Afrasianet - Dimitri Brega - Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, Kyiv has tried to paint a single image of the world: a brave president leading a united people in the face of "external aggression." But this glossy picture hides behind a more complex reality: a country mired in a deep web of corruption that Volodymyr Zelensky has not succeeded in dismantling;
Talk of corruption in Ukraine today is no longer an internal detail, but has turned into a political and media weapon that directly damages Zelensky's credibility in front of his own people and the Western public opinion that finances this war.
The legacy of a country built on oligarchy deals
Since Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the political elite has not succeeded in building a real state of law, but rather a hybrid system based on an unwritten deal between politicians and oligarchic businessmen.
In the 1990s, huge assets in energy, metals, transportation, and banking were dismantled and allocated at low prices to a small number of businessmen. They not only became wealthy, but they became centers of power that controlled parliament, the media, parties, and the judiciary.
Ukrainian politics has become a bargaining ground between rival financial groups: each group owns television channels, parliamentary blocs, and wings within the government. Buying votes in parliament has become almost commonplace, and buying judges' dues has become part of the daily game.Many
successive presidents have come to power, but the structure of the regime has not changed radically; promises to fight corruption in election campaigns, and then to reproduce the same network after winning. In this climate, society has a deep sense that the state is hijacked, that the law is applied to the weak, while the elders always survive.
This legacy is the ground on which Zelensky has climbed. He did not come in a vacuum; he came to a country where corruption is part of the way power works, not an accidental aberration.
Zelenskyy is a 'clean president' on paper only
In 2019, Zelensky presented himself as the complete opposite of all of the above: a young actor, with no political background, who in his famous series mocks corrupt politicians, and then decides to run for election to actually do what he represented on screen.
His slogan was simple and catchy: "Break the oligarchy system" and "Zero corruption." Millions saw him as one last chance to change the rules. He was voted by young and tired of chaos, part of an elite that needed a new face to polish the system.
But as soon as he began to scrutinize his financial background and network of relationships, another parallel picture emerged:
1. Zelensky made his stardom through a channel owned by one of Ukraine's most influential oligarchs.
2. The production companies he owns with his partners have been transported through a complex network of offshore companies.
3. Part of its profits and revenues are used through tax havens that are usually resorted to only by those who want to hide the true size of their money, or avoid taxes and censorship.
He did not come from outside the system entirely, but from its soft margins, a comfortable entertainment façade for an influential businessman who suddenly turned into a political façade for the presidency of a state.
Offshore Companies and the Mysterious Wealth Profile
Shortly before the war, international leaks revealed massive financial documents that Zelensky and his associates had recorded in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus and elsewhere since 2012.
These entities were not merely "legal instruments"; they were part of a financial structure that allowed money to be passed between media production companies and oligarch-owned channels, away from the eyes of the tax authorities and the public.
The irony is that the man whose rhetoric was based on "transparency" and "integrity" was using the same tools that the corrupt oligarchy has used for decades: the registration of companies in tax havens, the entanglement of ownership between partners and relatives, and the absence of full clarification of the size of assets in official statements before the elections.
It is true that having an offshore company in itself is not a crime, but when it is coupled with a sharp moral rhetoric against corruption, and financial ties to businessmen accused of embezzlement and money laundering, the question becomes legitimate: where does the image of the "clean president" end, and where does the truth of the businessman hiding behind it begin?
Wartime. An ideal environment for corruption
The outbreak of war with Russia has opened a new page, not only militarily, but also financially.
Hundreds of billions of dollars in military and financial aid have poured into Ukraine from the West, thousands of contracts have been executed under the title of "emergency", many tender procedures have been bypassed, and the powers of the executive agencies have expanded to an unprecedented extent.
In such circumstances, corruption becomes more attractive and less costly for the actors:
• No time for auditing, everything has to be bought quickly.
• Exaggerated prices can always be justified by saying that "the market is at war."
• Any internal criticism immediately accuses the author of being "serving the enemy."
This is exactly what happened in vital ministries, such as defense, infrastructure, and energy. Leaks emerged about supply deals for the army at double prices: contracts for food, clothing, and equipment, concluded with companies close to civilian and military officials.
Under media pressure, the defense minister was forced to resign, but the question remained: Is he a scapegoat sacrificed to protect the highest, or is corruption deeply rooted in the system run by Zelensky?
The most dangerous thing about these corruption scandals was that they coincided with a foreign political discourse constantly demanding more money and weapons from the West, as each new scandal gave ammunition to skeptical currents in Europe and America, who are asking: How can we ensure that taxpayers' money does not go to private accounts in Kiev?
The energy sector. A gold mine for power networks
Of all the Ukrainian sectors, the energy sector – especially gas, electricity and nuclear power – remains the most corrupt, combining four dangerous elements:
1. Huge long-term contracts.
2. A monopoly or semi-monopoly in the domestic market.
3. Direct link to national security.
4. Weak effective oversight under the pretext of "secrecy."
In this particular sector, business networks linked to current and former politicians, and men from Zelensky's old circle, have emerged in the world of entertainment and television production.
Supply and maintenance contracts are entered into with intermediary companies that do not add real value, but take a large percentage of the money, and then redistribute the profits in the form of hidden commissions to several parties.
The presence of these networks in a sensitive field such as electricity and nuclear power means that corruption is no longer just "money theft"; it is a risk factor for the stability of the state itself, because any imbalance or crisis in this sector is immediately reflected on the lives of millions of Ukrainians and on Kyiv's ability to continue the war.
For Zelensky, every scandal in the energy sector means not only the fall of a minister or a company manager; it means, in the first place, the fall of part of his image as a president who "fights the oligarchs." Some of the people named in the press and parliamentary investigations are from the same economic-media circle from which he himself started, and this leads to a fundamental question: has he actually been able to break with the past, or has he moved the network from behind the scenes to the front of power?
Anti-Corruption Institutions Between Independence and Containment
After the events of Maidan in 2014, a specialized anti-corruption system was born in Ukraine: an investigative office, a special prosecutor's office, and a competent court. These institutions, with the direct support of the European Union and the United States, have been given powers that would have been unimaginable in post-Soviet countries two decades ago.
On paper, Zelensky supported these institutions, and in his international speech he often mentions them as "evidence of the democratic transition in Ukraine," but the relationship in practice is more complicated:
• When these institutions opened files involving officials from the middle circles, the authorities allowed them to act, and showed this as a sign of integrity.
• When investigations approached powerful businessmen or political allies, attempts to amend laws or influence the appointments of the heads of these bodies suddenly appeared.
• At a certain moment, a law was passed that placed almost the most important anti-corruption organs under the direct supervision of the presidency, before it was quickly reversed under internal and external pressure.
This double game – overt support and covert pressure – reveals that Zelensky does not see anti-corruption institutions as an independent authority that must always be respected; rather, it is a tool that can be rounded up or removed according to political need,
and this is precisely what undermines the credibility of his rhetoric to the conscious public in the West: any serious reform project cannot be built on conditional independence of the watchdogs.
Two contradictory images of Zelensky
Today we can talk about two parallel images of Zelensky:
1. Exterior image
o A president in uniform addresses parliaments via video, calls for tanks and missiles, speaks the language of morality and defense of the "free world."
o This image has a wide audience in the West, especially among the media, which needs simple symbols: "hero" versus "enemy."
2. Interior image for those who want to see
o A president who came from the heart of a media-financial network surrounded by businessmen and oligarchs.
o He did not provide a transparent model of his financial situation and relationships, and questions arose about his foreign companies and the sources of his wealth.
o During his reign, the biggest corruption scandals in the defense and energy sectors exploded during a moment of war that supposedly calls for the highest levels of discipline and integrity.
o At critical moments, he tried to influence the independence of anti-corruption institutions, before being forced to back down under pressure.
The contrast between the two images is what is now creating real embarrassment for his allies: on the one hand, they need him as a political and emotional symbol to mobilize Western public opinion, and on the other hand, they cannot ignore the accumulated realities of corruption and mismanagement in Kiev.The longer the war drags on, the
more urgent the question of corruption becomes: not only in the press, but in the parliaments of donor countries themselves, where some lawmakers have begun to say bluntly: "We are not funding Ukraine; we are funding a system that we don't know how much to trust."
Corruption as a Strategic Pressure Card
The most dangerous aspect of corruption in Ukraine is that it is no longer just an internal affair;
The backlog has become a strategic pressure point that can be used by all parties:
Political forces in the West that refuse to continue the flow of aid find in these files ammunition ready for their position. Ukraine's opponents are using it to show that the war is not a struggle between "democracy" and "dictatorship," but between two regimes, both of which are loaded with their own internal problems. Even inside Ukraine, any faction within the elite can use information on corruption files against another faction at a moment of power struggle, or on the terms of a settlement with the outside, and at the heart of this network sits Zelensky: any report of major corruption in Kiev is directly reflected in his image.
He can no longer hide behind the rhetoric of "I just fight" because the world today sees that part of the real battle is taking place within the state institutions themselves, against the corrupt networks that have exploited the war to consolidate their positions more and more.
Conclusions
Zelensky may score some points in media and diplomatic battles, but the battle that will determine his place in history is not just one fought on the frontlines;
So far, all indications are that the man has not succeeded in achieving the rupture he promised:
• He did not dismantle the oligarchy system; he rearranged it.
• He did not give a complete model of transparency in his personal wealth.
• With his imprint, his inability, or the complicity of his circle, he allowed the war to turn into a "golden opportunity" for a number of officials and businessmen to make quick fortunes.
Therefore, the corruption cases in Ukraine today not only weaken the state, but Zelensky strikes himself at the core, because they undermine the moral basis of his discourse before his people and the world.
If he really wants to prove that he is different from those who came before him, it is not enough for him to wear a military uniform or give speeches in parliaments; he must seriously confront the questions of money and power, and allow all files to be opened to the end, even if they end up in his immediate circle.
Until that happens, "Ukraine's corruption issues" will remain a sword hanging around its neck, and a source of doubt for everything it says about democracy, freedom, and transparency.
