Lawfare Daily: Corruption, Coverups, and Crisis in Domestic Ukrainian Politics

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If lawfare is something you rely on, we hope you'll be part of sustaining it. And she, apparently, knows about him, and about his role in this whole process. And this leads strongly to believe that, well, President Zelensky was, at least, through

“his bodyguard implicated in all of this.”

It's the lawfare podcast. My name is in the Stesiela Patina. The Crane Fellow at Lawfare, with the Nillon Wokrick, a war crimes investigator at the Kumi dependent, and the author of a blog about domestic Ukrainian politics, Wokrick. You know, when it comes to Ukraine, Ukraine's interests in the state of war as a country,

he is doing a decent job about it. We don't know that someone would do it better if he was removed. Okay, we know that there would be instability. But when it comes to internal Ukrainian politics, Zelensky is very problematic. We spoke about the latest corruption saga and golfing the Ukrainian government, and why despite

so many arrows pointing towards Zelensky personally, no one is calling for his removal. We are recording this conversation on Thursday, May 14, and something quite extraordinary happened today.

The former Chief of Staff to President Vladimir Zelensky, the ones notoriously powerful

and the year mark, was taking into custody, after being charged with money laundering. Those charges come almost six months after Ukraine's anti-corruption bureau first searched your marks home back in November, and back then the bureau, which we in Ukraine called Nabu, announced that it uncovered a large corruption scheme, mainly in Ukraine's energy sector. Those revelations became an enormous scandal in Ukraine, because the scheme implicated senior

government officials, including associates of the president, and your mark was actually forced to resign as a result of that scandal. So we're going to talk about all of this today. But the corruption scandal, its recent developments, and also about the overall political environment in Ukraine.

But I want to start us off with the beginning of all of the saga back in November. So Nillo, could you just remind us what was the substance of that initial anti-corruption

“bureau's case, and why was it such a huge deal in Ukraine?”

So much so that the case has been called the biggest in Ukraine really indicates. Well, let me start by saying, still that all of this is unprecedented for Ukraine. We are talking about the three people, the closest people to the president Zelensky. He's not only his political allies, but his friends, his close friends that are being charged with corruption.

We are talking about Andrea Magda, you mentioned, about Timur Mingech and about the OX teacher of this is important because this means that it is possible in Ukraine for the closest

people, the most powerful people in Ukraine, to be charged with corruption.

And they are not protected from spending time in jail as Andrea Magda is set to spend, at least this night in jail, because no bail has been provided yet for him. It all definitely started last year, last November, officially it started, last November. When the national anti-corruption bureau announced that they uncovered a large-scale corruption in Ukraine and energy sector.

closest friends, the person that provided, they celebrated the birthdays together.

“In 2021, President Zelensky celebrated his birthday at Timur Mingech's apartment.”

He was his business associate in a quartile 95, which is the comedy production enterprise that Zelensky had it before becoming president. Already this was a shock and it did send shock waves through the whole Ukrainian political sphere and it ultimately led and quite quickly to dismissal from office of Andrea Magda,

who for six years seemed all powerful, all mighty, and actually was dubbed vice-president

by all Ukrainian political journalists. So this is when it all started, but we started hearing rumors about Timur Mingech's apartment being wired and listened to by the national anti-corruption bureau way before, like in summer, I guess, or even in spring, we started getting rumors that he was listened to and that there were a lot of tapes proving that President Zelensky's closest people were implicated

in large scale corruption and the corruption we're talking about, it's not extremely relevant to our conversation today, but I'll just mention it for the listeners who may be having followed it.

So we're closely, it's about this scheme related to a state-owned company that controls

all of Ukraine's nuclear energy plants and according to Naboo, this criminal group of which, I mean, Dich, Zelensky's business partner was sort of the ring leader, the leader of this group, they instituted the system of kickbacks where any company that was providing any services to an ergotum to the state-owned company had to pay, like, an extra 10 or 15 or 20% or risk losing the supplier status, which correct me from wrong the Nilla, but it's

kind of a very common type of course, it's a very common system at state-owned companies in Ukraine. That was the nature of the case, right? I'm not very familiar with how corruption in different sectors work, let's say, in the EU countries or in the US, you know, I get some investigations here and there, but I don't know what's

really typical in other countries, but in Ukraine this, what you described in what the national anti-corruption bureau uncovered in this case, is really, really typical like those kickbacks from state companies, from state-owned companies, is something that you, it's maybe it's the main type of corruption that you get in Ukraine.

“And Mindich has not, he doesn't hold any sort of political office, right?”

He's just a private citizen who has all of this access, allegedly through his friendship with Zelensky, right? Exactly, and that is one of the most striking things about this whole scheme, that's he's not holding any official position, all the influence he has is actually provided by his closed relationship with President Zelensky, like officially, he's more or less no one.

And he wasn't even very well known before all of this, right?

Like I've heard of him for the first time, it may be a few months before Nubba's investigation,

but he wasn't a very popular figure, right? He wasn't one of the key investigative reporters in this story, Mikhail Latkarch started talking about Mindich exactly in 2021, one of this whole story about Zelensky celebrating his birthday to more Mindich was published, but before that I do not believe that I heard about him either.

“And I think that when this name appeared for the first time in 2021,”

I did not even, like, you know, pay a lot of attention to it. Okay, it's his business friend, okay, it's his business associate, okay, it's his close friends, so what, you know, it's only well now that we learn about the influences, the different influences of this person, because his, his, he talked, he met with ministers.

He helped them to resolve different issues, also related to some degree to this scheme with

President Zelensky. On one of the tapes, he actually messages Zelensky during his conversation with then minister of energy sector Hermann Hloschenko and reads his response, well, then Zelensky's response. So yeah, this is how it worked. And at one point, he also says that President's chief bodyguard, Maxim Danets, a figure quite popular on TikTok, was about to, to come to meet him. So obviously, this leads us to think that the bodyguard was running some

errands for President Zelensky too. He was meeting with me on behalf of President Zelensky.

“We're going to get to that definitely have several questions. I think that maybe the most important”

part of our podcast episode today, but I wanted to ask about your mark. You mentioned, of course, that he was let go as a result of these revelations back in November. But why was he forced out if legally back in November, he wasn't yet implicated, right? So now he was let go, you know, almost immediately after the searches. But why was there this pressure on Zelensky to let go of your mark if his name didn't, if he himself wasn't charged with any crime yet? Well, because the way

the Ukrainian politics work for the whole of, of, of, of, of, of, of Zelensky's turn in general, such a large scale scheme would not be possible without at least sanctions from the President's office and from the head of the President's office. Under Yamaq was Zelensky's main manager, he was charged actually with appointing all of the main officials in Ukraine, including the

heads of state companies, state-owned companies. He was controlling the, basically, the whole state sector.

So it was not possible for such a scheme logically, naturally, to exist without your mark, at least knowing about it and allowing it. And it was so so obvious that even a lot of members of parliament from Zelensky's own party were privately calling for your mark's dismissal. And the pressure, the political pressure started to to grow so quickly and became so intense that it was impossible for Zelensky to to hold on to Yamaq, although it is very typical of the

Zelensky to try to protect his own his back as long as he can. Okay, this is something that he does,

“that he always did. And I think that's he just did that because he could not”

try to protect Yamaq any longer. It is very common in Ukraine to fire officials, stop officials, before they get charged with a crime. Okay, this is something that we that we see all the time for some reason they think the government thinks Zelensky thinks that if an ex-minister is being charged, it is not as grave as an acting minister being charged. In his mind, in their minds, an ex-head of presidential office being charged is somehow less shocking than an actual acting

head of president's office being charged. So let's talk about your marks charges. He was charged

with money laundering and basically the charges that are that he was laundering millions of

“dollars. I think it's it's nearly $4 million to build this luxury compound kind of thing near”

Kiev. So you can just explain the nature of the charges. So the story is the main story here is about four houses, a compound of four houses being built near Kiev and it is assumed that those houses should belong to President Zelensky under Yamaq, Alexey Chernishov and Timur Mendesh. They should

there was a number of media investigations by colleagues. Yes, there was that. Well, it kind of

“kind of transpires from all those tapes that we heard from from the official tapes published by the”

National Anti-Corruption Bureau, but also by some parts of those tapes leaked to to investigate if journalists that seem to be like true in real tapes. They do check out with the rest of them. So Yamaq is not being charged with being part of the corruption scheme himself. So he's not being charged with let's say stealing money or getting bribes. He's charged with being one of the facilitators that allowed laundering of that corrupt money in the process of building

of those four houses of his house. This is basically the story. He's charged with money laundering

not with the original crime, but with the follow-up crime, let's say. Right, but the money that he is allegedly helping to laundry, at least a portion of that, has probably come from state owned. Most of that. Companies, right. Yeah, okay. So it's stealing, basically stealing to experience money. Yeah, but he's not being charged with that. He's not being

“charged with stealing. He's charged with money laundering. This is important because, you know,”

there is there are things that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office believe that they can prove and they lead with that. So they are not charging them with something that they think may fall apart in a court of law. They think that this part of their investigation is solid, so they lead with that. They focus in that. Right, so it's not that they're saying he wasn't stealing the money. They're saying, right now we can't prove that he was.

Yeah, they say they're saying we can prove this and this is enough. Yeah, so the four houses that you mentioned, they're known and Ukraine is the dynasty cooperative. Right. And that's also the official name allegedly according to, you know, the information released by Naboo. So these four friends Timur Mindic, President Zelensky, Alexey Chernoshov, who is a close family friend of Zelensky's and also Ukraine's former deputy prime minister, one of the highest drinking officials in the country

and Andrea Mark. So those four people allegedly according to Naboo and according to the investigations were building these four homes. Let me point out that they do not say that President Zelensky is implicated. You're right. They actually can't say that. Yeah, they actually say that he is not being investigated and this is like legally right because in Ukraine the president has immunity from criminal investigations. So he which is standard practice for it. Yeah, he cannot be investigated.

So Naboo doesn't actually have jurisdiction over a sitting president. Right. So they are not saying that he is not part of the scheme. They are saying we are not investigating him. And this is like very important to understand this distinction between the two. Right. So this leads into my next question which is, you know, the obvious question coming out of this, you know, all these recent developments as well was President Zelensky aware of all of this or also is he taking part in all of this.

“And I think as you already alluded to, you know, there are kind of several ways of answering that.”

So from one side, you can say legally, you know, Zelensky has not and cannot be implicated because he has presidential immunity and because Naboo doesn't have jurisdiction over him. So, you know, they just cannot investigate any of his actions right now. But there is another way of looking at that, which is that there has been reporting, pretty strong reporting, suggesting that Zelensky was in fact involved in these schemes. And I'm talking about this kind of astonishing leak that

happens several weeks ago, where a bunch of previously undisclosed case files files from this exact investigation were leaked to a top Ukrainian media outlet, okineska prada and also several opposition lawmakers. And so the files were the transcripts of the conversations that Naboo

wiretapped between me and the bunch of his associates. So basically, journalists got hold of like

part of those conversations that mentions somebody named Vauva, which is what President Zelensky goes by

“among friends and family. And so can you just explain the context in which this mysterious”

Vauva is evoked in the conversations and what do you make of it? So Vauva is mentioned a few time as one of the owners, or as the owner of one of the houses in this dynasty compound on those tapes. And there is another episode that Vauva leads us to strongly suspect that he was well implicated, that the president was implicated in that scheme. At one point, to more mortgage meets a woman,

named Natalia, she was mentioned, and her identity was uncovered in the recent court proceedings

against under your mark already. So she was charged with the construction and design of those houses, and when Mendige meets her and starts talking to her about freezing, actually the construction, because of some problems that they encounter, he says, "Well, at one PM, Maxim the Nat will come."

“Maxim the Nat is the chief bodyguard of Voldemort Zelensky, and what is important here is that”

he does not explain to this woman charged again, but the construction and design of those houses,

he does not explain who that is, and he does not explain why he'd come, and she does not ask

those questions either. So she apparently knows about him and about his role in this whole process, and this leads strongly to believe that, well President Zelensky was at least through his bodyguard implicated in all of this. Maxim the Nat is the same famous bodyguard that you can see near Zelensky almost every time that he goes to any public place, so it is someone who is very close to Zelensky as well, and it's hard to imagine, you know, him having free time at one PM during

a walkday just to meet for his own personal reason with Timur Mendige or the aforementioned Natalia. So this is something that makes me conclude that, well, the President Zelensky was at least, at least it was all coordinated with him. It's worth mentioning that when Naboo charged your mock just a few days ago, they released a video in their typical, as of recently, Naboo Netflix type fashion, making their case in presenting some of their evidence about the charges against your

mock, and so they released some of those wire-tabbed conversations that perfectly match the leaked transcripts, suggesting that they are, in fact, authentic. And so that means that at this point, we have, you know, several investigations done by credible Ukrainian investigative journalists alleging that the forehouses are for these four men, including Zelensky. We have these recent leaks where a certain Vova is evoked, I mean, we should probably say there is not really another top senior official

in that circle, also named Vladimir. I cannot think of one. There is not some other obvious Vova that you could point to. Right. And so at that point, what I find really striking is that Zelensky actually hasn't said a word about any of this. He hasn't, he hasn't actually denied any of it, he hasn't escaped go to some other Vova, he hasn't said that the leaks are fake,

“like he's just pretending like this isn't happening. Why do you think that is?”

That's also very typical of Ukrainian presidents in general. Every time, every time something really really bad happens, that could affect them, they just try to play that, you know. That happened to, there was a very characteristic, very characteristic of Petro Poroshenko before of old Zelensky. It was very much characteristic of Victorian college and, uh, well, to to the predecessors too. So this is this is some kind of, you know, usual tactic, usual PR

actually because they, they do not control the narrative, they do not try to control the narrative.

“They hope that it would just all, you know, pass and it never does. It almost never does.”

So they instead of trying to have a word in the narrative, they just let it all flow as it does.

And, uh, well, it never leads to good results for them, but they keep repeating the same mistake.

Uh, but then again, uh, President Zelensky tried last year to, to influence the investigation by initiating, uh, actually the, the law weakening the national anti-corruption bureau and the special and, uh, special anti-corruption prosecutor's office. The people of Ukraine, uh, gather to protest against that. And, um, those were, the, the, the, the, the most massive protests that we had in Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. And, I mean, also the first, right,

“the, the, the, those were also the first protests that we've had. The first big protests that we had.”

Yeah, the first really, like, country, countrywide protests. Is it your understanding that that was in reaction to him getting wind of this investigation? Well, obviously, like, there's no, there's no way it could be caused by anything else. Or the, at that time, rumors about his closest friends being investigated, uh, while leaking to the Ukrainian media, and it was quite widely talked about. So, uh, the reason for this attempt was quite obvious, uh, but he did back down after those protests.

It was basically a slap on the wrist for him, and he retreated, uh, which is a good thing. It means that he's still, you know, has this instinct of, of sensing the danger of knowing

“where the liberation in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what, that, that's what he did. But”

the director of the national anti-corruption bureau and the head of the, uh, special anti-corruption prosecutor's office, when they presented the case against the Yamag, they started their briefing by thanking the Ukrainian people for what they did last summer saying that this would all be impossible if those protests didn't happen. I think that this is something that we have to, to, to, to keep in mind that the Ukrainian people, even in the circumstances that we are in now, they keep fighting

for democracy, they keep fighting for justice, and they keep fighting for checks and balances in, in the system of, of Ukrainian government. And this is something that I think, uh, has to be,

uh, like always pointed out and always applauded, actually. I agree with you, but I do want to ask

about the public's reaction to these most recent revelations about, uh, not even your most charging, but, but about the mention of this mysterious vova. So I found it a bit surprising that, you know, it seemed to me like neither the civil society's reaction nor, let's say, the parliament's reaction has been particularly strong, like the phrase that comes to mind is like shocking but not surprising, like, you know, for example, nobody has called for, you know, any sort

of removal of Zelensky or, you know, an impeachment, which is what you would expect in normal times. Yeah, but we are not in normal times. Right, right, right. Expecting something like that right now is, well, how, how would you see it? Well, well, I mean, how do you, my question is, how do you see it? Because let's say, you know, if I'm around in American looking at this whole situation, I'm guessing that I would see a president in a massive corruption scandal basically getting away

with no accountability. And, you know, there, there are no countrywide protests right now, you know, people are making various comments about how this is a really bad thing, but there is no actual mechanism for doing anything about it at this moment. And so, you know, how do you think about what, well, what should we want to do about it? I mean, if you try, in any way, to remove Zelensky from office right now, the danger for for the Ukrainian state is existential. I mean, we are still fighting

for this country's survival and it is crucial to have at least basic government stability.

agree that would make it very vulnerable to attacks, to Russian attacks against it, both military

and political. So, you know, Zelensky, we are now, we are now about to celebrate seven years of

“Zelensky in office. And I remember his debate, his presidential debate with the Petro Poroshenko”

in 2019, when he actually said that we have two Poroshenko's, one of them being patriotic, defending Ukraine on international stage and another one being corrupt. And this is something we can easily say about Zelensky right now. So, he is a double-faced president right now. When it comes to defending Ukraine on the international level, he does that quite well. So, you know, when it comes to Ukraine, Ukraine's interests in the state of war as a country, he is doing a decent job about it.

And we don't know that someone would do it better if he was removed. Okay, we know that there would be instability. But when it comes to internal Ukrainian politics, Zelensky is very problematic.

And we have to always find a middle way between punishing Zelensky, between responding

to the different problematic decision bad things that he does. But also, on the other hand, between, you know, like supporting him when it comes to Ukrainian national interests. So,

“it's a tough game to play for Ukrainian people right now. But all in all, I think,”

well, they do a decent job about it. I should also probably mention that, and I've written about this for law firm, but Ukraine cannot hold elections during wartime, even though there has been, you know, some discussions about this in the American media. And, you know, I don't know,

asking Trump has thought about it. The reality is that, you know, because of safety concerns

and, you know, a variety of other issues, including legal issues, Ukraine cannot hold elections during wartime. It's explicitly prohibited under Marshal Law, which is what's in effect right now. And so that's, of course, why the most obvious accountability mechanism of voting the President's out of office isn't available. Well, yeah, and there is, you know, this discussion about President's landscape legitimacy. And I've talked about it to, to, like, a dozen of constitutional

lawyers and former judges of the constitutional court who Ukraine and actual serving judges of the constitutional court. And almost all of them accept to, said that while he is legitimate. I mean, if there's no way to hold elections right now, he is legitimate. And he will be until the Marshal Law is, is, is, is over. Those two others that had a different opinion on it, they do have their arguments, but they also have their own personal reasons to dislike Zelensky.

So I have to put a bit of that, a bit of the opinion on that account. But the legal argument of those others who say that Zelensky is legitimate, they are quite compelling, and I will not enter into details, but it does seem solid. So I don't think we should have any discussion about that. None of Ukrainians will, generally, are happy with Zelensky being, you know, a President was an unlimited term. But then again, no Ukrainian is happy with this war being unlimited and having an unlimited

term. This is the problem. We are in a way stuck with what we have, both for the Ukrainian legal system and justice system and for the civil society, the main goal is actually to minimise the damage, you know, and trying to to limit any corruption as much as it can be done in this situation.

“Right, which is, which is why I think it's worth explicitly mentioning that no one of any”

significance has called, as I've said, for Zelensky's removal, even he, you know, his biggest

appetite for his removal. Because we understand that the danger that comes with that, you know.

Right. And the polls show that the vast majority of the country doesn't support holding elections during war, and also despite all of the scandals that we've discussed, he's actually surprisingly popular. Like his rating right now is around 60%, which is kind of crazy if you compare it to, you know, the ratings of the American or leader or a bunch of other European leaders. And it stayed actually surprisingly high at around 60% on average since 2022.

But the level of unpopularity is also quite high in higher than than any other European political figure has. So it is unpopularity, like I do not trust in the answer. I do not trust Zelensky is around 40% and it's higher than than than any other European

“political figure has many acting important political figure. So you also have to keep that in mind”

that if we are talking about that, you're thinking about that in electoral terms, this is an obstacle that would be quite hard for him to overcome when it comes to elections.

So his popularity is well limited too. But yeah, the choice here is basically

we understand, well, we, the Ukrainian people, we understand that the destiny of the country is more important than the political destiny of Zelensky. So as long as he does his job as the defender of the country on the international level, decently, there would be no calls for him to to step down. If we see that if you Korean see that while he becomes problematic in that way too, they would maybe call for him to step

down. Yeah, it's, as I said, it's a very complicated game for for the people for the nation to play. Especially for a nation that has had so many revolutions and where the civil society in general is very active. Yeah. You've mentioned that Zelensky is kind of a double-faced

“president that, you know, I think he's kind of a man of contrast, like on the other, on one hand,”

he's this, you know, Churchill of our time is that a friend of Ukraine, you know, this very popular, broad narrative. But then when it comes to his actual governing at home, the situation is very different. Could you talk a bit more about what kind of president is he? Like what is his relationship with the cabinet with the parliament? How would you describe the Ukrainian government as a whole to someone who doesn't really understand the domestic political situation? Well, Zelensky

doesn't care too much about what is written in the Ukrainian constitution, like he thinks that he can do as he likes and pleases. For example, last year, when the prime minister or Ukraine that we have now, Ulyus Rodenko was appointed, he should, the candidate for the prime minister should actually be chosen and suggested by the Ukrainian parliament. And the Ukrainian parliament should actually come to the person and say, well, we want you to be the prime minister. This is how it's written in the Ukrainian

constitution. But it was President Zelensky who publicly announced that he suggested for Ulyus Rodenko to become prime minister without any decision by the Ukrainian parliament. So this is like grossly unconstitutional, but he doesn't care. And not only he doesn't care, he wants to

“publicly, he wants to be seen as the main decision maker in Ukraine. So that's why he doesn't shy away”

from announcing such a thing publicly. He actually wants it to be announced publicly. He couldn't care less about what you know parliament wants, about what the ministers want. He is the one in charge. This is the kind of of leader that he has domestically. He also dislikes independent journalists

quite strongly. Like you can you can sense it every time that he, he, he, he faces a critical

question during a press conference. He becomes aggressive. He sees it as a personal attack. He snaps, he starts being rude to the journalist, etc. And there have been attempts by the

as institutions still today in 2026. I would say that the Ukrainian independent media are quite vibrant. You can see a lot of independent investigations including the investigations of corruption in the Ukrainian government and in President Zelensky's entourage. So he wants to be authoritarian. He strives to be authoritarian. But I would say that you know he lacks the systematic approach for that to be successful. So he, he, he, he has all the urges of an authoritarian

leader. But he lacks the vision, you know, to, to make it a real system. Or, but also, and it's also

“important that he always gets, you know, a pushback from, from Ukrainian public, from the”

Ukrainian civil society. And, and from Ukrainian media. So Ukrainian's never actually just let that happen.

Do they grasp a bit? I, I had a discussion with the colleague of mine in 2012. It was during the, the, it was the best times of President Yanukovic who was really, very professionally president and really trying to, to limit any kind of freedom that Ukrainian's had. And we had, but, but, but this colleague of mine, we had this discussion if there could be another, another Belarus in Ukraine established by Inkovic. And we talked about that a bit and he thought for a while

and he said, well, you know, no, I don't think that a second Belarus is possible in Ukraine, because Ukrainians are just too crazy for that. And I think it, this is how it works. You mentioned

their illusions that we had. Like Ukrainians never allow authoritarian dreams of presidents to go too far,

“you know. And that's why we never had, we all, only once we had a president that served to tons.”

We had six presidents and only one of them served to terms. And two of them actually never even finished their legal term of five years. So yeah, that's the kind of people Ukrainians are. So what do you think could happen after the war ends? And, you know, when there is the next presidential election, do have your gut feelings about what that could look like? And the future of Zelensky? No, well, it's, it's hard for me to say, like when it comes to setting a data deadline,

you know, it is said that it was said in those court proceedings against Indonesia, Mark, then he consulted all those clerical youngs and, you know, the astrologist magic people.

“I do not do that. Yeah, fortune tellers. And I, yeah, I do not do that. So I couldn't tell you,”

but as of right now, it seems like there is no choice for the national anti-corruption bureau

not to ultimately implicate President Zelensky or Voldemort Zelensky in the investigation.

And once he stops being president and loses his immunity, logically, he could be charged to, like it could happen exactly at the time of inauguration of the next president. But then again, this is, this is something I'm thinking about right now. We don't know how much time will pass before any of this becomes possible. So we just have to see how the situation develops, which we have to see how the case against Andrea Mark holds in a court of law.

Because again, the Ukrainian high anti-corruption court is not like somewhere you enter and you lose a hope. You can win and there's been several, uh, several not guilty verdicts and it can happen to to Andrea Mark. So let's see how that develops, uh, but most importantly, let's see how the war develops. I mean, the, the Ukrainian statehood is still at stake. If Ukraine loses that, like no political fate of no political figure, uh, will matter. On that note, the nilla, thank you so

much for coming on. I was a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for having me. The law of her podcast is produced by the law of her institute. If you want to support the show and

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