Ukraine is still worth fighting for, even now

The significant fact about Ukraine's corruption scandal is that it is having one. A scandal, that is, as opposed to just a fact of life.

- Bret Stephens

Last month an investigation led by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ulaine, an independent agency, accused allies of President Volodymyr Zelensky, including two ministers, of graft and fraud to the tune of US$100 million (3.1 billion baht). The ministers have resigned. So has the president's chief of staff, while a former business partner of Mr Zelensky appears to have fled the country. The president himself is not accused of wrongdoing but has been politically damaged.

Corruption has always been what's wrong with Ukraine. The investigation is what's right. A nation that can investigate its leaders even as it fights for its existence is one worth defending.

That's the thought that should animate anyone not part of the peace-at-any-price wing of the Trump administration, whose leading lights, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, were in Moscow on Tuesday for personal talks with Vladimir Putin. The two real-estate developers were previously the authors, with Putin negotiator Kirill Dmitriey, of a 28-point plan devised in Miami that amounted to a Ulzaine surrender document; the thinking behind it, as The Wall Street Journal reported last week, was even scarier.