Is Trump using Ukrainian corruption to force a peace deal?

0:00Jaroslava Barbieri:Coming up, corruption in Ukraine. As allegations are made against allies of Vladimir Zelensky, what hope for the latest plan for peace? How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow. Claims of corruption in Ukraine are nothing new.

0:44Jaroslava Barbieri:In fact, you're probably more We're used to hearing it described as endemic corruption. That phrase is often used by Putin apologists as justification for ending the West's support for Vladimir Zelensky, which doesn't mean it's necessarily not true, of course. The Ukrainian justice and energy ministers recently resigned over an embezzlement scandal involving state-run nuclear energy company Enerhal Atom. A close friend of Zelensky has fled the country. And just as the scandal comes close to invoking criticism of the President directly, Zelensky now has to deal with a new peace plan. A plan drawn up by the Americans with Russian involvement, but neither Ukraine nor Europe having any input.

1:27Jaroslava Barbieri:No wonder some in the West have already described it as a complete capitulation. And just as I sat down to record this, in fact, the EU said for any peace plan to work, both Kyiv and Europe need to be on board. For Ukraine to be sidelined so completely suggests there is weakness perceived in Zelensky's position and weakness linked to those charges of corruption. We'll be focusing on that a little later with Yaroslava Barbieri from Chatham House. First, though, our international affairs editor, Dominic Waghorn. Dominic, just explain if you can, what do we know about this new plan for peace? I mean, is it new for starters?

2:06Dominic Waghorn:It's not really. It's a kind of, and as we've seen with this diplomatic effort by Donald Trump and the way he's dealt with both Russia and Ukraine, he sort of goes through a kind of resetting mode every few months. So he seems to get impatient with the Russians. He gets frustrated. But he always goes back to his default position, which is sympathizing with the Kremlin. So we had heard from Trump back in September, actually going as far as saying that he thought Ukraine could win this war and actually push the Russians right out of their country. and possibly take a chunk of Russian territory as well.

2:40Dominic Waghorn:And everyone thought, gosh, he's now turned against Putin. And he's gone back to his default position. He's helping Vladimir Putin at a time where Putin is doing well in a military sense, but also where Zelensky is getting into harder and harder political territory home because of a corruption scandal. So this peace plan, if you can call it that, comes at a very difficult time for Zelensky. It puts pressure on the Ukrainians. And I think what's surprising to Europeans, to British diplomats as well, of course, is that this plan seems to have been cooked up by Wyckoff, Donald Trump's golf buddy turned chief negotiator for pretty much everything.

3:14Dominic Waghorn:It seems to have been sort of done without any consultation with the Europeans, certainly not with the British, but also no consultation with the Ukrainians. And I think, you know, from what we've heard from Ukrainians so far, they're trying to sound pragmatic about it, but they think it's a non-starter because a number of these proposals contained in this 28-point plan, they've already said are non-starters.

3:38Jaroslava Barbieri:Let's start with that, Dom. I mean, what is it within the plan that is so unpalatable to Vladimir Zelensky and everyone down?

3:44Dominic Waghorn:I think we have to go back to sort of brass tacks as ever with the Ukrainian diplomatic story, which is that, you know, this is a war that was started by an invasion, and you would have thought that the best way to end that war is to end the invasion, to reverse that invasion. Instead of reversing the invasion, this plan seems to reward it. So what it's proposing is that Ukrainians accept the following, that they give up the Donbass. So the Donbass is the territory in the east that the Russians have taken a large amount of, but not completely. And the estimations from military experts are that it would take another four years for them to carry on grinding on at the pace they are going at.

4:20Dominic Waghorn:They are advancing, but incrementally, to take all of the Donbass. Now, this plan is proposing that the Russians just get all that territory effectively for nothing. The plan is also to give the Russians satisfaction in the sense that there can be no foreign troops in Ukraine after this peace plan is implemented. So the plans for the French and the British, which were to stick in troops there, European troops to kind of act as reassurance for Ukrainians, the Russians aren't accepting that. They're also wanting, and they now seem to have Trump's approval in this peace plan, the idea that the Ukrainians can't have a certain amount of long range weapons.

4:56Dominic Waghorn:Long range weapons that are really worried the Russians could be used to hit deep into Russia, some of them as far as Moscow. So this peace plan is saying that the Ukrainians can't have that as well.

5:07Jaroslava Barbieri:Why was this done so apparently without the involvement of Ukraine or indeed Europe? Why has this been done in secret? Is it in essence just because European leaders would have said as one, we don't think this is a good idea?

5:22Dominic Waghorn:I think it's hard to say. I think the assumption you kind of are tempted to make is that Donald Trump was impatient for another kind of diplomatic achievement, and that this may well have been born out of trying to satisfy and assuage that impatience from the boss, from very loyal figures like Witkoff and Rubio and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, but also possibly out of a sense of hubris. He was massively praised, overly praised, you might say, for the Gaza peace plan that was called a peace plan, but really was a ceasefire deal. And the flaws in that plan have emerged since. But Donald Trump was praised prematurely, many people would say, by kind of what I think you might call a sort of conga line of sycophantic world leaders who massively overly praised him, gave a sense that he can achieve anything diplomatically.

6:16Dominic Waghorn:and I think have given him an inflated sense of his own diplomatic peacemaking abilities. And so he's sort of got that. And he's now said to Wyckoff and Kushner, right, make peace in Ukraine, make this happen. And they have effectively tried to do so by sort of dressing up what are Russian demands for Ukraine's capitulation and dress it up as a peace plan. But it's just it can't go any further diplomatically without Ukrainian involvement and European involvement. I think what's going to be crucial is how the Europeans respond to this. We're going to hear from Kaya Kalas, the EU foreign affairs supremac.

6:48Dominic Waghorn:I mean, her honest response to this should be, really, are you effing kidding me? I think that's the response of Western diplomats privately, because it is just a rehashed version of the same capitulation demands from Ukraine that have not made any progress diplomatically over the last three and a half years. I'm sure she'll choose more diplomatic, more pragmatic language. But it's hard to see how you square the circle in terms of what the Americans have cooked up with the Russians and what the Europeans want and also what the Ukrainians are prepared to accept.

7:17Jaroslava Barbieri:I get all of that, you know, and people will have their own views as to Donald Trump's abilities when it comes to, you know, international relations and geopolitics. But some of the people surrounding him are not daft. And the people who surround him are as aware as you, are as aware as I, that you can't get a deal done in Ukraine without the involvement of the Europeans without the involvement of Ukraine. So are they just trying to bump us into it?

7:43Dominic Waghorn:Donald Trump always favours the stronger party. And he sees in this, you know, he says the Russians should have won this war within a few weeks and that their failure is pretty embarrassing for the Russians. But he still thinks the Russians have the upper hand in this. And, you know, you have to say that the direction of things in a military sense in Ukraine are supporting Putin's claims. Things are inevitably and inexorably moving in Moscow's direction because the Russians are about to, if they haven't already taken the town of Pokrovsk, which is one of the crucial cities in the Donetsk, the Donbass region.

8:18Dominic Waghorn:I mean, the Ukrainians say that that's just another city they're losing. They lost Bakhmut. Nothing strategically changes. But each town and each city the Russians take is making life harder for the Ukrainians. And the Ukrainians do have a massive problem with mobilisation and recruitment. The Ukrainians are just not signing up, not being drafted in the ways that the numbers that the Ukrainians need them to. And there are massive holes in the front line the Russians are now pushing through.

8:45Jaroslava Barbieri:Again, this is where I'm getting confused on because, you know, the Americans must know, as well as anyone else, that this 28-point plan that they've tossed on the desk in front to Vladimir Zelensky, is in its current form something that he cannot agree to? Or is it that there is a perception, for whatever reason, that right now Vladimir Zelensky is weakened?

9:08Dominic Waghorn:There's certainly that perception. And the corruption scandal that's engulfed his government in Kiev in the last week or so is the most damaging political scandal to hit him for the duration of this war. The allegation is that key members of his administration have been making money in a corrupt way out of rebuilding the power infrastructure in Ukraine, damaged by Russia. And that's really galling for Ukrainians hunkering down at home, unable to heat their homes and stay warm. And that's doing enormous damage to Zelensky. So, you know, on the one hand, it's baffling, frankly, why, you know, Wyckoff is criticised as being rather naive, bit of a rookie when it comes to diplomacy.

9:51Dominic Waghorn:With the Russians, he has made some pretty big mistakes. The Ukrainians will tell you that when he flew to Moscow with his private jet, he left it on the runway, unguarded by security, and therefore it will be riddled with Russian bugs and surveillance technology. They handed over his phone to the Kremlin handlers when he went to meet Putin for the first time. And for all those reasons, the Ukrainians say he's completely naive and out of his depths. And Western diplomats will say the same things to you about Wyckoff. But he's not stupid. He knows that this is very difficult for Zelensky at this moment.

10:22Jaroslava Barbieri:Well, what happens next then, Dom, given that Ukraine and Europe seem unlikely to agree to this? Do we get them going back to the drawing board and coming up with something more palatable?

10:32Dominic Waghorn:I think what we're likely to see is just a continuing kind of effort to sort of fudge this. What the Europeans fear most is Donald Trump walking away in a Fidipique and taking military intelligence support for the Ukrainians with him. And he's threatened that a few times. That's a very real threat if you talk to Western diplomats. That spectre hangs over this whole process. So for that reason, the Europeans are not going to call him out. I think they're going to say, you know, fantastic that you're making diplomatic progress. It's great to see you making more efforts towards peace. It's great that you did that in Gaza.

10:59Dominic Waghorn:Great you're continuing to do it in Ukraine. But we've got a few issues with this, Mr. President. and if we could focus on that and that, and the Ukrainians have got to be involved and we've got to be involved. So I think it's sort of trying to sort of delay the process and not get to a point where Ukrainians simply refuse this deal and Europeans have to choose sides and Donald Trump gets so upset that he walks away and he takes that military intelligence with him because that then leaves Ukrainians blind to the threat of Russian drones that are attacking their cities up to a thousand a night and without the kind of warnings that Americans can give them, but also the kind of intelligence that tell them where they're coming from and where they can use the longer range missiles to hit, Ukraine will be in very serious trouble.

11:41Jaroslava Barbieri:Thanks, Dom. Okay, so just how close do these corruption allegations come to directly involving the Ukrainian president? Yaroslava Barbieri is research fellow at the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House. Yaroslava, can you just explain the corruption scandal? I suppose I should say the latest corruption scandal that appears to be afflicting Ukraine right now. What's going on? The Ukraine anti-corruption agencies have uncovered this large-scale corruption scheme that involves individuals in President Zelensky's inner circle that are believed to have presented themselves in some sort of overseers that were pressurizing contractors that were conducting commercial activities with Ukraine's state nuclear energy company.

12:30and these contractors were pressurised into paying up to 15 % of kickbacks in exchange for continuing to have access to commercial activity with Enerho Atom or were threatened not to be reimbursed for services already provided.

12:50Jaroslava Barbieri:What sorts of figures are we looking at here? I mean, I've seen reports of prosecutors carrying out bags of cash. Yes, indeed. So what is particularly inspiring outrage among Ukrainian population is that the corruption scheme involves people close to Zelensky's circle, primarily Timur Mindic, who is a businessman and long term friend of President Zelensky. He is the co-owner of the production agency business that Zelensky set up years before entering politics, but also a former deputy prime minister who was actually involved in another corruption scandal. And he is believed as part of this scheme to have siphoned off funds that then would use to build luxury mansions just outside the capital.

13:43but also the Ukrainian energy and justice ministers that have now been asked to resign.

13:53Jaroslava Barbieri:So some of President Zelensky's inner circle are losing their jobs. But just how close does the scandal come to involving him directly? The current evidence shared by Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies in no way indicate the direct involvement of the Ukrainian president. However, critiques remind of the attempts at crackdown that the government had pushed in the summer. It was an attempt to encroach on the independence of Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies. And in a way, people are connecting the dots and believing that that initial attempt in the summer might have been an indication that the government knew that these anti-corruption watchdogs were coming close to disclosing evidence of these corruption schemes.

14:43Jaroslava Barbieri:Yaroslav, it's a charge that is often made by the Russians. It's a charge that's also made by those who would wish Ukraine to not receive the levels of support and funding that the West is and has provided to it. But do you think that this is a country in which we can say corruption is endemic? So corruption has been a long-term problem that Ukraine has faced. It's a bit of the legacy of the Soviet Union. in the latest Transparency International Index, Ukraine was ranked 105th out of 180 countries, I believe. The point is that there's another side of the story. The fact that anti-corruption watchdogs were able to work independently and uncover this scheme and sort of provide evidence that has led to the resignation and potential dismissal of other people involved in this scheme is still a positive sign that the country is going in the right direction.

15:40Jaroslava Barbieri:We've been discussing the proposed peace plan with our correspondent Dominic Wankhorn. I just wonder, from your perspective, Yaroslava, I mean, is part of the reason that we have seen the US pushing so hard on this is that in the White House, they are currently perceiving weakness, weakness on the part of Vladimir Zelensky? This is very interesting because we've seen both Washington and Moscow recurrently misunderstanding and underestimating Ukraine as a whole. So the idea that this moment of political vulnerability could be a window of opportunity for Washington to pressurise the government into accepting a peace deal on terms that are absolutely unacceptable for Ukraine is very misleading.

16:26This is a country that has faced immense sacrifices over the past three and a half fears, if not more. And so it's quite telling that, you know, you have these real estate developers that are improvising themselves as diplomats.

16:43Jaroslava Barbieri:Whilst accepting everything that you've just said, Yaroslava, I do wonder if this current corruption scandal does provide a window of opportunity for Vladimir Zelensky's political opponents. Is there a chance that this could precipitate, hurry about the end of his presidency? It is a risk. I believe that largely people still consider him to be the legitimate president, though his mandate officially ended in May 2024, but because of martial law elections cannot be held. And so I think that ultimately the imperative of keeping the country together and keeping the resistance efforts in the name of national unity will still prevail.

17:27Jaroslava Barbieri:Thanks, Jaroslava. And that's a lot for today. For the very latest on the state of the peace plan, just head over to skynews.com. We're back tomorrow.

17:57Jaroslava Barbieri:reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.