The home of Andriy Yermak was searched Friday by investigators probing an alleged $100 million kickback scheme.
A top Ukrainian official at the heart of peace talks resigned on Friday after being thrust into the center of a massive corruption scandal, threatening to further weaken President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a crucial moment in negotiations to end Russia’s war.
Andriy Yermak’s, Zelenskyy’s powerful chief of staff, decision to quit came hours after his home was searched early Friday by investigators with Ukraine’s National Anticorruption Bureau, the NABU, which is leading the $100 million kickback probe involving the country’s energy sector.
Zelenskyy said in a later video statement that Yermak had handed in his resignation and he was looking for his replacement. “Russia really wants Ukraine to make mistakes,” he said. “There will be no mistakes on our part.”
Yeah, Ukraine was part of Russia for like 200 years, and had the same culture of embezzlement and graft. It takes a long time to unlearn that, but they’ve been working hard at it (as evidenced by this anti-corruption agency)
Indeed. Although it’s painful to see these things happening at such crucial junctures to such crucial individuals, overall it’s a good thing that corruption is being rooted out. The process of rooting out corruption will of course expose a bunch of corruption in the process, but better that it be exposed than to let it continue to fester.
It would have been lovely to flip a magical switch the moment Ukraine left Russia’s orbit that made corruption go away, but that switch doesn’t exist. Corruption probes and prosecutions are what will cause the change to happen.