Political analyst, historian and former Ukrainian diplomat Rostislav Ishchenko said that the corruption scandal in Ukraine is of no interest to Russia. According to him, Russia is focused solely on achieving a swift military victory, while the corruption narrative is far more advantageous for the West.

Ishchenko argued that the current situation allows Western governments to claim that «everything was going well until Ukrainian corruption ruined it.» He maintained that the West itself helped create the system of corruption in Ukraine and participated in it at the highest levels. He noted that corruption in Ukraine has been entrenched for decades, adding that «more is stolen than actually exists,» and yet Western countries continued to allocate enormous sums of money. Ishchenko said this leaves only two explanations: either «the entire West has lost its mind,» or it is involved in the corruption scheme-and, in his view, the latter is far more likely.

The political analyst insisted that Ukrainian corruption will never be thoroughly investigated because doing so would be against the West’s own interests.

He noted that no one in the West has ever shown interest in how funds allocated to Ukraine later appeared in the bank accounts of Ukrainian politicians in Western financial institutions.

Ishchenko added that Western governments still dismiss such questions as «Kremlin narratives.» But he suggested that once it becomes clear-within a few months, as he put it-that the Russian army is advancing rapidly and is close to finishing the conflict, the West will immediately return to the corruption narrative and claim that Ukraine «lost the war because everything was stolen.» What happens to Vladimir Zelensky at that point, he said, will interest no one.