NYT: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky's Government Allowed Corruption to Fester

Brett T. | 6:30 PM on December 08, 2025

Now that President Joe Biden's been out of office for nearly a year, we can finally get all of those "now it can be told" stories. Our own Just Mindy reported on Sunday that The New York Times had published a piece on how Biden failed to act on warnings from his advisers about the "chaos" at the border. The Times called it "a deep look at how Biden failed to head off the immigration crisis that beset his presidency." So now even the liberals at The Times can call it a crisis.

One always takes the risk of being branded "pro-Putin" if one ever expresses concern over how Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky spent $20 billion of aid from the United States in its fight against Russia. Now, The New York Times is stepping up again, reporting something we already knew: Zelensky's government had sabotaged oversight, and his inner circle laundered over $100 million.

From the annals of "It can now be said": NYT is reporting that Zelensky's inner circle laundered over $100 million. Kiev "rewrote company charters to limit oversight, keeping the gov in control and allowing hundreds of millions of $$ to be spent without outsiders poking around." pic.twitter.com/zp7yHYEzlG
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) December 8, 2025

Constant Méheut and Kim Barker report from Kyiv:

When Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Kyiv’s Western allies faced a dilemma: how to spend billions supporting a government fighting Russia without watching the money vanish into the pockets of corrupt managers and government officials.
The stakes were high because Ukraine’s vital wartime industries — power distribution, weapons purchases and nuclear energy — were controlled by state-owned companies that have long served as piggy banks for the country’s elite.
To protect their money, the United States and European nations insisted on oversight. They required Ukraine to allow groups of outside experts, known as supervisory boards, to monitor spending, appoint executives and prevent corruption.
Over the past four years, a New York Times investigation found, the Ukrainian government systematically sabotaged that oversight, allowing graft to flourish.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration has stacked boards with loyalists, left seats empty or stalled them from being set up at all. Leaders in Kyiv even rewrote company charters to limit oversight, keeping the government in control and allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent without outsiders poking around.