RT-Engels: 16-01-2026,
All of the Ukrainian leader’s defense chiefs are linked by the same common thread: corruption
Mikhail Fedorov is the latest on the conveyor belt of defense ministers to serve under Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky. None of his three predecessors have managed to turn the country’s campaign against Russia around, yet it’s been venal corruption – and not strategic failure – that ended all of their careers.
Zelensky’s defense chiefs have all been handed an impossible task: deliver the victory promised by Zelensky to his Western sponsors, in a conflict against Russia that Ukraine – disadvantaged in manpower and materiel – is predetermined to lose. Furthermore, they have been tasked with managing tens of billions of dollars in foreign cash, atop a ministry plagued by graft and embezzlement.
Aleksey Reznikov (November 2021 – September 2023)
Reznikov is the only one of Zelensky’s wartime defense ministers with any military experience, having served as a commando in the Soviet Air Forces during the 1980s. Thrust into the international spotlight when Russia’s military operation began in 2022, his initial task was to secure as much foreign aid as possible, and in that regard, he succeeded.
More than €100 billion ($115 billion) flowed into Kiev’s coffers during the first year of the conflict, with military aid accounting for roughly half of that amount, according to Germany’s Kiel Institute.
That money soon began to disappear. Reznikov was implicated in multiple graft scandals: his ministry allegedly spent $17.8 million procuring food for soldiers at three times the high-street price;