in Kyiv.
The 54-year-old lawyer and former film producer stands accused of being involved in laundering more than $10 million in embezzled funds through the construction of lavish private mansions in the village of Kozyn on the capital’s southern outskirts.
The court has set Yermak’s bail at $3.2 million, which he says he doesn’t have. He told reporters outside the court that his lawyer would work with his friends to scrape the funds together.
The anti-corruption operation – dubbed “Midas” – accused Zelensky’s former business partner Tymur Mindich of leading a scheme to siphon off tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks from the country’s state-owned nuclear energy giant Energoatom.
Mindich, who like Yermak maintains his innocence, reportedly fled to Israel last year ahead of a raid on his house. Former deputy prime minister Oleksiy Chernyshov and former energy minister German Galushchenko have both been detained in connection to the probe.
Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPU) have said that Zelensky himself is not under suspicion.
But the mention of a “Vova” – a common diminutive of Volodymyr – in a leaked wiretap transcript of a conversation between Mindich and an unidentified woman about the Kozyn construction project has raised questions about just how deep into the president’s circle the corruption has spread. Sitting presidents are immune from prosecution by Ukrainian law enforcement – though they can be impeached if evidence of wrongdoing is found.
To better understand the significance of this sweeping investigation, FRANCE 24 spoke with Andrii Biletskyi, the administrative director of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’s Anti-Corruption Research and Education Centre.
FRANCE 24: Just how significant is this latest development in the corruption investigation?
This is the continuation of the “Midas” operation that started last year, and which was one of the reasons why Yermak was fired from the presidential office. And we have different camps, to be honest, because some people were saying that Yermak was on these Midas recordings, and some people were saying to be careful, that he wasn’t there, it was impossible.
There are different views on this Midas operation, because some people are more sceptical about it – they are saying that this is just a political battle during the war. And some people see it as a positive thing, because it means nobody is untouchable and the anti-corruption authorities are doing their work.
Ukraine: Volodymyr Zelensy's former top aide arrested as corruption probe widens
I think it's a test not only for anti-corruption authorities in Ukraine, but also for the government and the country in general. Because the Ukrainian law enforcement system has never seen an official or ex-official of such a high level being prosecuted or being brought to criminal responsibility.
So, it's really a test for anti-corruption authorities to finish this task, or at least to bring this case to court. And for the Ukrainian government, it's a test whether to help Yermak to escape the responsibility – whether or not to interfere or to let the case go and be whatever it's going to be.
But it's really a dilemma for them, because the government needs to understand whether they want to lose their ex-friend, or current friend, Andriy Yermak, and just forget about him. It's really a struggle for them.
But for Ukraine in general, this is a huge case, and we've never seen anything like it.
FRANCE 24: With several close allies of Zelensky under suspicion, what impact is this investigation likely to have on the president’s own support?
Politically speaking, if we're talking about his personal ratings, he is going to be losing support. Not a lot, because he didn't interfere, he didn't comment on the situation, he didn't protect his close ally, or ex-ally. So it’s a manageable situation.
On the other hand, people still rate him because he's a war-time leader, and he is protecting us, he's the higher commander-in-chief, right? So it’s bit into his ratings, but not as much as it could have, for example, in normal times. Because if not for the war, if we had seen such a scandal, it would have been political suicide for him, and we would just be waiting for the opposition to come to power.
FRANCE 24: As someone who’s worked for years in the fight against corruption, how do you see the importance of Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities being able to undertake an investigation of this magnitude?
For me personally, it's a positive sign. We as Ukrainians, and my colleagues from the anti-corruption centre, we have to talk a lot about how Ukraine is not really corrupt – we have a lot of corruption cases not because we have a lot of corruption, but rather because we have this system in place which can expose this corruption, and which can bring people to responsibility. Because of the fact that we have an independent system, which is not interfered with by political actors, they can do their job properly in a normal way, and they can expose a lot of corruption.
Of course it is [easier] not seeing corruption and not caring about it. When we don't have a lot of corruption scandals in the media, we don't know about them, and we simply don't care. We think of ourselves as good guys, and we think, okay, corruption is at a low level – if it's not being exposed, we have no problem with that.
So it’s really positive. Probably you remember that last year in July, we had huge protests in Ukraine during wartime because the government tried to neglect the procedural independence of the anti-corruption authorities. And a lot of people, a lot of young people, actually came to protest against this decision – and they won, because the government rolled it back.
And it was important for people to see that they did the right thing, so that they could see that they fought for the independence of something valuable. And by this investigation, NABU and SAPO are showing those people that it was the right call.
FRANCE 24: One of the more unexpected details of this three-day hearing has been the allegation that Yermak ran potential government appointments past an astrologer. What kind of reaction has that sparked?
Of course it was quite a surprise to hear that the chief of staff, the head of the presidential office, was consulting an astrologer for governmental appointments. It was really a surprise – I mean, it was ridiculous to hear that he was sending the birthdates of potential candidates.
It not only affects the reputation of Andriy Yermak himself, because he was already seen as this “shadow cardinal” in the office of the president, but it also brings a shadow on the presidential office in general, and the governmental system in general.
Because people have to know whether all the appointments have been going this way or not. It’s also that a bad thing for the public service in general. It was really ridiculous to hear.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
