Before it disappears I wanted to take note of this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by former Zelensky economics advisor Alexander Rodnyansky;
A stable and genuinely sovereign Ukraine remains in Europe’s interest. But if Europe wants to support Ukraine as a future member of the West rather than merely as a glacis against Russia, its policy has to change.
That starts with honesty. Europe should admit that self-preservation is now a central motive of its support. It should also stop treating military endurance as the only measure that matters. Aid should be tied to battlefield needs and to institutional development: legislative function, transparency, anticorruption enforcement, competence rather than the blind celebration of supposed political savvy, limits on arbitrary power, and a clear understanding that wartime necessity cannot become a permanent political principle.
but even more to a comment in the ensuing thread of that op-ed by Yuri Victor Vizitei which I will quote in full:
This piece is part of the political struggle within Ukraine and I would caution an uninformed reader to make any assumptions or come to any conclusions.
“The most significant controversy surrounding Rodnyansky is his very public break with President Zelensky following Ukraine’s largest corruption scandal since the war began. In November 2025, Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption agencies (NABU and SAPO) unveiled “Operation Midas” — a $100 million bribery and money-laundering scheme centered on Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear power operator. The scheme’s alleged architect, Timur Mindich, was a co-owner of Kvartal 95 Studio — the media company Zelensky co-founded before his presidency.”
The problem is that NO ONE high enough in business or politics in post Soviet space is “clean” of some level of corruption. It’s more often a struggle between camps, not right or wrong. This is a direct failure of the West to “clean” the post USSR space of left over Soviet influencers. We didn’t want to invest any money in it, and didn’t see them as a risk. SO we didn’t execute on a Marshall plan equivalent as we should have. That gave us Putin and unending corruption.
We should see Ukraine today as the bulwark against Putin and Russia. As well as a potent future EU member, but only after the shooting war. Trying to sort out politics in Ukraine now is fool’s errand. It’s not that Mr. Rodnyansky is wrong or right. It’s just that we can’t know all of the history and realities involved here.
What I want to draw attention to is corruption. It is endemic in Ukraine’s system. It won’t vanish with less connection with Russia. It shouldn’t simply be dismissed. It is structural not episodic therefore it must be mitigated rather than just wished away. Failing to recognize that is our mistake not the Ukrainians’.
That means that we must be vigilant in our oversight of how the aid we provide to Ukraine is used and that cannot easily be done from 5,000 miles distance which implies more direct, embedded oversight and conditionality than we have been comfortable with.. If the objective, Ukrainian independence, is to be achieved, that is something we cannot avoid or delay in doing.
