On November 10, Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities revealed that close associates of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were suspected of involvement in a scheme to embezzle $100 million from Ukraine’s energy sector.
The investigation, led by the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), has so far named Zelensky’s business partner Timur Mindich and two government ministers. Ukrainian and Western media have suggested that the president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, may also be involved.
The way the investigation uncovers the facts and identifies the suspects is carried out slowly, theatrically, and strategically, but it smells like a political campaign aimed at achieving specific political outcomes under the cover of an anti-corruption campaign.
The scandal dealt a devastating blow to Zelenskyy’s international reputation and the entire Ukrainian cause. The Ukrainian president is emerging from the situation as a lame duck, at the mercy of the person pulling the strings, which may be the administration of US President Donald Trump.
One area where we are already seeing dramatic changes is in Ukraine’s policy regarding negotiations with Russia. On November 11, the British newspaper The Times published an article about Deputy Foreign Minister Sergii Kislysha, who was tasked with leading the negotiations, in which he clarified that engagement with Russia had been suspended due to the lack of results. Just a week later, President Zelenskiy announced that he wanted to resume talks with Russia.
Shortly thereafter, talk began about a new American peace plan that, if media leaks are to be believed, envisages Ukraine capitulating to all major Russian demands to end the war. Despite several defiant statements by Ukrainian officials, President Zelenskiy did not reject it outright and pledged to cooperate with the United States. Corruption scandals have significantly narrowed his scope for rebellion.
What makes the prospects for peace more realistic today is that there is essentially a clear scapegoat for Ukraine’s impending defeat: the Ukrainian president himself.
Indeed, talks led by President Trump earlier this year failed to make progress, largely because no one wanted to take responsibility for an outcome that contrasted sharply with the expectations built by the war’s cheerleaders. Today’s military defeat may mean relief for Kiev, but it will be a fatal blow to the warmongering politicians and lobbyists who promoted the idea that nuclear power Russia could enforce Western supremacy by force.
This illusion underpinned the entire Western policy toward Russia throughout the conflict. This is the main reason why Kiev resisted accepting the outcome of the war, which the Western powers were unable to change.
It has long been clear that Ukraine’s Western allies have hit a wall when it comes to military supplies and funding to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. 19 tough sanctions against Moscow failed to stop the Russian military, which is now stronger and far more technologically advanced than at the beginning of the conflict.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is suffering from draft evasion and territorial and human losses. Reportedly, Western funding could be exhausted by April. Worse still, close European allies such as Poland and Germany have shown they are not prepared to continue funding the large numbers of Ukrainian refugees they host.
The appetite for further war with Russia has all but dried up in Europe, but of course no one wants to be accused of reaching a far worse settlement than could have been achieved had this all-out war been avoided altogether.
For President Trump, being held responsible for Ukraine’s defeat is not a big risk. President Trump has long dismissed the conflict as “Biden’s war” and blamed his predecessor, President Joe Biden, for starting it.
That is much harder for European leaders and Zelensky himself to accept, given how committed they have been to the promise that Russia could be defeated on the battlefield.
To understand their predicament today, one must recall December 2019, when President Zelensky met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Paris and the two sides agreed to a ceasefire in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, ending hostilities and freezing the front lines for the next 12 months.
At that time, the war could have ended on terms that Kiev could only dream of today. In particular, Ukraine was supposed to retain formal sovereignty over the Donbass region, only parts of which were to be autonomous with Russian influence. Ukraine would have lost Crimea, which Russia occupied and annexed in 2014.
However, with Biden’s arrival in the White House in January 2021, Zelenskyy pivoted to the peace process and embarked on a strategy of pressuring Russia on all fronts to agree to better terms for Kiev.
It has strangled Ukraine, a key political ally of President Vladimir Putin, and launched a loud campaign for Ukraine to join NATO as Western allies seek to pressure Germany to halt construction on Russia’s major export energy project, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. London also challenged Moscow by sending battleships into the waters off Crimea, which Russia considers territory. More than a year of dangerous brinkmanship ended in February 2022 when President Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
This year, Ukraine finally abandoned its legitimate but completely unrealistic demands for Russia’s complete withdrawal and reparations in favor of a comprehensive ceasefire along its current front lines. It did so after losing vast territory, much infrastructure, 14,500 civilians and up to 100,000 military personnel.
A peace agreement based on Russia’s terms would be extremely unfair to Ukraine and indeed violate international law. But the only alternative is for the country to be sucked deeper into a black hole of devastation and national collapse.
The reaction to the draft peace plan was a predictable mix of virtue signaling, histrionic defiance, and patriotism. This reflects the complete lack of any realistic plans that could improve Ukraine’s negotiating position. Conveniently, however, corruption within Mr. Zelensky’s inner circle gives Western pro-Ukrainian cheerleaders an escape route to absolve them of responsibility for the deadly chaos they have caused.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
