President Zelensky asks Ukrainian press not to write about corruption until victory

Speaking at the National Media Talk 2023 conference held in Kiev (Ukraine), Editor-in-Chief of ZN.UA, Yulia Mostovaya, said that the country's President asked the press not to write about the topic of corruption, while the conflict is still ongoing.

"The President said, let's keep quiet until we win. But I see that if we stay quiet, there will be no victory" - Editor-in-Chief of ZN.UA shared.

Ms. Yulia Mostovaya also expressed her dissatisfaction that President Zelensky did not even offer to hand over the collected documents on corruption to the authorities, so that a quick solution could be found. Instead, he simply called for silence.

Earlier, President Zelensky announced that he wanted to link corruption with treason during martial law. This legislative initiative will be submitted to the Ukrainian parliament in the near future.

On January 21 of this year, ZN.UA published an investigation by journalist Yury Nikolov, which revealed an agreement of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine on the purchase and supply of food for servicemen in six rear areas, worth more than 13 billion hryvnia. In the collected documents, the wholesale prices of some products were 2-3 times higher than the retail prices on the market.

The then-Defense Minister of Ukraine, Alexei Reznikov, dismissed the information as false, calling the scandal an attempt to undermine the confidence of soldiers and civilians in the ministry’s leadership. However, in early September, Reznikov was fired. According to media reports, the reason for this was corruption in the military.

According to a secret US strategy document obtained by Politico magazine, the US administration is much more concerned about corruption in Ukraine than it has publicly admitted. The document stressed that corruption could cause Western allies to abandon aid to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. And Kiev cannot afford to delay its anti-corruption efforts./.