In all too many ways, what has happened to Ukraine, particularly since 2014, is a very sad story. Two things that are especially depressing are what its own “elites” and its so-called “supporters” in the West have done to the country.

Regarding the West, its contribution to Ukraine’s devastation has been to lure its leadership into sacrificing the country and its people in a proxy war. That proxy war, to make things even more absurd and futile, has long failed predictably, even if measured against its Western designers’ own selfish and hubristic aims: namely, to substantially weaken if not degrade Russia, or even subject it to the scourge of regime change.

Ukraine, in sum, has been literally bled almost dry in pursuit of a cynical and delusional strategy that has always privileged misconceived Western, not real Ukrainian interests. Ironically, what was meant to weaken Russia has made it stronger, while it is Ukraine that has been degraded, economically, geographically, and, last but not least, demographically.

And politically as well. This may surprise some observers, at least in the West, where the public has been deprived of truthful reporting on Ukraine’s domestic politics for years now. Yet the reality is that the country’s own “elites” are as brutally selfish and corrupt as ever. Yes, the last president who was not anti-Russian (he wasn’t “pro” either), Viktor Yanukovich, made himself a big fat regime change target with his pronounced if messy authoritarianism – mean lawfare against rivals included - and bombastic corruption. But no, nothing has changed.

At least not for the better. If anything, the current regime, under Vladimir Zelensky, is worse. And, as before, it is pervasive: while a favorite sport of the ultra-rich and well-connected, corruption also poisons the life of ordinary Ukrainians at every step. As a Ukrainian construction manager told Al Jazeera this summer, “What’s the point if I go back home and my family is surrounded by corruption everywhere […] Judges, officials, even schoolteachers all say, ‘Give, give, give.’” Yet unlike with hapless Yanukovich, Zelensky is, in the infamously candid American phrase, “our son of a bitch,” that is, the West’s. So, he lasts. For now.

That is where things get sticky. Because Ukraine is currently being shaken by a corruption scandal so humungous even Zelensky’s most deluded fanboys (for........

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