Stephens: Corrupt to be sure, but protecting Ukraine still matters

"Last month an investigation led by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, an independent agency, accused allies of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, including two ministers, of graft and fraud to the tune of $100 million. The ministers have resigned. So has the president's chief of staff, while a former business partner of Zelenskyy 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, and the legal and political accountability that have gone with it, 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 Dmitriev, of a 28-point plan devised in Miami that amounted to a Ukraine surrender document; the thinking behind it, as The Wall Street Journal reported last week, was even scarier. For the Kremlin, the Miami talks were the culmination of a strategy, hatched before Trump's inauguration, to bypass the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and convince the administration to view Russia not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity,"

Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau, an independent agency, accused allies of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of graft and fraud totaling $100 million, prompting resignations including two ministers and the president's chief of staff while a former business partner reportedly fled the country. The president faced political damage though not accused of wrongdoing. The probe represents legal and political accountability confronting entrenched corruption. Simultaneously, informal U.S.-Russia back-channel meetings pushed a plan to reframe Russia as an economic opportunity, potentially undermining traditional security assessments and splitting Western alliances through lucrative energy and rare-earth deals.

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