As Walls Close In, Zelensky Lashes Out

Ukraine Iulia Mendel, the president’s former press secretary, told The American Conservative she is being politically persecuted. Photo by Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images Welcome to the barfing-in-the-neighbors’-bushes hangover of Ukraine’s “turning the tide” exuberance this summer. Actually, the exuberance phase was short-lived, so we’ve been feeling the crapulence since at least mid-July, when President Volodymyr Zelensky axed the popular Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. Days later, he fired Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi and, one day after that, Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Andrii Hnatov. Wartime presidents don’t strike down their top military leaders when battlefield developments are coming up roses. And following Kiev’s military reshuffle, Russia has only intensified its air attacks, lobbing jet-powered drones at critical infrastructure and firing glide bombs at Ukraine’s eastern strongholds in the strategic “fortress belt.” To be sure, Ukraine has been getting its own hits in, launching deep strikes at Russian oil refineries to up the pressure on Moscow. Such strikes seem intended to force Russia’s President Vladimir Putin into an energy ceasefire before the winter, so at least there’s some kind of strategic logic involved. But, as the military analyst Jennifer Kavanagh put it on a recent podcast, “Anything Ukraine can do, Russia can do better.” It’s the political tumult inside Zelensky’s government that’s grabbing attention this week. Having run out of top generals to give the boot, the Ukrainian leader is now lashing out against former officials as he tries to assert control amid a chaotic corruption crisis. You might think that sounds like both a new and a troubling development, and you might be only half right. “None of this development is new,” Balazs Jarabik of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center told The American Conservative. What is new, Jarabik said, is that the accumulating scandals “are now creating a multicrisis ahead of a very tough winter where Russia has a much larger destruction capacity.” This Sunday, Zelensky slapped sanctions on his own former press secretary, Iulia Mendel, who has become one of his fiercest and most prominent critics. According to a presidential decree, Mendel spreads “Russian propaganda” and supports “Russia’s aggressive policy against Ukraine.” Not only will she face economic restrictions like asset freezes, but internet users within Ukraine will be blocked from accessing her social media accounts. Mendel told TAC the accusations against her were bogus and crafted to silence a voice calling for peace (and even Zelensky supporters basically agree). “My case is one of many in which people have been unconstitutionally sanctioned,” Mendel said. “It is further proof of political persecution in Ukraine. I am deeply afraid for my family and for myself.” Zelensky had previously sanctioned other Ukrainian citizens, including his ex-chief of staff and even a former president. The timing of the latest action corroborates Mendel’s claims of political persecution. “The sanctions were imposed once it became known that I was scheduled to speak in the European Parliament in favor of peace,” she said. Another presidential decree issued by Zelensky, this one on Monday, said Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko had been removed from office under powers granted by martial law. Zelensky, in a statement earlier the same day, described a conversation he’d recently had with Kravchenko. “This prosecutor general has only one path: dismissal from office,” Zelensky said. “That is exactly what I told him.” Unlike Mendel, Kravchenko is no critic of Zelensky—he’s a key loyalist. Moreover, he’d already resigned a week ago and was merely hanging around until the Ukrainian parliament approved his resignation. So, why did Zelensky not only “fire” Kravchenko but make such a show of it? It’s a complicated story. Kravchenko’s ouster comes after Ukraine’s top anticorruption watchdogs raided his office—climbing up ladders after being illegally denied entry at the door—and later exposed a major scandal involving scam phone calls, racketeering, and money laundering. Kravchenko denies involvement, but many suspect he’s “the boss” referred to in leaked audio recordings from the investigation; in any case, at least some of his underlings are implicated. Nevertheless, on Monday night he was permitted to leave Ukraine in an official car. Here’s the elephant in the interrogation room: The anticorruption inquiries are creeping closer and closer toward Zelensky. The saga doesn’t end there. On his way out the door, Kravchenko executed an unexpected counterattack. He released a video—titled “Episode 1: Part 1”—in which he unveiled a “notice of suspicion” he’d supposedly just signed against Semen Kryvonos, who leads one of the anticorruption watchdogs. Kravchenko accused Kryvonos of voter bribery, document forgery, ill-gotten gains, and “fictitious adoption.” That last phrase isn’t some fancy term of art. Kravchenko alleges Kryvonos pretended to adopt a baby as a stratagem for gaining judicial leniency in a case against him. Jarabik suspects that Zelensky orchestrated the 11th-hour plot twist. “Why is Zelensky being theatrical? He has to show that he is fighting corruption,” Jarabik said. “Yet this was a clear deal between them: Kravchenko can leave but signs the notice of suspicion against Kryvonos.” Ukrainian politics has never seemed crazier. And this column hasn’t even touched on the daytime shootout two weeks ago between Ukraine’s rival intelligence agencies. The bullets began flying around 8:30 a.m. in the streets of Kiev (imagine seeing that out your window over morning coffee). Zelensky called it an “absolutely shameful event” and ordered an investigation by the prosecutor general—that would be Kravchenko, the guy who just fled the country. Meanwhile, Western support for Ukraine shows signs of cracking. The mercurial President Donald Trump had been swinging in Ukraine’s direction, but amid his own troubled war and the energy supply crisis it has sparked, the Trumpian pendulum is now swinging back the other way. “Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing—he has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. Trump’s special envoy Jared Kushner, after visiting both Moscow and Kiev to get peace talks going again, seemed to blame Ukraine for the lack of diplomatic progress. “President Putin laid out his line of what he wants to achieve,” Kushner said last week. “If Ukraine wanted to withdraw to that line, then obviously, you know, we have the rest of the deal set up and put together. Ukraine right now does not want to do that.” Subscribe Today Get daily emails in your inbox Meanwhile, the European Union postponed a September 15 deadline for extending sanctions against Russia, creating more time to consider proposals by Slovakia and, more surprisingly, France and Luxembourg to remove certain Russian businessmen from the sanctions list. Zelensky isn’t pleased. “This is definitely not the time to lift sanctions, definitely not the time to shield Russian oligarchs from sanctions, and definitely not the time for Europe to give Russia any gifts,” he said. To make matters worse, Ukraine faces an acute budget crisis that bewilders European allies who don’t understand where all the money they’ve provided has gone. Zelensky has tried to blame a $27 billion shortfall on Fedorov, the ousted defense minister, but the problem is structural: The war is getting only more expensive, even as Russian strikes on seaports deprive Kiev of revenue. Ukrainians are heading toward a tough winter of mounting Russian attacks and wavering Western support. Their future has never seemed less certain, nor their leader more isolated. “This is the tragedy of Zelensky, in the end,” Jarabik said. “He remains alone, he has no team left.”