Martin Jay
What Myndich was doing was perfectly normal for a government minister or a senior official within Zelensky's cohort of cronies.
The recent corruption scandal in Ukraine has been making the headlines in the western press with some enlightened so-called 'experts' predicting the downfall of Volodymyr Zelensky himself. The case, involving the possible apprehension of 100m USD in the energy sector, which saw two of its top architects flee to Israel minutes before they were due to be arrested, is a fascinating story with many layers which should be held up to the light to gain some understanding of the culture of corruption. But Zelensky falling on his sword because of it is pure fantasy by those zealous writers who are ill-informed, based in the U.S. or UK and rely too heavily - normally - on the media factory that the U.S. has created in Kiev.
What is especially fascinating about this assertion and those who are writing it is that they are working for big media titles in the west who are starting to look to the opposition in Ukraine to 'source' their colourful copy. Although this is a significant milestone in how the West looks at the Ukraine war, and in particular the tyrant at the heart of it, like a spider in the centre of a web, there is a long way to go before a 100 million dollar racket can topple Zelensky.
For one, there needs to be context about the sum. 100 million USD dollars, which was to be shared with 10 people hardly adds up to much, in a country which has been given 400 billion and which many western analysts believe has been diverted into the offshore accounts of Zelensky and his cabal over the course of the war - a scenario that the Trump administration is waking up to more each day, which EU leaders still turn a blind eye to.
The arrests of the two chief culprits Aleksei Chernyshov and Timur Myndich, very nearly didn't happen at all, even on paper. Both tipped off by Ukraine's infamous anti-corruption agency's move on them, they fled the country to Israel, sparking speculation that Israel plays a considerable role in Ukraine's foreign policy and is closer to manipulating actions on the ground much more than we earlier assumed. Yet their activity gives a glimpse into the vastness of corruption, how the business of graft on such an industrial scale as Ukraine under Zelensky is really the basis of the whole economy and Zelensky's identity. The war needs to be kept going at any cost, not only to keep Zelensky in power and far from the madding crowd of the masses who put him in power in the first place under the auspices of democratic process but also for the racket of war to keep functioning. What Myndich was doing was perfectly normal for a government minister or a senior official within Zelensky's cohort of cronies. Skimming from the top.
But what is not reported by these call centre journalists is how close Myndich was to him or how he (Zelensky) had the previous investigating officer of the anti-corruption unit arrested on dubious charges when he earlier got close to nailing Myndich who has been friends with Zelensky since at least 2008, when he introduced the future president to one of the country's most powerful oligarchs, Igor Kolomoisky. The billionaire crafted a president out of the popular comic through a hit television show before finally in 2023 Zelensky throwing him in jail. Some analysts in Russia are speculating that the attempted arrest of Myndich, while certainly a blow to Zelensky, was a deeper wound as the plot came from the prison cell of Kolomoisky, who Zelensky visited several times both in Israel and in Switzerland before he became president, when the billionaire was his sugar daddy, mentor and financier.
But betrayal is part of the scorpion soup of Ukraine's corruption. Zelensky wasted no time courting the media spotlight over the Myndich affair by pretending to be behind the corruption crackdown. The relations or rather the smoke and mirrors which the relations move is what is fascinating. Kolomoisky is showing that even from prison, he still has powers and that Zelensky's infrastructure isn't as tough as many might think. Western media got it wrong about the Myndich affair rocking Zelensky's multibillion dollar business, even though the U.S. is reported to be investigating some 40 billion dollars which got swallowed by the racket that Zelensky heads. The takeaway lesson is that a small matter of a 100 million dollars is hardly worth anyone getting excited. Another lesson might be that Ukraine's opposition and Kolomoisky are getting comfortable in this role of feeding media with corruption stories, hoping that they will be part of an inevitable downfall. Zelensky himself must have noticed how western media isn't lapping up everything that it is spoon-fed any more and so the going is going to get tough.
But we have no idea how long this can continue as Trump is so capricious in his handling of the Ukraine file. Perhaps this latest scandal should be filed under 'K' though rather than 'M'.