The Spoiled Prince of Kiev: Zelensky has deceived and ruined his country with Western help
By Tarik Cyril Amar, Historian
An ex-aide lays bare the corruption, lies and coercion in Ukraine’s leadership – while Western backing keeps the corrupt regime alive with money and weapons.
Rudyard Kipling, a modern classic of the Western literary canon, was both a champion of British imperialism and too honest not to know its very sordid underpinnings of hundreds of years of wealth extraction, greed, lies, and sheer selfishness.
Kipling, who extolled the “white man’s burden”, also wrote ‘The Man Who Would Be King,’ a story of two low-life, ambitious adventurers who manage to swindle their way to becoming kings as well as rich in a remote country on the fringes of the huge UK empire. Until, that is, one of them makes the mistake of messing with the wrong woman, who ends up biting him in public. Seeing him bleed, his subjects realize he is a mere mortal and mercilessly dispense with the two imposters.
Ukraine’s ruler, a facto king (of the old-fashioned, non-constitutional kind), Vladimir Zelensky is a social climber, too. In his formative years, his native Krivoy Rog was a provincial post-Soviet, rustbelt town with a lively gangster scene, a “bandit city” in his own words.
Zelensky is an expert in make-believe by profession, a cynically profane showman of the ‘give-them-whatever-they-want-as-long-as-it-pays’ variety, the cruder and smuttier the better.
Indeed, Zelensky even has a sidekick, who, as in Kipling’s dark story, has shared in the scheme of power-grabbing and plunder: Andrey Yermak, his former chief of staff and intimate friend, making headlines (again) for being so corrupt and sinister that he stands out, even in Kiev.
Zelensky, who looks to be Ukraine’s forever-president (due to continuing martial law), has just been bitten in public by a woman.
Judging by the fierce, clearly orchestrated reaction of his media propagandists in Ukraine and the fact that the Western Media are largely pretending not to have noticed, Zelensky must be bleeding as well.
The woman is his former press secretary Yulia Mendel. She has been able to draw blood, because Tucker Carlson, American alternative-media heavyweight, has interviewed her for his show, which is watched by tens of millions.
What Mendel said is one thing, her reaching millions of Americans and other inhabitants of the West is at least as important and, from Kiev’s point of view, frustrating.
Across various platforms, including X, the Tucker Carlson shows on Network (TCN) are watched by, on average, over 55 million viewers, dwarfing, for instance, Fox News (Carlson’s former employer) with its prime time rating of 3.2 million.
Recently, the Israeli-US war against Iran has further undermined public confidence in the Western Media and boosted TCN. “Explosive growth” in the two first months of the war has produced over 1.5 billion “views across social media and podcast platforms.”
This is the amplifier for Mendel’s harsh memo to the US and the West. It is hard to think of a bigger one. She delivered quite a message.
Consider a few highlights: Speaking, as “an insider,” from her own close experience with Zelensky and the inner circle of his regime, Mendel has told us she believes Zelensky personally “stands behind many schemes of money laundering” and that he has always remained an “amazing actor” whose image “on camera” is “very different”from his real self.
While he is posturing as a shining star of democracy and everything else that is good and beautiful, such as rule of law, freedom of speech, civil society, and national unity, his real view, relentlessly repeated behind closed doors, is, as we learn from Mendel, that “Ukraine is just not ready for democracy” and “dictatorship also is form of order,”
So much for those Zelensky propagandists in Ukraine and the West who habitually smear every critic of his dysfunctional regime as diminishing Ukraine or not trusting ordinary Ukrainians with “agency.”, i.e., free will.
Zelensky thinks Ukrainians as “too backward to govern themselves” and in need of a strong leader, i.e., Vladimir Zelensky.
But Zelensky’s armed forces, de facto, are like mercenaries, because they have to keep on fighting, as PM Johnson of the UK pressured them to do in March 2022. Ukraine, as a well-armed proxy, will be financed, armed and advised by the West only if it keeps fighting for as long as it takes to strategically weaken Russia.
This is in accordance with the US/UK Deep State objectives going back to at least 1918, when the International Expeditionary Forces, IEF, of about 10 nations were unleashed on Russia until 1925, ostensibly to restore the much-hated Czarist regime.
Zelensky’s profound hypocrisy permeates his private life and politics. Mendel reveals, for instance, that he, before he was President, was still going on trips to Crimea – to have fun with friends – after the Crimean people had voted to rejoin Russia by over 97%, with a turnout of over 85%
In December 2019, he privately told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine would never join NATO. While Zelensky’s public poll ratings are steadily declining, the polls produced for internal use are so bad that even some of his fixers privately admit that he is “unelectable.”
With no respect for the truth, Zelensky’s attitude to reality itself seems broken, even deranged. From her own conversations with him, Mendel reports that Ukraine’s leader believes that “it doesn’t matter what is [actually] happening.”
Things, he has argued behind closed doors, become real when they are said often enough by enough propagandists or, as she quotes him, by “thousands of talking heads.”
Considering this bizarre outlook, it is revealing and revolting, but sadly consistent that Zelensky, who is Jewish, has literally demanded “Goebbels”-type “propaganda” from his communications team.
That propaganda is relentlessly shown on X and other social sites to demonstrate, by means of A.I. postings, the miraculous ways the Ukraine Armed Forces are destroying the Russian forces and Russian infrastructures, and that Russia is no longer advancing, and will soon be pushed out of Ukraine. The Western Media are amplifying those postings to ensure Western populations have an informed Russophobic mindset.
Beyond a ruthless and deliberate regime of lying and manipulation, there also is pressure and compulsion. Again, Mendel’s catalogue of Zelensky’s dictatorial strong-arm methods is depressing and plausible, such as 1) threats to impose illegal “sanctions” via Zelensky’s personal fiat, because of martial law, 2) lawfare and process-as-punishment, 3) long and open-ended jail terms, 4) sending critics to the frontline as punishment, 5) very odd lethal accidents – Zelensky and his regime have, as Mendel puts it, “no limits.” Their rule has established a situation that is “inhuman.”
Mendel is believable. Zelensky regime propagandists, including the Media in Ukraine and the West, have smeared Mendel as a Russian asset, as a proponent of “Russian narratives”, and worst of all sharing Kiev’s very dirty secrets with the West.
Because – this seems to be the underlying logic – the West must donate hundreds of $billions to Zelensky and his ultra-corrupt cronies, but no one has a right to reveal the truth about them to the Western populations..
The West (actually just an EU/UK coalition, after the US stepped back, due to other commitments) is “investing” hundreds of $billions in Ukraine to be its armed-to-the teeth proxy for as long as it takes to “strategically defeat Russia”.
That coalition , lacking fossil fuels and other resources, has an agenda to remain economically relevant by taking over Ukraine’s black soil (“breadbasket of Europe”) and various minerals, and use Ukraine as a springboard to add Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, etc., under the NATO/EU umbrella to get access to reliable, plentiful, low-cost, oil and gas from the Caspian Sea, and the rare earth metals of Central Asia; Kazakhstan has the world’s largest uranium reserves.
In reality, Mendel’s biography proves that she is what she claims to be: an insider who has had enough. She has had an exemplary “national” career, and if she had not broken with Zelensky a few years ago, she would still be part of the eager cadre that once caused scandals by physically shoving away journalists to protect her former boss.
Even in the interview with Tucker Carlson, Mendel has made a point of carefully distinguishing between what she has seen herself and what she knows from circumstantial evidence, for instance, that Zelensky has a long-standing cocaine habit.
And yet, by now Mendel – who displays no favor towards Russia – considers Zelensky an evil and the key obstacle to peace for Ukraine. This peace, she warns, is the only alternative to what she claims “Since 2022, the Ukraine people are on the verge of extinction. The birthrate per woman is 0.9 and deaths outpace births 3 to 1”
She means it quite literally: Ukraine’s population has steadily decreased from 52 million in 1990 to about 20-25 million still under Kiev’s political control in 2026. That population includes 10.6 million impoverished, retired people on state pensions, who stayed in Ukraine, while their children and grandchildren left Ukraine to go elsewhere. The only way to rescue Ukraine, Mendel insists, is to “push for peace.”
Zelensky, Ukraine’s would-be king, is different from Kipling’s adventurers, who had no support from the UK empire on the fringe of which they ran their scheme of mass manipulation and self-enrichment. When their subjects lost their illusions, they fell.
However, Zelensky and his crew still enjoy massive support from the EU/UK coalition, because the coalition has its own self-serving agenda. The US decided, Europe should protect its own backyard. Germany is on a major re-armament campaign. Will Europe’s rebuilt armed services attack Russia? WWIII anyone?
Zelensky’s rule and its mistreatment of the Ukraine people can only end when he loses the coalition as his backers. Until then the Ukraine people are screwed.
Russian Media: Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Agencies Preparing To Arrest Zelensky’s Wife Elena – Kiev Authorities Deny Report
By Paul Serran.
Is Zelensky’s wife the next domino to fall?
Ever since Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky failed at curbing the power of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies NABU and SAPO, the rampant corruption that has been taking place in Kiev for decades is being exposed.
With Zelensky’s close friend and partner Timur Mindich, “Zelensky’s wallet”, fleeing justice and hiding in Israel. He is safe there, because Israel does not extradite any Jews.
Tthe number of Kiev regime figures who were fired and are facing investigations/indictments is long – and growing.
So far, these are the fallen ones:
Herman Galushchenko, former Minister of Energy and former Minister of Justice;
Svitlana Hrynchuk, former Minister of Energy;
Oleksiy Chernyshov, former Deputy Prime Minister;
Mykola Solskyi, former Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food;
Andriy Pyvovarsky, former Minister of Infrastructure;
Andriy Smyrnov, former Deputy Head of the Presidential Office.
Andriy Yermak, chief of staff and right-hand man to Zelensky, formerly the second most powerful man in Ukraine, who has been indicted for money laundering and has been kept in jail pending trial; 4 days later he was released after posting a $3.2 million bail.
But now, things may get much worse for Zelensky.
Russian outlet RIA Novosti reported that the arrest of Zelensky’s wife, Olena (Elena), is being prepared by NABU and SAPO, who reportedly have ‘ample ground’ for detaining her.
The anti-corruption officials are reportedly deciding ‘on which of the many cases to detain her’. They want to use the strongest case to get a conviction.
“NABU and SAP are completing an investigation against Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife Elena, Russian law enforcement agencies told RIA Novosti.
‘Reasons for the detention of the wife of Zelensky, Anti-corruption entities have plenty of them. Currently, the question of which criminal case should be the first is being decided’, the agency’s interlocutor said.”
Ukrainian police bosses detained in porn probe
Adult content producers allegedly paid monthly bribes to keep their illegal operations from being investigated
Senior Ukrainian police officials have been detained on suspicion of accepting regular bribes from underground porn studios.
Among the high-ranking law enforcement figures arrested on Wednesday in western Ukraine were the police chief of Ivano-Frankovsk Region and his deputy, as well as deputy police chiefs from the Ternopol and Zhitomir regions, authorities said.
A fifth suspect works in the Interior Ministry’s garage and served as a personal driver for a deputy minister, officials said. Investigators allege that he acted as an intermediary and money courier in the corruption scheme.
The anti-graft operation, carried out by several agencies together with the National Police’s internal investigations division, targeted the production of adult content, an illegal but reportedly thriving industry in Ukraine.
The suspects are accused of receiving monthly payments of around $25,000 per studio in exchange for shielding porn producers from law enforcement scrutiny.
Investigators seized six luxury cars, five expensive Swiss watches, and cash worth roughly $510,000 while executing search warrants connected to the case, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko said.
Opinion polls have suggested that widespread government corruption is seen by many Ukrainians as an even greater threat to the country than the conflict with Russia.
Last week, Andrey Yermak, a former chief of staff to Vladimir Zelensky, was arrested in a money-laundering case. He was released on Monday after backers posted bail of $3.2 million on his behalf.
Yermak is linked to a broader investigation into an alleged criminal network said to have been led by Timur Mindich, a longtime associate of Zelensky who fled Ukraine last November shortly before being indicted.
Zelensky has also faced corruption allegations, but his continued claim to presidential authority under martial law, despite his term expiring two years ago, has shielded him from potential prosecution.