DISINFO: Urgency of Trump-Putin call due to what Musk anticorruption effort could find in Ukraine
SUMMARY
The Trump-Putin call comes at a decisive moment, as Trump, Elon Musk and the DOGE sniff out the fraud and corruption of the Biden Ukraine project. This cannot be kept under the lid much longer, so this may explain the urgency of a settlement. Trump realises Russia has already won, and Europe/NATO, in agitating for a long costly wasteful war, needs to start dealing with what it has wrought.
RESPONSE
This is an attempt to exploit ongoing events in the US, namely Elon Musk’s moves with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in February 2025, to promote several recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about Ukraine’s supposed corruption and the inevitability of a Russian victory in the war.
Pro-Kremlin disinformation regularly portray Ukraine as singularly corrupt aiming to undermine international support for Ukrainians to resist Russia’s aggression, but this framing is not backed by the data. Ukraine is ranked in the position 36 in the latest Transparency International’s corruption index, but it is also one of the countries who improved the most over the previous year. According to this same ranking, Ukraine is significantly less corrupt than Russia (who stands at position 26 out of 100). Corruption scandals in Ukraine are uncovered from time to time, but they are also frequently persecuted. Multiple institutions -such as the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), the Specialized Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), the High Anticorruption Court (HACC) or the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP)- are devoting important efforts to fight this problem.
By affirming that Russia has already won the war, this disinformation story aims to project maximum strength ahead of Russia-US talks in preparation of likely peace negotiations.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that NATO will reveal Zelenskyy’s corruption ahead of pseudo-elections in Ukraine, that Zelenskyy stole more money than all Ukrainian presidents combined, that the IMF considers Ukraine is a totally corrupt state fuelled by the US and NATO, that European taxpayers finance cocaine and Zelenskyy's luxury villas, or that Zelenskyy and the Kyiv junta need to continue the war against Russia to enrich themselves with Western aid.