Kyiv, Ukraine

The rumour reverberating around Kyiv is that the FBI has been leaning on Ukrainian anti-corruption police to investigate Zelensky’s inner circle in order to force him to swallow the bitter US peace deal. Trump, as they say, has put the screws, or the feds, on Zelensky.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) – which is currently unravelling a $100 million war profiteering scandal that has implicated many of Zelensky’s closest political allies – has denied the accusation point blank, and there’s not a single shred of evidence that it is true.

Nevertheless, Mykola Kniazhytskyi, a member of the opposition in the Ukrainian parliament and hardly a friend of Zelensky, told me: ‘A lot of people are saying anti-corruption bodies are taking orders from the United States to undermine Zelensky, to make him do the deal.’

That the rumour exists and has gained currency within the country crystalises how Ukrainians have come to view their relationship with America. Where once they looked east to find a belligerent state using its secret police to try to control their country – now they look west. 

And the rumour reveals how Ukrainians regard democracy and its guardian institutions; they don’t much care for them right now. In a time of war, the fight against corruption is subordinate to survival. It’s heretical in Ukraine to suggest that the country might benefit from elections to give its leader, whoever that turns out to be, a democratic mandate, a stronger arm to bargain with. Elections would be complicated to stage, no doubt, but they were managed during the US Civil War in 1864, so why not now? Ukrainians – even those who despise Zelensky – shrug at the suggestion and say........

© The Spectator