Letter From the Editors

So says Ukrainian political commentator Leonid Shvets in a lively interview about the sudden resignation (read: dismissal) of President Zelensky’s right-hand man, chief of staff Andrei Yermak. The seemingly omnipotent official had become implicated in the machinations of the so-called “back office,” led by businessman Timur Mindich, which collected cash payments from government contractors. Shvets affirms that Zelensky knew about this money management scheme, but in the end he had to “throw Yermak under the bus” in order to protect his reputation: Like Vasyl Holoborodko, the fictional president he played on the TV series “Servant of the People,” he had to remain “squeaky clean” even if he was surrounded by crooks.

Some commentators say the domestic turmoil in Ukraine is reverberating internationally, giving the US an opportunity to push Kyiv toward a peace deal with Russia. As Andrei Okun phrases it, “the Donald Trump administration has apparently decided to achieve a speedy peace by exerting colossal pressure on Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. The US saw him as a weak link that could be broken to move toward a ceasefire.” Okun is referring to the 28-point peace plan leaked to the media last week.

But did this plan really come from Washington, or was it born in Moscow? Meduza shares excerpts from a phone conversation (first divulged by Bloomberg) that suggests this idea is more than a paranoid delusion. According to the transcript, Kremlin adviser Yury Ushakov asks his colleague Kirill Dmitriyev whether the Russian side should make a proposal stating “the maximum” – otherwise, “what’s the point of passing anything on?” To Washington, that is. Dmitriyev responds by saying they should draft “this paper from our position” and share it “informally, making it clear that it’s all informal.” Dmitriyev adds that Ushakov can “talk later with Steve about this paper.” Meaning envoy Steve Witkoff – with whom Ushakov did indeed talk soon thereafter. At the end of that call, Witkoff proposed a conversation between Trump and Putin before Zelensky’s upcoming visit to the White House.

Meanwhile, European officials are crafting their own version of the “peace plan” in Geneva, but no matter what, any version is likely to involve partitioning Ukraine. In a masterful political pirouette, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov shares in an interview with the Association Dialogue Franco-Russe that this idea originated among the Ukrainians themselves: “Long before the special military operation, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky directly advised Russian-speaking people to ‘go to Russia’ if . . . they identified with Russian culture. . . . In a sense, both the Donetsk Basin and Novorossia are simply following his advice.”

To save Belarus from a similar fate, Sergei Tikhanovsky offers an idea that contrasts radically with his wife’s vision of bringing their country into the European mainstream. Dmitry Taratorin quotes him as saying: “The harsh truth is that Belarus will not join NATO or the EU in the near future. Pretending that this is not the case only fuels Moscow’s paranoia and keeps Belarus trapped in eternal dependence.” Instead, Tikhanovsky proposes to follow the model of Finland during the cold war: “A neutral Belarus – free, sovereign, nonaligned – could serve everyone’s interests. It would be a buffer without being a pawn, a stabilizing element instead of a flashpoint.” But what about the rampant corruption in Minsk that Svetlana Tikhanovskaya continues to protest? For fresh insight, let’s turn the pages of literary history back to Mayakovsky’s poem “Gimn vzyatke” [Hymn to the Bribe], which he wrote in 1915, when Russia, Ukraine and Belarus were all part of one empire. The poet observed what happens in a country rich in resources: “Has a goat . . . ever been seen / to be too lazy to climb into a garden?” Sarcasm aside, corruption really got Mayakovsky’s goat – and it outrages the general public, too, at least on TV shows. But will life imitate art?