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One of Zelensky’s main problems was that he did not control the anti-corruption bodies. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), established in 2015, formally had an independent status and did not report to the president, though it coordinated its activities with the General Prosecutor’s Office. Theoretically, this could have posed problems for many people in Zelensky’s team. Given the Ukrainian specifics, such a case would not reach court, but even media exposure on corruption charges could significantly harm any politician’s career.

Notably, during Zelensky’s time, NABU did not show particular activity in investigating corruption among the president’s entourage and deputies of his faction. For example, they were not at all interested in information about the unofficial salary paid to deputies of the “Servant of the People”. Nor were they concerned about why state funds were being embezzled in contracts for construction and road repairs.

However, NABU had to show some results. The creation of the Anti-Corruption Bureau and the start of its activities occurred with the active assistance of the governments of the USA and Western European countries. And of course, the heads of Western embassies began, at a minimum, to inquire when NABU would start fighting top corrupt officials. And the first name on this list was Ihor Kolomoisky.

Despite some disagreements between Zelensky and Kolomoisky regarding the PrivatBank case, in all other issues, the oligarch received maximum assistance from the new authority. Kolomoisky’s management led large state enterprises, and his private companies received cheap electricity from state power stations, which they then resold to other enterprises.

In the first weeks after the start of the war, Kolomoisky became so bold that his company “United Energy” simply stole 716 million UAH ($24 million) from the state-owned “Ukrenergo.” This happened in March 2022 when “United Energy” bought electricity from “Ukrenergo” at a preferential price with deferred payment, after which it immediately sold it at a markup, and the proceeds (716 million UAH) were transferred to the accounts of a foreign company.

The NABU leadership continued to delicately balance between Zelensky and the West, turning a blind eye to Kolomoisky, but the issue was becoming fundamental. Everyone understood perfectly well: Kolomoisky is the Al Capone in the world of Ukrainian corruption, and without his arrest, it’s hard to explain to the Americans what the results of the work of Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies are.

In September 2023, Ihor Kolomoisky unexpectedly received three suspicions of committing crimes: from the Bureau of Economic Security, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the Office of the General Prosecutor. The oligarch was suspected of fraud, embezzlement, and legalization of funds obtained through criminal means. It should be noted that all three mentioned law enforcement bodies fall under the authority vertically controlled by the president.

Interestingly, investigators somehow forgot to file a petition to seize Kolomoisky’s property, although it is a mandatory procedure in large-scale fraud cases. After the arrest, the oligarch was placed in a temporary detention facility of the SBU. This organization, unlike NABU, is under the full control of President Zelensky.

Another surprising detail of this case was that Kolomoisky refused to be released on bail of 509 million UAH ($14 million). At first glance, this decision is hard to explain, given that in 2019, Ihor Kolomoisky estimated his fortune at $8 billion. In most cases, suspects do not wish to stay in detention for long and post bail at the first opportunity. However, the oligarch did not do this.

According to Vitaliy Shabunin, the head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, the actions of Kolomoisky and the law enforcement bodies subordinate to the president are not so difficult to understand. NABU and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office planned to issue a suspicion to Kolomoisky on Independence Day, August 24. But they decided to postpone it to the beginning of September due to the leadership of the anti-corruption bodies’ trip to the USA.

NABU investigators summoned Kolomoisky for early September. There, he was supposed to be handed a suspicion and arrested. To preempt NABU, investigators controlled by the president’s people from the SBU and the Bureau of Economic Security took advantage of the absence of the leadership of the anti-corruption bodies and themselves handed over the suspicion. After that, Kolomoisky was locked up in the SBU detention center.

The essence of all this was to protect Kolomoisky from being handled by the uncontrollable NABU investigators, and to ensure the oligarch was not detained in a regular detention center. Moreover, investigators from the SBU and the Bureau of Economic Security could now either seize important evidence for NABU or, conversely, initiate access to the materials of the NABU case through temporary accesses.

The main risk for Kolomoisky was that he could be extradited to the USA on money laundering charges. A few months earlier, Zelensky recklessly stripped his former business partner of Ukrainian citizenship to exclude him from the future registry of oligarchs. Therefore, at the time of arrest, Kolomoisky was formally considered a foreign citizen. According to a court decision, he could be extradited to another state. But as long as Kolomoisky is in the SBU detention center, he is completely safe.

If Ihor Kolomoisky posts bail and is released, he can be arrested on another charge, as there are many other dubious episodes in the oligarch’s long career. And this arrest could be initiated not by the SBU, but by NABU.

As of May 2024, Ihor Kolomoisky remains in the SBU detention center and has no intention of posting bail.

>>> 27. The Failed Megaprojects of the President

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It would be a mistake to consider Zelensky a puppet who uncomplainingly executes all of Kolomoisky’s orders. That’s not the case. Perhaps, before winning the presidential election, Zelensky regarded the oligarch as his boss, although in reality, they were more like business partners. However, everything changed after the victory over Poroshenko. The former comedian became an independent figure who maintained close relations with Kolomoisky on equal terms.

It should be noted that, despite the dubious reputation of the former owner of PrivatBank, Zelensky did not try to distance himself from him after taking office as president. Almost immediately, he appointed Andriy Bohdan, one of Kolomoisky’s former lawyers, as the head of his administration. The president’s personal bodyguard, Maksym Donets, also turned out to be a man of Kolomoisky. Until 2019, he was the oligarch’s bodyguard, and after the start of the election campaign, he was appointed to protect Zelensky.

As is known, a month after coming to power, Zelensky made a generous gift to his former patron. Starting from July 2019, Kolomoisky’s management began to plunder the state energy company “Centrenergo”. However, the oligarch did not intend to stop at this episode alone. The main prize for him was to regain control of PrivatBank. After the overthrow of Poroshenko, Kolomoisky had all the opportunities for this. It only required a couple of court decisions, which Andriy Portnov would take care of.

The fact that the former owner was seriously planning to get the country’s largest bank back is evidenced by the actions of the District Administrative Court of Kyiv. A few days before the second round of elections, when it was clear that the incumbent president was about to pack his things from the office, the judges made three decisions in favor of Kolomoisky.

On April 18, 2019, the District Administrative Court of Kyiv satisfied the oligarch’s lawsuit against the National Bank and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine about the illegality of the nationalization of PrivatBank. The court also canceled the National Bank’s decision on identifying a list of persons related to the bank. In December 2016, it was precisely this decision of the National Bank that was one of the decisive factors in the process of removing the insolvent PrivatBank from the market.

Two days later, on April 20, 2019, the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv canceled Kolomoisky’s property guarantee for the loans that the National Bank issued to PrivatBank in 2013. The total amount of these loans was 9.2 billion hryvnias.

Everything was heading towards the return of the bank, with almost 20 million clients, to its former owner after Zelensky came to power. But Kolomoisky did not take into account that the PrivatBank case had become too public, not only in Ukraine but also abroad. Western creditors started to worry about the prospect of reversing the nationalization of the country’s largest bank. For Ukraine, this could lead not only to increased rates on government securities but also to the cessation of cooperation with the International Monetary Fund. The denationalization of PrivatBank meant that Ukraine was effectively giving the scandalous oligarch the money borrowed from the IMF.

Another nuance that made the scenario of reversing the nationalization impossible was that the state had invested its own finances into PrivatBank’s capital. Kolomoisky handed over an empty bank to the state. He had siphoned off $5.5 billion to shell companies. Now, even if a corrupt court returns PrivatBank to Kolomoisky, it still couldn’t start operations. In case of denationalization, the state must take its funds out of the bank’s capital (more than $5 billion), and according to the current regulations of the National Bank of Ukraine, Kolomoisky would have to inject this amount for recapitalization.

Kolomoisky had no intention of returning anything to Ukraine − the stolen funds were hidden in offshore companies and crypto wallets. He understood that the scenario of getting the bank back wouldn’t work. Therefore, the oligarch proposed another option: the state pays him compensation for PrivatBank in the amount of $2 billion, he becomes a minority shareholder of the bank, and the state gets the controlling stake. The funds allocated by the Ministry of Finance remain in the bank’s capital. Kolomoisky also wanted another trifle: to install his management at the helm of the state-owned PrivatBank.

Yes, you guessed it. This was Kolomoisky’s favorite scheme, which had worked for many years at “Ukrnafta” and then at “Centrenergo”. If this idea had been realized, then PrivatBank would have faced the unhappy fate of “Ukrnafta” − it would immediately start showing losses or minimal profit. The oligarch-controlled management would begin issuing insider loans to companies associated with Kolomoisky.

In the end, Zelensky was afraid to agree to a settlement regarding PrivatBank, which Kolomoisky had proposed to him. Protecting state interests had nothing to do with it. Subsequent events showed that Zelensky repeatedly lobbied for Kolomoisky’s business interests, even if they brought obvious losses to the state. Simply, the PrivatBank case was too visible, and its denationalization could have destroyed cooperation with the IMF.

This episode became the first disagreement between Zelensky and Kolomoisky. Yes, the oligarch failed to get at least two billion dollars through a settlement agreement. However, he wasn’t too offended. It was clear that the president’s position was precarious, and it was not wise to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. There was still plenty of time. According to Kolomoisky’s plan, Ukraine was to become a reliable rear for him for the next 10 years, for both presidential terms of Zelensky.

>>> 26. Kolomoisky and Prison

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On May 19, 2020, Member of Parliament Andriy Derkach held an online conference, during which he released an audio recording made up of various parts of several phone conversations between Joe Biden and Petro Poroshenko. According to the parliamentarian, he received this recording from investigative journalists, and all conversations were recorded in Poroshenko’s office when he was still the president.

Sitting next to Derkach at the conference table in the news agency “Interfax-Ukraine” were Member of Parliament from the “Servant of the People” faction, former journalist of the “1+1” TV channel, Oleksandr Dubinsky, and former Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Konstantin Kulik. Both had a controversial reputation and had repeatedly worked in the interests of Kolomoisky. Regarding Kulik, The New York Times reported in October 2019 that he was the author of the document that formed the basis of corruption charges against Hunter Biden during his work at Burisma Group.

As Andriy Derkach stated at the online conference, the materials he disclosed “demonstrate facts of international corruption and high treason at the highest state level” and “clearly show… Biden was managing Ukraine.”

The content of the released audio recordings included, for example, a conversation from March 22, 2016, dedicated to allocating $1 billion in budget support to Ukraine. For this assistance, Biden demanded from Poroshenko to intensify the fight against corruption, which was one of the conditions for cooperation between Ukraine and the IMF. The conversation also touched upon the dismissal of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin. According to Biden, Shokin was blocking the process of cleansing the Prosecutor General’s Office.

In another conversation from February 18, 2016, Poroshenko acknowledged that he did not have a parliamentary majority, as two out of four parliamentary factions had left the coalition. Theoretically, this was a basis for holding early elections, which Poroshenko wanted to avoid.

These were two of the most interesting moments. Nothing criminal was revealed in the conversations. Nevertheless, Derkach tried to present his audio recording as a basis for initiating criminal proceedings against Poroshenko. Understandably, due to local specifics, this criminal proceeding was unlikely to have any judicial prospects. But the very fact of such proceedings being registered in Ukraine, involving Joe Biden, could negatively impact the US election campaign. It’s worth noting that Derkach’s briefing took place in May 2020, when Joe Biden had already effectively received the Democratic Party nomination.

Just imagine the potential consequences of this case. A few weeks before the first debate between Biden and Trump, the State Bureau of Investigations of Ukraine summons Joe Biden for questioning in Kyiv, and then declares him wanted for failing to appear. Clearly, this was the maximum outcome the scandal’s authors were hoping for.

Fortunately, the parliament understood the danger they were trying to drag Ukraine into, so no investigative commission was created in the Verkhovna Rada. And a few days later, when Zelensky was plainly explained what Derkach was dragging him into, the State Bureau of Investigations lost interest in registering the criminal case.

Even then, it was clear that the roots of this case led either to Russia or to Trump’s team − to those who were extremely uninterested in Biden’s victory. At first glance, the Russian trail seemed most probable. Andriy Derkach graduated from the FSB Academy in Moscow in 1993 and never particularly hid his pro-Russian views. But, most likely, this story began in Madrid. It was there on August 22, 2019, that a meeting took place between the Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, and Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. At this meeting, according to The New York Times, Giuliani persistently called on Yermak to “just investigate the damn things” (related to Biden). In return, Giuliani promised to expedite the visit of the Ukrainian president to the USA and hinted that Zelensky’s meeting with Trump depended on the mentioned investigations in Ukraine.

Zelensky’s role in this story was that he agreed to transfer the telephone recordings to Derkach. Apparently, they were stored in the archive of the President’s Office along with text transcripts. Probably, Zelensky, due to his incompetence, simply did not understand the consequences these recordings could lead to. Playing on Trump’s side could jeopardize bipartisan support for Ukraine in the US Congress and Senate. But if Zelensky’s involvement could be attributed to inexperience, why Andriy Yermak agreed to this adventure remains unclear.

Most likely, Zelensky was used without fully understanding the situation. This can be inferred from his statement on May 20, 2020, when the president said that “Derkach’s tapes” could lead to a criminal case against Poroshenko for treason. It’s quite possible Yermak promised Zelensky that the only consequence of disclosing the conversations would be problems for Poroshenko. Biden was not mentioned.

In August 2023, the “cassette scandal,” which had begun to fade against the backdrop of the war, resurfaced. On August 3, law enforcement conducted a search at the home of Member of Parliament Oleksandr Dubinsky − the very person who sat next to Derkach when he talked about the recordings of conversations between Poroshenko and Biden. Officially, law enforcement was searching for Dubinsky’s passport. A few weeks before, he had left for Austria, allegedly to accompany his sick father for treatment, though he actually went on vacation to the resorts of Italy, Croatia, and Spain. Journalists found out about this, causing a minor scandal. Zelensky needed to mitigate the negative public perception, so he wanted to discipline Dubinsky.

It’s necessary to explain that Oleksandr Dubinsky is not just any deputy. He is a former journalist for Kolomoisky’s TV channel, who played a very important role in discrediting Poroshenko before the elections. If Zelensky mocked the former president from his show’s stage, portraying him as an alcoholic and a failure, Dubinsky worked differently. In his TV program “Money,” he focused on the corruption of Poroshenko and his entourage. Comparing the contributions of Zelensky and Dubinsky to destroying the former president’s rating, it’s hard to say who had a more significant impact.

Of course, Dubinsky was more qualified, but in Kolomoisky’s puppet theater, there was only one vacancy for the president. Fate smiled on Zelensky, and Dubinsky remained for the owner of “1+1” a simple Jewish boy who had to do the dirty work.

After the elections, some tension appeared between these two characters, which only intensified over time. Volodymyr Zelensky became president and gained access to enormous financial resources. Dubinsky’s reward was a place in the “Servant of the People” parliamentary faction and a few trifles: in November 2019, journalists discovered that after several years of working for Kolomoisky, Oleksandr Dubinsky became the owner of 24 apartments, two houses, and 17 cars.

Wishing to punish Dubinsky for his unauthorized vacation, Zelensky forgot he was dealing with an experienced propagandist. Immediately after the search, Dubinsky claimed he was being persecuted because he had testified in Andriy Derkach’s treason case. And the traces of this case lead to the President’s Office.

“It was the Office of President Zelensky that demanded my participation in creating an investigative commission in the Verkhovna Rada on the topic of the Poroshenko-Biden tapes. And it was the Office of the President that demanded my participation in that press conference where Derkach published the corresponding tapes,” Dubinsky stated.

Obviously, the deputy took such a risky step in the face of the threat of criminal liability for forgery of official documents. The maximum punishment for this article entails 6 years of imprisonment. Given Dubinsky’s closeness to Kolomoisky, he was unlikely to end up in jail. But the further course of events showed that Dubinsky’s confidence was premature. The fact is, Zelensky is very sensitive to criticism and dislikes those who insult him.

In the fall of 2023, already under house arrest, Dubinsky imprudently crossed the line, publishing facts of Zelensky’s corruption in his Telegram channel. He also made several personal attacks against the president. This was enough to lock up the former ally in jail. Now he was accused of treason. According to the SBU, Oleksandr Dubinsky, together with Andriy Derkach, worked for Russian intelligence and engaged in activities “aimed at destabilizing the internal political situation” and “discrediting the country’s leadership.” The maximum punishment for this article is up to 15 years of imprisonment.

As of May 2024, Oleksandr Dubinsky is still detained in a pre-trial detention center in Kyiv. All his properties and cars have been seized. Whether Dubinsky worked for the Russians is not for me to assert, but many publications he spread through his social networks indeed coincided with Russian propaganda.

Regarding the episode with the audio recordings of conversations between Biden and Poroshenko, there are significant doubts that Derkach received these tapes from the Russians. Understandably, the Security Service of Ukraine cannot officially support another version, according to which Derkach was given the tapes from the Office of the President of Ukraine. Then, accusations of treason would have to be made against not only Volodymyr Zelensky but certainly against the head of his Office, Andriy Yermak.

>>> 25. The PrivatBank Case: The First Contradictions Between Zelensky and Kolomoisky

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For a time, ordinary Ukrainians perceived Volodymyr Zelensky as part of a political show. Yes, most of them had begun to suspect they were deceived. There would be no breakthrough to the happy future that the TV comedian had promised before the elections. But this was the case with every president. Half the country hates him, half supports him. The main thing was that people could live peacefully, and no one interfered in their affairs.

Notably, deep down, Ukrainians fully understand the danger that amateurs pose. This can be seen in their attitude towards doctors. In case of serious illness, Ukrainians immediately seek out the best doctor in the city and personally bribe him to ensure the surgery goes well and that the doctor makes every effort to save their relative. In times of real health danger, they are not at all concerned that this doctor is corrupt and has taken bribes all his life. No one wants a bad doctor or, even worse, a novice without experience to perform their surgery.

The first serious crisis that came to Ukraine with the coronavirus showed that in the 2019 elections, Ukrainians deceived themselves. A comedian cannot protect the population in case of a threat. His purpose is to entertain people, not save them. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that in our case, the head of the state was a corrupt comedian.

Let’s recall the sequence of events. The first case of coronavirus in Ukraine was detected at the end of February 2020, a month later than in most other European countries. This gave Ukrainian authorities additional time to better prepare for the epidemic. Indeed, initially, it appeared that the Ukrainian Ministry of Health was ready to face the new challenge. Television and the internet began to explain to the population the need to wash hands more often and avoid contact with those who show signs of a cold or have recently returned from abroad. New instructions were also given to border guards. On January 31, by the order of President Zelensky, the government formed an operational staff to fight the coronavirus.

But then everything went according to the worst scenario. As in other countries, panic began in Ukraine. People started hoarding medical masks and cold symptom medications from pharmacies. The cost of a regular medical mask rose from 1 to 17 hryvnias.

In early March 2020, a scandal erupted. Spanish television showed a story about the arrival of a shipment of medical masks and respirators of Ukrainian manufacture. As it turned out, in February, 118 tons of filtered masks and 408 tons of non-filtered masks were exported from Ukraine. Most other countries had already banned the export of these medical products. But not in Ukraine. On January 31 and February 3, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, sent two letters to Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk about the need to ban the export of medical masks. Nonetheless, the government did not respond for more than a month. The export ban on these products was introduced only on March 11, when millions of masks had already been exported from Ukraine. Let me remind you that an operational staff had been working in the country for over a month, headed by the president.

By March 20, 2020, 40 cases of Covid-19 had already been confirmed in Ukraine. The vaccine was still far off. At that time, all attention was focused on coronavirus tests and ventilators. There was a shortage of tests, but they began to be supplied to the country through the World Health Organization. The situation with ventilators was even worse. For a country of 42 million, there were only 3,900 units. But similar problems were observed in other countries; Ukraine was not an exception. Meanwhile, the epidemic gradually spread across the regions. The mortality rate of patients connected to ventilators in Ukraine was 88%. This is a high figure. In Germany, for example, it was 53%.

What was the president doing during the crisis? On April 12, 2020, Zelensky publicly promised a $1 million reward to Ukrainian scientists for inventing a vaccine or medicine against coronavirus. A rather strange offer, considering that Ukraine lacks the laboratories and specialists for molecular modeling of drugs at such a level. The president might as well have promised $1 billion for a Ukrainian’s flight to Mars.

This is just another aspect of Volodymyr Zelensky’s portrait, with worse to come. The first signs that Ukrainians were facing serious problems appeared in the summer of 2020 when clinical trials of the first vaccines began in the USA and Europe. Ukrainian authorities did not even try to reserve a minimum quantity of vaccines directly from the manufacturers, as the governments of the United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Israel, and many other countries did. These countries acted quite actively, while Ukraine simply waited for free vaccines to be provided through WHO and the UN.

Mass vaccination of the population in Ukraine started on February 24, 2021, much later than in EU countries. For example, on the same day, February 24, the Polish government reported that 1 million people had already been vaccinated in their country.

The pace of vaccination in Ukraine remained very slow throughout the epidemic. By the end of March 2021, only 230,000 Ukrainians, or 0.4% of the population, had been vaccinated. The operational staff led by Zelensky did almost nothing to accelerate vaccination. The situation could have been improved by issuing clear orders mandating vaccination for the population involved in the real sector of the economy, under threat of dismissal or fines. However, none of this was done. Instead of real work, the president only made promises.

On May 5, 2021, Volodymyr Zelensky stated that by Independence Day (August 24), most Ukrainians should be vaccinated. Of course, this remained just empty words. As of August 24, only 3.2 million people, or less than 10% of the country’s population, had been vaccinated.

While in neighboring Poland, the vaccination of teachers was completed by March 7, in Ukraine, it was delayed by 5 months. Only in August, before the start of the new school year on September 1, did the state finally threaten to prevent teachers who had not yet received the vaccine from working.

By the end of October 2021, only 16% of the population in Ukraine was vaccinated. For comparison: in France − 79%, in Germany − 66%, Latvia − 49%, Romania − 29%. Ukraine’s figures were lower than any EU country. Even in Bulgaria, the least vaccinated country in the European Union, more than 20% of people were vaccinated.

The vaccination failure cost Ukraine tens of thousands of additional lives that could have been saved if the authorities had acted decisively. Apparently, Zelensky was afraid to make unpopular decisions to avoid losing voter support. It is worth noting that a significant portion of Zelensky’s supporters are poorly educated. If a person is skeptical about vaccination, there’s a 90% chance they are a Zelensky voter. Being an experienced showman, the president did not want to disappoint his audience, did not want to coerce anyone, and procrastinated in the hope that the problem would somehow disappear on its own. The result of this delay is tens of thousands of deaths. These people could have stayed alive if not for Zelensky.

According to official data as of September 2023, 109,000 people died from coronavirus in Ukraine. But there are reasons to believe that these numbers are significantly understated. The statistics on overall mortality indicate that, from March 2020 to July 2021, Ukraine saw about 100,000 “excess” deaths compared to previous years. Meanwhile, official statistics claim that as of the end of June 2021, 52,532 people had died from coronavirus in Ukraine. This contradiction suggests that for every recorded death from COVID-19, there was another unrecorded one. Likely, to avoid spoiling the statistics of their medical institution or region, doctors often recorded the cause of death as another disease, such as pneumonia or heart failure.

>>> 24. Against Biden, in Favor of Trump and Russia

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Back in 2019, many people noticed the strange behavior of the new president towards big business. Zelensky grimly frowned at the mention of possible violations by foreign investors and strangely overlooked the same accusations when they were directed at Ukrainian oligarchs.

For example, the issue of ecology. Residents of some industrial cities in Ukraine have long complained about harmful emissions from metallurgical plants. Typically, these plants use outdated Soviet equipment. Moreover, during the USSR era, when these enterprises were built, the norms for harmful emissions into the atmosphere were much higher than they are now. Of course, the new owners of the plants could install modern filtration systems that would reduce harmful emissions into the atmosphere, but they were not very willing to spend tens of millions of dollars on this.

On July 20, 2019, the Security Service of Ukraine conducted searches at the country’s largest metallurgical enterprise, “ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih”. The searches began a week after Volodymyr Zelensky criticized the management of this plant for harming the ecology.

A few words about the history of this metallurgical giant. In the last year of President Kuchma’s term, when the plant was still called “Kryvorizhstal” and was state-owned, it was decided to privatize it. The auction conditions were arranged so that none of the competitors could participate in the bidding. Therefore, the consortium “Investment Metallurgical Union” (founders − President Kuchma’s son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk and the Donetsk oligarch Rinat Akhmetov) became the buyer. They paid $800 million for the plant, which was much less than its real value.

Half a year after privatization, the “Orange Revolution” began, and opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko became president. Since the privatization of “Kryvorizhstal” was clearly violated, it was quickly annulled. Pinchuk and Akhmetov did not protest much because they feared mass reprivatization. They amassed their fortune by buying state-owned plants for tens of millions of dollars, which were actually worth billions. Therefore, they agreed to give up “Kryvorizhstal” and did not challenge this decision in court, hoping that their other plants would not be taken away.

A new privatization auction was held transparently, live on television, for the first time in the history of privatization in Ukraine. Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal won the auction for “Kryvorizhstal” with a bid of $4.8 billion. Since 2005, the new owner has invested about $4.4 billion in modernizing the enterprise.

But let’s return to 2019. On July 17, in addition to the SBU searches, a criminal case was initiated against the enterprise under Article 441 of the Criminal Code − “ecocide”, which entails imprisonment for a term of 8 to 15 years. Simultaneously, Zelensky directly hinted to the owner of the plant about the need to allocate financial assistance to those affected by harmful emissions.

On August 8, top managers of “ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih” met with the president. As a result of the conversation, agreements were reached: representatives of the plant promised to build an oncology center in Kryvyi Rih for 400 million hryvnias and increase investments in environmental protection. After the meeting, the criminal case on ecocide was immediately closed.

The fact that this story smells a bit like racketeering is just one side of the matter. Zelensky’s principled stance would be commendable if he tackled the ecological problems of other cities with the same energy. Kryvyi Rih only ranked fourth in the list of Ukrainian cities with the dirtiest air. The situation in Mariupol, Kamianske, and Dnipro was even worse. But the air there was polluted by the plants of local oligarchs: Akhmetov, Kolomoisky, Pinchuk, and Yaroslavsky. Zelensky, for some reason, had no complaints against them, and no criminal cases for ecocide were initiated against these enterprises. Perhaps if Lakshmi Mittal owned not only a metallurgical plant but also a TV channel in Ukraine, he would not have had such problems.

The scheme of cooperation between Zelensky and the oligarchs was very simple. Kolomoisky, Pinchuk, and Akhmetov received electricity at preferential prices from state power stations. Who lost in this? First of all, the state company “Energoatom”, which manages nuclear power plants, as well as state hydroelectric power stations and “Centrenergo”. Who wins and increases their income? The oligarchs and their metallurgical plants.

Another example of corrupt lobbying for the interests of oligarchs can be seen in the case of writing off debts to gas companies. On July 14, 2021, the parliament, controlled by Zelensky, passed a law on “regulating” the debt of natural gas market subjects. This law allowed private gas distribution companies to write off debts to the state amounting to 58 billion hryvnias (approximately $2.2 billion). Coincidentally, 70% of these companies belonged to oligarch and owner of the “Inter” TV channel Dmytro Firtash. If you remember, Volodymyr Zelensky once held the position of general producer on the “Inter” TV channel.

Interestingly, a similar law on writing off debts to oil and gas companies was passed under President Yanukovych, 10 years before the events mentioned. Then, in May 2011, the parliament, at that time controlled by the Party of Regions, passed the law “On Certain Issues of Debt for Consumed Natural Gas and Electric Energy”. Thanks to this document, the state forgave the debts of enterprises in the fuel and energy complex amounting to more than 24 billion hryvnias. At the then exchange rate, this was almost $3 billion. The state missed out on approximately $1 billion (7.4 billion hryvnias) due to the writing off of debts to gas companies, most of which were controlled by Firtash.

As you can see, Zelensky, who verbally portrays himself as a fighter against oligarchs and corruption, upon coming to power, began to work according to the old schemes proven by Yanukovych. State money was given to oligarchs. In return, oligarchic TV channels demonstrated complete loyalty to the current government. In the end, the state budget, that is, ordinary citizens: workers in the budget sector and pensioners, for whom there was somehow always not enough money in the Ukrainian budget, lost the most.

>>> 23. How Zelensky Fought the Coronavirus

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