POLITICS: Harsh realities a weakened Ukraine must face as scandal, troubles loom over Zelensky’s regime

Gennady Druzhenko reckons that of the 1,000-odd fellow military recruits in his training camp, he is the only one who is there willingly.

The vast majority are conscripts, many of them old or unhealthy, press-ganged off the streets to plug the growing gaps in Ukraine’s front lines.

His comrades’ morale could not get much worse, but in the wake of the corruption scandal last week engulfing Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, a new low has been reached.

“Some of these guys are nearly 60 and it’s a tragedy that they’re being mobilized anyway,” Druzhenko told The Telegraph. “But now we have this huge corruption scandal, where people in government are stealing hundreds of millions of dollars, just at a point when ordinary Ukrainians are really struggling. Do you think that motivates them to defend a regime very similar to [Vladimir] Putin’s kleptocracy?”

Druzhenko, 54, is no spring chicken himself, yet is already well-acquainted with the horrors of battle.

On the front lines, the former democracy activist’s organization, Pirogov First Volunteer Mobile Hospital, has treated more than 50,000 casualties. He sees the realities of Ukraine’s fight against Putin’s forces every day.

For Zelensky, there is now a triple threat at home and abroad.

There’s growing anger over the scandal in which officials allegedly stole millions from the state nuclear energy provider, huge losses on the front lines and now Donald Trump’s controversial 28-point peace plan.

Terrible timing

While Druzhenko’s comparison of Zelensky’s regime to Putin’s is perhaps rhetorical, it is fair to say even the Kremlin might have blushed over the unfolding scandal at Energoatom, the state nuclear power firm.

Seven government figures, including Zelensky’s close associates, are under investigation for allegedly siphoning up to $100 million from contracting processes after detectives secretly recorded conversations.

Among them is Timur Mindich, a former business associate of Zelensky’s, who fled abroad after being tipped off about his arrest warrant.

In a country whose borders are heavily policed to stop draft dodgers fleeing, that was not a good look.

Nor was the golden lavatory — allegedly found along with bags of money — in Mindich’s apartment or the reports that one of the accused complained of back pain from lugging the stacks of illicit cash around.

The timing of the scandal, and its origins in the energy sector, could barely have been worse.

Thanks to relentless Russian strikes on Ukraine’s power network, nearly half a million Ukrainians are currently without electricity, with Kyiv spending 10 hours a day without power.

This winter could be Ukraine’s toughest ever. And rather than just blaming Russia, Ukrainians are now also blaming Energoatom, where the corruption allegedly stopped work to protect substations from air raids.

On top of warnings that Pokrovsk, a key city in the Donbas, will fall any day, Zelensky was already facing his worst week since early 2022.

Then came the news on Thursday that Washington was seeking to strong-arm him into another one-sided peace deal — yet again, brokered with Moscow behind Kyiv’s back.

The 28-point plan, first published by The Telegraph, would not just see Russia keep parts of eastern Ukraine it has already seized, but force Kyiv to hand over four key towns in Donetsk that it has fought for a decade to preserve.

In exchange for as yet unspecified security guarantees, it would also halve the size of Ukraine’s army and ban it from acquiring long-range missiles that could hit Moscow. All war-crime charges would also be dropped.

In many ways, it looks simply like a rehash of previous Washington peace plans — most of which appear calculated to be unacceptable to Kyiv, and to allow Trump to give up on the talks.

On Friday night, to make matters worse for Zelensky, Trump and Putin told him to agree to their peace plan by Thursday or face defeat.

Trump told Zelensky he would “have to like” the peace deal while American officials threatened to stop sending weapons and sharing intelligence with Ukraine if the demands were not met.

Zelensky is taking it seriously, saying on Friday in an address to Ukraine from the streets of Kyiv: “Now is one of the most difficult moments of our history.” He called the decision on the peace deal a choice between “a loss of dignity, or the risk of losing a key partner.”

Having Zelensky in a bind, though, is one thing. Getting him to sell the deal to the Ukrainian public is another, as it tears up red lines that Kyiv has drawn in very thick blood.

Among the very few who do back the plan is Druzhenko. He is, by Ukrainian standards, relatively unusual in being willing to accept that territorial losses are now inevitable.

“It is a bad option but it is the best option we have,” he said.

This is not just because it might spare him a stint on the front lines. Just recently, he got his routine military call-up, which he opted to answer rather than dodge. As he puts it: “Military service is a tax for the honest and poor.”

Realistically, he says, Ukraine was never going to reclaim its lost territory by force anyway.

The separatist-held republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, meanwhile, have become lawless, gangster-run hellholes — spelling only trouble for whoever keeps them long term.

Alina Frolova, a former Ukrainian defense minister and deputy chairman of the Center for Defense Strategies, a Kyiv think tank, doubts the new peace plan will get any further than previous ones.

“I think President Zelensky is only going along with it because he can’t say in public that he doesn’t support it,” she said. “It will be discussed for a bit, and then nothing will happen, as the conditions it lays down are completely unacceptable.”

‘Headed toward disaster’

Yet Ukraine’s hand at any bargaining table seems to be getting weaker. The fall of Pokrovsk, a road and rail link, makes the key Donbas garrison cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk more vulnerable.

In defending Pokrovsk thus far, Ukraine has also had to divert troops from the southern front around the city of Zaporizhzhia, where the outlying town of Huliapole is now under pressure.

A Russian breakthrough there could be far more serious, putting Zaporizhzhia itself at risk of falling.

Russia has not taken a major Ukrainian city since Kherson in the war’s first week, which Ukraine then reclaimed in late 2022.

Kyiv is also running ever shorter on fighters, with around 200,000 military-age men fleeing the draft since 2022, despite police drones patrolling the borders. As Druzhenko points out, that 200,000 figure is the rough size of the Ukrainian army at the war’s outset.

 Front-line troops complain about thermal drones being wasted on border policing, when they would be more usefully used in battle.

The number of draft dodgers, in turn, hints that draft officials can be bribed. And corruption at the top gives draft dodgers a ready excuse. Why should they risk their lives, they ask, when others have their hands in the till?

Draft-dodging has also fueled a growing social divide between those who have fought and those who have not.

Ukraine now has a large constituency of battle-hardened, nationalist-leaning veterans. Even were Zelensky to accept Washington’s peace agreement, they might not. And deal or no deal, if he continues to make a mess of things, they might be tempted to interfere.

They include men like Serhii Sternenko, an influential right-wing YouTuber, who this week warned Ukraine was “headed toward a disaster of strategic magnitude, which could lead to the loss of statehood.”

Without significant changes in both military and political leadership, he said, it was “only a matter of time” before Russian tanks might break through to Zaporizhzhia and beyond.

Drastic moves needed

Might a coup happen? Frolova says “no,” Druzhenko says “yes” — although he warns it would backfire, depriving Ukraine’s government of the “legitimacy” that earns it Western support.

Most observers do believe, though, that Zelensky will have to make some drastic moves.

One might be to sacrifice Andriy Yermak, his all-powerful chief of staff, long regarded as the president’s “Grey Cardinal.”

As the man who controls access to Zelensky, many feel he bears at least indirect culpability for the Energoatom fiasco.

“It would show, symbolically, that he is taking the scandal seriously,” says Druzhenko.

Zelensky, though, regards Yermak as a key ally, without whom neither he nor the entire government might have lasted this far.

In recent days, many Ukrainians have also pointed out in previous Kyiv governments — like the one in Moscow — graft also thrived, but was simply hushed up.

“Yes, corruption is a problem,” says Frolova. “But at least it gets uncovered.”

It is true also that Zelensky has weathered many tempests before, from the siege of Kyiv and the failed 2023 counter-offensive to his roasting from Trump in February.

Seldom in the last three years, though, have so many storm clouds gathered at once.

Reprinted with permission from The Telegraph.