“Is it conceivable he didn’t know about some of these corruption schemes?” Goncharenko said. “I don’t know the answer.” “But I can tell you that Zelenskyy is very much about micromanagement. So it is hard to imagine that he didn’t know what Mindich, Chernyshov, and now allegedly Yermak, were doing.”
Goncharenko, who chairs a parliamentary investigative commission on corruption, said he had called some of Zelenskyy’s former aides to appear before the commission. “We want to interrogate them. So that’s what we are doing on Wednesday,” Goncharenko said.
Zelenskyy’s defenders argue there’s no direct evidence tying the president to any alleged illegal acts, but critics like Mendel are skeptical. “The 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,” she said.
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’s leaders have already dubbed unrealistic, given the benchmarks — including on corruption — Kyiv will have to meet before it can join the EU.
“It is a good question,” said Goncharenko. “From one point of view, indeed, it doesn’t help, having accusations of high-level corruption and allegations against the closest people to the president.”
“But 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,” he added. “So it shows our anti-corruption system is working.”
Ultimately, he added, the verdict will depend on how the country handles the cases, especially the ones closest to the president.
“The question now is what will be next and how it will develop,” he said.