The Deputy Secretary of Defense is under investigation for swindling millions in outrageously high food tariffs for troops. The Deputy Attorney General, theoretically the republic’s number two incorruptible, was caught by the media during a Christmas family vacation in Marbella, Spain, driving a well-known businessman’s Mercedes. The deputy director of the president’s office is accused of being involved in the embezzlement of international financial aid circles in his country. For any government in the world, the accumulation of so many such scandals would be a huge problem. Moreover, this is not about some kind of power, but about Ukraine, a country that is fighting not for life, but for death, whose leaders call on the people to sacrifice and ask the international community to reach deeper into their pocket to ensure the highest good. , national survival.

Under the weight of revelations that emerged as a result of active Ukrainian journalistic investigations, Volodymyr Zelensky launched a massive anti-corruption campaign. Personnel reshuffles and cardinal changes in the state apparatus are on the agenda, but the first examples of writing are already indicative. Four deputy ministers, five regional governors and a presidential official are included in the first wave of purges launched by the Ukrainian president. The cases speak for themselves about the scale and severity of the problem.

For international observers, news of corruption scandals in Ukraine is as shocking as reports of a drought in the Sahara. In the annual assessments of Transparency International, the country, along with Russia, is included in the list of the most corrupt countries in Europe, if not the world. As WikiLeaks has learned, the State Department has been calling Ukraine a “kleptocracy” since the presidency of the staunchly pro-American Viktor Yushchenko. The big difference with Russia is that while the authoritarian state Putin has built has stripped the oligarchs of any independent political power (Khadarkovsky, once the country’s richest man, served ten years in prison to show them all), their Ukrainian colleagues promoted their state as major shareholders of a private company.

Four deputy ministers, five regional governors and a presidential official are part of the first wave of purges launched by Zelensky.

This gloomy picture did not change whether someone from the Russian or pro-Western bloc was in the presidency – after all, the oligarchs and their political representatives had nothing to change, like chameleons, the ideological and patriotic connotation to suit their interests. The heroine of the anti-Russian bloc in the 2005 Orange Revolution, Yulia Timoshenko, as prime minister, made controversial deals with Putin over Russian natural gas supplies and was accused of corruption by her former ally Yushchenko. “Chocolate King” Petro Poroshenko, one of the country’s few billionaires (in dollars), became president against the truly corrupt, pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych after the 2014 Maidan uprising, but today he is on trial for treason because of legendary business connections with the pro-Russian separatists of Donbass.

The fight against rampant corruption has been the banner of Volodymyr Zelensky since the days of the Servant of the People series that made him famous. He chose the same name for the party he founded as a springboard for his ascent to the presidency. However, from the moment he came to power, steps to combat corruption and the oligarchs have been trickle. To the reasonable question “why now and why is it so spectacular?” the French Le Figaro has the answer.

Last summer, the Biden administration began to seriously pressure Zelensky to cut off heads, as pressure increased in Congress to control the weapons and funds that America generously sent to a country that was not a model of moral users. The pressure intensified when the Americans were to launch Patriot missiles against Kyiv. Then, in December last year, he allowed Zelensky to dissolve the Kyiv administrative court, a huge hotbed of scandals, and arrest Pavlo Vovk, whom the Americans called “Ukraine’s most corrupt judge.”

At this stage, Biden had three good reasons to increase the pressure on Zelensky. The first was the upcoming (officially announced on Wednesday) deployment of American Abrams tanks in Ukraine, which is a major development. Secondly, the dominance of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, when the new Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, announced that from now on there will be no “blank checks” in Kyiv. And third, the expected opening of a House-level investigation into disputed payments to Hunter Biden, the president’s son, who received $50,000 a month from Ukraine’s Burisma when his father was Obama’s vice president. from Ukrainian The continuation is expected to be interesting.