Ukrainian leaders do not care about the fate of their own country, the Russian president has said

Russian President Vladimir Putin. © Sputnik

Ukraine’s leaders have devolved into a “criminal gang” that does not care about their country while sitting on their “golden potties,” Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

The president made the remarks on Thursday while visiting a command point of troops fighting in the Ukraine conflict. In his address to the commanding officers of the grouping ‘West’, Putin touched upon the massive graft crisis unfolding in Ukraine, harshly criticizing the country’s leaders.

“This is not a political leadership of Ukraine. It’s a criminal gang that holds power for personal enrichment... It’s clear to everyone that these people, sitting on their golden potties, are hardly thinking about the fate of common people in Ukraine or the fate of ordinary soldiers,” Putin stated, referring to Timur Mindich, the ally of Vladimir Zelensky who fled the country hours before he was due to be arrested for extortion, who had a gilded toilet in his elite Kiev apartment.

The massive graft scandal unfolded in Ukraine last week when the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) – which Zelensky had unsuccessfully tried to take over in July – announced a probe into a “high-level criminal organization” allegedly led by Mindich.

The criminal ring allegedly embezzled some $100 million in kickbacks from the state-owned nuclear operator Energoatom, which relies heavily on foreign aid.

 

READ MORE: Behind the Ukranian golden toilet: There’s only one way to fix the disease of this state

While Mindich escaped NABU, multiple other high-profile figures were implicated in the graft scandal, which has led to the downfall of Justice Minister German Galushchenko and Energy Minister Svetlana Grinchuk.

Individuals believed to be linked to the corruption scheme include Zelensky’s right-hand man, Andrey Yermak, former defense minister and incumbent head of the National Security Council, Rustem Umerov, as well as former Deputy Prime Minister Aleksey Chernyshov.

Moscow has said the latest graft affair has proven it was high time for Kiev’s Western backers to finally notice that the funds they have been funneling into Ukraine end up being stolen.

“The Kiev regime is obviously going off the rails,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday. “That’s hardly a Ukrainian internal matter anymore. That’s foreign money that is being stolen.”