\u201cIs it conceivable he didn\u2019t know about some of these corruption schemes?\u201d Goncharenko said. \u201cI don\u2019t know the answer.\u201d \u201cBut I can tell you that Zelenskyy is very much about micromanagement. So it is hard to imagine that he didn\u2019t know what Mindich, Chernyshov, and now allegedly Yermak, were doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goncharenko, who chairs a parliamentary investigative commission on corruption, said he had called some of Zelenskyy\u2019s former aides to appear before the commission. \u201cWe want to interrogate them. So that\u2019s what we are doing on Wednesday,\u201d Goncharenko said.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy\u2019s defenders argue there\u2019s no direct evidence tying the president to any alleged illegal acts, but critics like Mendel are skeptical. \u201cThe pattern suggests a leader who either tolerates or is insulated from a court of loyalists and oligarch-adjacent figures who treat state resources and positions as personal fiefdoms,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The scandal is flaring just as Ukraine is pushing to get fast-track accession to the EU. Zelenskyy has called for the country to be admitted next year, a target the bloc\u2019s leaders have already dubbed unrealistic, given the benchmarks \u2014 including on corruption \u2014 Kyiv will have to meet before it can join the EU.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a good question,\u201d said Goncharenko. \u201cFrom one point of view, indeed, it doesn\u2019t help, having accusations of high-level corruption and allegations against the closest people to the president.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut at the same time it shows that our anti-corruption bodies are really independent and they can prosecute, which makes us very different from Russia or Belarus,\u201d he added. \u201cSo it shows our anti-corruption system is working.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ultimately, he added, the verdict will depend on how the country handles the cases, especially the ones closest to the president.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question now is what will be next and how it will develop,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIs it conceivable he didn\u2019t know about some of these corruption schemes?\u201d Goncharenko said. \u201cI don\u2019t know the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":792092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3661,25818,17628,99,50,66044,257,186907,273,3656,275,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-792091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-andriy-yermak","9":"tag-belarus","10":"tag-corruption","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-petro-poroshenko","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-rustem-umerov","16":"tag-ukraine","17":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","18":"tag-war-in-ukraine","19":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116564129722673395","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}