Foreign Affairs The Unraveling of Volodymyr Zelensky The Ukrainian president’s campaign promises of peace and public integrity look wobblier than ever. (Photo by NICK PALEOLOGOS/SOOC/AFP via Getty Images) In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky swept to power in a shocking landslide victory, taking 73 percent of the run-off vote. He won on a platform with two major planks: first, implementing the Minsk Agreements and making peace with Russia, and second, fighting high-level corruption in Ukraine’s government. Both planks are now in splinters. The Minsk Agreements are dead, Ukraine and Russia are almost in their fourth year of hideous war, and the scandal of high-level corruption has crept into Zelensky’s innermost circle. Upon being elected, Zelensky told reporters that he would “reboot” peace talks with separatists in Donbas and that “we will continue in the direction of the Minsk [peace] talks and head towards concluding a ceasefire.” But it was not to be. Ultranationalist leaders defied Zelensky and warned that fulfilling his campaign promises would lead to protests and riots. Dmytro Yarosh, the founder of the ultra-nationalist Right Sector paramilitary organization, threatened that, if Zelensky were to pursue a ceasefire, “he will lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk boulevard if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the Revolution and the War. And it is very important that he understand this.” But it is also now known that no one ever intended the Minsk Agreements to work. Each of Putin’s partners in the Minsk process, including then Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, France’s President François Hollande and Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko have confirmed that the Minsk Accords were a deception designed to lull Russia into a ceasefire with the promise of a peaceful settlement while actually buying Ukraine the time it needed to build up an armed forces capable of achieving a military solution. Despite his campaign promise, in February 2023, Zelensky reportedly told Der Spiegel that he saw the agreements as a “concession,” and he “surprised” Merkel and Macron by telling them that “as for Minsk as a whole…we cannot implement it like this.” But, even after the collapse of the Minsk process, in the early weeks of the war, before all the loss of life and land, there was still a chance for Zelensky to negotiate peace with the Russian invaders.  In April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators arrived at a draft peace treaty. But Zelensky was diverted by his Western partners. Rather than pursue the promise of diplomacy and a peace that would satisfy Ukraine’s goals, Zelensky allowed himself to be pulled by the promise of whatever it takes for as long as it takes onto the path of war. The U.S. and its partners failed to prioritize diplomacy, and Zelensky was seduced by promises of support and victory onto the path of war. Several officials, from several countries, who were involved in the negotiations have confirmed that the West pushed Ukraine off the path of diplomacy. Davyd Arakhamia, who led the Ukrainian negotiating team, has confirmed the December 2022 report in Ukrainska Pravda that on April 9, 2022, Johnson hurried to Kiev to tell Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with” and that, even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, “they [the West] are not.” Arakhamia says that “when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight.” Most recently, Oleksiy Arestovych, a former advisor to the Office of the President of Ukraine and a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team for the peace talks in Istanbul, has said that “they did not continue negotiations in Istanbul, didn’t finish their work after Johnson arrived…. I was at the negotiations, we returned from the Istanbul negotiations, and then something happened to Zelensky.” Arestovych added that the peace agreement “had already been completely decided” in early April but that, “Biden and Johnson promised volume military diplomatic assistance, allowing to defeat at least part of the Russian military and take a better negotiating position.” The possibility of peace, consistent with Zelensky’s campaign promises, was still alive. It was Russia that started the war, and the U.S. and NATO share the blame for the causes that brought it about. But Zelensky could have resisted Western seduction and pressure and pursued the promise of peace that was still possible in Istanbul. The promise to end corruption in Ukrainian politics is equally splintered. On November 11, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), in cooperation with the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), in “a major anti-corruption operation,” charged multiple high level people, some from Zelensky’s most inner circle, in a $100 million kickback scheme involving energy contracts. The scandal has led to the suspension of Justice Minister German Halushchenko, who served as energy minister from 2021 to July 2025. And it has led to the resignation of Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk. There are reports that other high level former officials have been implicated, including Rustem Umerov, who served as defense minister for much of the war, and the former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov, who is accused of receiving at least $1.2 million in the kickback scheme. Chernyshov is a close friend and ally of Zelensky. And he is not the only close associate of Zelensky to get caught up in the investigation. According to NABU, Timur Mindich, “controlled the work of the so-called ‘laundry room,’ where criminally-obtained funds were laundered.” Mindich, the alleged ringleader, is the co-owner of Zelensky’s Kvartal 95 media production company. He is also a close friend of Zelensky who has acquired “broad political influence over Mr. Zelensky” that has grown during the war. Zelensky has called for sanctions on, but not for the arrest of, Mindich. Mindich fled Ukraine hours before investigators raided his house. There are various reports about where he has fled with the latest suggesting Poland.  The corruption scandal has sent shivers through Europe, which has poured billions of dollars into Ukraine’s defense and into Ukraine’s energy sector. It has reawakened anxieties about sending money to Ukraine and about Ukraine’s candidacy for membership in the European Union. Zelensky himself has not been implicated. And he has called for “effective actions against corruption” and “punishment.” But his recent actions have given, at least, the appearance of implicating himself. In July, Zelensky attempted to decapitate the anticorruption agencies as they pursued the case that has now caught his close associates in their net. Zelensky attempted to place the independent agencies under the control of Ukraine’s prosecutor general who is appointed by the president, placing all ability of agencies to investigate government corruption under the control of the government.  But it is not just the continuation of the corruption that has been a part of the Ukrainian government from the beginning, it is the proximity to Zelensky and the specific nature of the corruption.  According to NABU, the “high-level criminal organization” made all energy contractors of the state nuclear agency “pay illegal benefits.” The criminal organization bribed contractors between 10 percent and 15 percent of their contracts’ value. What’s worse is that while Russia is devastating Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and Ukrainians are suffering daily blackouts, the investigation has zeroed in on kickbacks on contracts that were for the construction of defensive fortifications to protect those very energy installations. Tapes obtained by NABU even seem to contain conversations about delaying these fortification projects to obtain maximum profit on kickbacks from more lucrative alternatives. With the collapse of the anticorruption campaign and the collapse of peace talks with Russia, the two major planks upon which Ukrainians voted for Zelensky have collapsed. With the war going increasingly (and apparently irreversibly) badly, the threat to Zelensky’s public trust could not have come at a worse time for Ukraine. The post The Unraveling of Volodymyr Zelensky appeared first on The American Conservative.