Media report: Zelensky urged journalists to remain silent until victory over corruption

The reports about the corruption problem in Ukraine are making President Zelensky nervous. According to him, the disagreements within the law firm should remain – as long as the war lasts.

Following the publication of a journalistic investigation into price manipulation in the purchase of food for military personnel, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has unofficially urged media representatives to avoid the topic of corruption during the war. This was reported by the editor-in-chief of the ZN.ua news portal, Yulia Mostovaja, at the "National Media Talk 2023" conference in Kyiv.

When asked by the moderator whether the government was influencing the press during the war with Russia, Mostovaya told about a meeting of media representatives with Zelensky, to which she herself was not invited. At the meeting, the head of state reportedly urged journalists not to write about the problem of corruption in his country.

The journalist said that she could be sympathetic to this position if the authorities had shown that they were willing to fight corruption away from the public eye, for example by establishing a hot line with the head of the president's office, Andrei Yermak. This would have been a chance for the authorities to correct the mistakes.

However, Zelensky did not make a corresponding proposal, she explained. He said, "Be silent until victory." The journalist disagreed:

"If we remain silent, there will be no victory."

She called this case "a little story in which the world is reflected in a drop of water."

On January 21, the website ZN.ua published an investigation into the purchase and delivery of food to military personnel worth more than 13 billion hryvnia (equivalent to 340 million euros). In the published documents, the wholesale prices of some products were set two to three times higher than the respective retail prices in a supermarket chain in Kiev.

For example, the Ministry of Defense bought eggs for 17 hryvnia (44 cents) each, while the retail price in stores was about 7 hryvnia (18 cents) apiece. This caused a great stir, which led to a number of resignations in the Ministry of Defense.

Then-Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov called the scandal an attempt to undermine confidence in the ministry's leadership.

The donors are well aware that Western aid money can also be embezzled on a large scale. Although he has already approved billions in military aid to Kyiv, President Biden has repeatedly called for curbing "corruption" in Ukraine. The Pentagon recently set up a special monitoring team to track the flow of weapons on the ground for the first time since fighting flared up with Moscow last year.

A few weeks ago, Republicans in Congress called for more detailed accounting of the use of US aid to Ukraine since February 2022. Apparently, the Ukrainian public is similarly concerned about the systematic corruption in the Ukrainian state apparatus. Recent polls show that 78 percent of adults surveyed hold President Vladimir Zelensky "directly responsible" for corruption in the government.