While the mass media pumps out propaganda about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ‘heroism’, and the idyllic character of Ukrainian ‘democracy’, the Western imperialist ruling classes have no such illusions. In September 2021, the European Court of Auditors, which is a body of the EU, issued a special report, Reducing Grand Corruption in Ukraine. The preamble to the report defines ‘grand corruption’ as the abuse of high-level power that benefits the few, and causes serious and widespread harm to individuals and society. It continues ‘Oligarchs and vested interests are the root cause of this corruption’.
The Report draws damning conclusions:
‘grand corruption remains a key problem in Ukraine. Judicial reform is experiencing setbacks, anti-corruption institutions are at risk, trust in such institutions remains low, and the number of convictions resulting from grand corruption is small. Oligarchs and vested interests across Ukraine are the root cause of corruption and the main obstacles to the rule of law and economic development in the country. The European External Action Service (EEAS) and the Commission were well aware of the multiple connections between oligarchs, high-level officials, the government, parliament, the judiciary and State Owned Enterprises (SOEs).’
In other words, Ukraine is a corrupt country run in the interests of super-rich oligarchs who also control the political process.
Zelensky won the 2019 presidential election on an anti-corruption ticket. He was backed by Ihor Kolomoyskyi, one of the richest men in Ukraine, worth $1.8bn. Kolomoyskyi, who in March 2021 was banned from entering the US for ‘involvement in significant corruption’, stands accused of looting the Ukrainian Privatbank, which he owned at the time, of more than $5bn in ‘the biggest financial fraud of the 21st century’. The Pandora Papers two years ago revealed that Zelensky and his television production partners were involved in a web of offshore firms that allegedly received $41m in funds from Kolomoskyi’s Privatbank.
Kolomoyskyi’s Privatbank was nationalised in 2016 by Petro Poroshenko, who preceded Zelensky as president, and is also one of the richest men in Ukraine. He was president from 2014 to 2019, coming to power on the back of the Maidan coup. Accused of treason, he fled into exile after his election defeat. He was alleged to have made lucrative deals with the separatists in eastern Ukraine while fuelling the civil war against them as president. He is now back in Ukraine, posing as an ultra-nationalist. The Poroshenko government showed its ‘democratic’ credentials by banning the Ukrainian Communist Party and criminalising communist symbols.
Fascist involvement
On 7 April Zelensky addressed the Greek parliament alongside a member of the neo-fascist Azov Battalion, who also addressed parliament, prompting walkouts by communist and socialist MPs. Zelensky’s brazenness shows how far Azov Battalion is integrated into the Ukrainian military and state. The inclusion of the Azov speaker was also linked to the fact that railway workers in northern Greece had for weeks been refusing to move arms shipments from the US, bound for Ukraine, to Romania. Fascists in Ukraine had been issuing threats against the strikers.
The Azov Battalion was founded after the Maidan coup by Andriy Biletsky, who was freed at that point from prison where he was serving a sentence for attempted murder. Biletsky has professed his support for the ‘crusade of the white nations of the world against the Semitic-led sub-humans.’ The Azov Battalion’s symbols, the wolf’s hook and black sun, were used by Hitler’s SS in World War II. It plays a leading role among a number of far-right and fascist militias established after the Maidan coup which have been built up, armed and financed to fight the separatists in the east of Ukraine. Oligarchs such as Kolomoyskyi have financed these militias and they have been promoted by the Ukrainian government: in 2014 then-President Poroshenko described them at an awards ceremony as ‘our best warriors’.
The reality is that Ukraine is a kleptocracy: it is owned by oligarchs who obtained their wealth through looting state-owned resources, and run by their political hirelings who salt away their wealth in offshore tax havens. This corrupt elite then buys the support of armed fascist groups to protect them against any opposition. This is the ‘democracy’ which the US, Britain and the rest of the NATO bloc are promoting through their unrelenting propaganda campaign.
Bob Shepherd
