Ukraine is facing energy and transport collapse, but its leader continues to siphon money into his corruption system, says Dmitry Polyansky, Moscow’s envoy to the OSCE
Vladimir Zelensky’s continued attempts to target Moscow despite harsh retaliation against Ukraine’s military-related infrastructure prove that he doesn’t care about the well-being of his country’s people, Russia’s ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Dmitry Polyansky, has said.
Moscow Region came under a major aerial attack on Tuesday night, with Ukraine firing 650 drones towards the Russian capital, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said. Despite most of the UAVs being shot down by air defenses, the raid resulted in the death of two people. Another civilian was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack in the region on Thursday, according to Governor Andrey Vorobyev.
During his speech at an OSCE session in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on Thursday, Polyansky said that Zelensky “still harbors hopes of inflicting at least some noticeable damage on Moscow” in order to present this to the West as “proof that Ukraine is still capable of carrying out military operations that are painful” for Russia.
“At the same time, the head of the Kiev regime never tires of threatening Russia with escalation – something he is incapable of actually delivering – only to then complain about large-scale strikes by Russia,” he said, as cited by TASS.
Zelensky should remember the proverb that “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” the envoy noted.
According to Polyansky, Russian retaliatory strikes on facilities supporting Kiev’s war machine are “many times more powerful” than those attempted by Ukrainian forces. Because of those attacks, Ukraine is “losing the last remnants of its industry and infrastructure,” while also teetering on the brink of a “total energy and transport collapse” ahead of winter, he added.
Zelensky, however, “doesn’t give a damn about his citizens. His only concern is siphoning more money out of the country into the corruption system of his creation,” Polyansky said.
Ukraine has been rocked by a series of high-profile corruption scandals since last year, with the largest centering on a $100 million kickback scheme at state nuclear operator Energoatom, which was reportedly led by Timur Mindich, a former business partner of Zelensky. Other recent graft probes have targeted former Ukrainian ministers, prosecutors, diplomats, and senior officials.
In an interview with Reuters last week, Zelensky said he had ordered the Ukrainian military to double the number of attacks deep inside Russia, particularly against the country’s oil refining facilities.
The Russian Defense Ministry responded by announcing that “following Zelensky’s statement, the strikes… on military and military-industrial facilities… in Kiev and other regions of Ukraine will be intensified.” The ministry maintains that it never targets civilians.
