Mindichgate — is it checkmate?

One of the joys of being a hardcopy weekly is that we can’t run after breaking news; instead, we have the luxury of time to analyze the events of the last week. But one of the downsides is that if news is due to break between the time we go to press and the time the newspaper lands in your mailbox, we’re out of luck.

We know that President Donald Trump is urging Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to sign the capitulation — whoops, the peace plan — by Thursday. That’s Thanksgiving. It’s in between the time we go to press and the time the paper will land in your mailbox.

Here is an analysis of the situation. If there are updates, we’ll post them online, but the basic analysis will continue to hold.

—JP

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Our readers will recall that in February, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky had a debacle of an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, where the men ended up yelling at each other. Mr. Trump accused Mr. Zelensky of being ungrateful — the Ukrainian president had thanked Mr. Trump and the American people for their aid many times, including in that meeting, but Mr. Trump apparently felt that it was not fulsome enough.

“Trump told Zelensky — and I paraphrase, but not by much — to shut up, and that he had no good cards to play,” Alexander Smukler of Montclair said. Mr. Smukler is the Moscow-born former president of the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry who analyzes the Russian invasion of Ukraine for us through the lens of a well-connected-to-sources Soviet-American Jew.

Mr. Smukler’s theory is that “Trump is paving the road to Yalta II.” That would be the replay of the famous summit between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin that reshaped the world after the end of World War II. Mr. Smukler believes that Mr. Trump is working toward a similar meeting, with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, to reshape the world again, 80 years later.

He believes that Trump’s effort to get Zelensky to sign this peace deal, by Thanksgiving if possible, is a push toward that end. So, too is Trump’s desire to win a Nobel peace prize, as President Barack Obama did. Applications for the prize are due by January 1, he said, which adds to the pressure Trump is putting on Zelensky.

There is a great deal going on just below the surface, where we can see bumps and odd shapes, even if we don’t know exactly what cause them, but there’s much more further underground. Let’s take a look.

“Since that meeting in the Oval Office in February, many things have happened,” Mr. Smukler said. “The words ‘you have no good cards to play’ has taken on new meaning because of what has happened in the last few weeks. It’s telling us that the chess game in Ukraine is coming to an end.

“Russia is slowly, slowly advancing in its occupation of the territories. It’s  paying an enormous price for it in human lives.

“But just about a week ago, an announcement by the internal media made the internet explode. It’s because of an announcement by NABU, the Ukrainian anti-corruption agency that is totally independent and supervised by the international allies that supply financial and military aid to Ukraine.

“NABU” — that’s a Ukrainian acronym whose initials spell out National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine— “was created by the Ukrainian government, but it is 100 percent independent and is supposed to conduct investigations into corruption and money laundering.”

In fact, it even works with the FBI, according to its website, nabu.gov.ua/en. “The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are deepening their cooperation in investigating corrupt crimes, combating money laundering, and asset recovery. The respective intentions are outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding between NABU and the FBI, signed on Aug. 31, 2023,” the website tells us.

So, about a week ago, “NABU started activities against Ukrainian members of the government and President Zelensky’s closest inner circle,” Mr. Smukler said. “Thirty-four people were arrested, and two government ministers resigned immediately. Two other high-level Ukrainians had fled the country just about 12 hours before they were to have been arrested — who tipped them off? — although men who are between 23 and 60 years old are not allowed to leave the country, so that they can be drafted.

Those two men are Timur Mindich and Oleksandr Zuckerman. They’re both in Israel now. Like Volodymyr Zelensky, they’re Jewish.

“Mindich is probably Zelensky’s closest friend,” Mr. Smukler said. “He was very much involved in Jewish community life, and was  very philanthropic.” Before Zelensky ran for office, he and Mindich owned a business together. It’s a production studio called Kvartal 95 Studio.

Oleksandr Zukerman also is an extremely successful entrepreneur, and he, too, is close to Zelensky.

“Ukraine has requested that both men be deported to Ukraine — but Israel never deports Jews,” Mr. Smukler said.

“This creates enormous turmoil in Ukrainian political life, and obviously it affected Zelensky,” he continued. “It hit him terribly. It’s just the beginning of a huge corruption investigation.

“According to different sources, hundreds of millions of dollars were stolen from the Ukrainian energy system. There was an organization that stole money that was coming into the Ukrainian economy to support the production of Ukrainian atomic energy.”

To be straightforward, it is very bad. “And according to NABU, it was organized and controlled by Mindich and Zuckerman.

“And I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

To be clear, Mr. Smukler said, “I don’t think that Zelensky himself is corrupt. I don’t believe it because of the way he has behaved during the last four years. I think the guy is truly devoted to defending his people and his nation.”

But he’s presiding over a demoralized, large decimated country — not only have many men been killed in battle, many people have left, and others have been displaced. Winter is coming, and there is no power to heat homes or cook food or even to turn on lights or flush toilets. Most people in the cities live in apartment buildings; there is no power to run the elevators. Morale is about as low as it is possible to go, Mr. Smukler said.

So when NABU searched the homes and apartments of officials close to Zelensky, “they discovered hundreds of thousands of euros there and created “the biggest scandal of his political career,” Mr. Smukler said. “It could really wash out his administration in just a few days.”

And then, just a few days later, “a group of U.S. generals came to Kyiv to present a peace plan with 28 steps. It’s a roadmap that basically gives Ukraine a chance to stop the war.

“It was not random. It obviously was prepared.”

Wait. Really, what??

“So there’s an enormous political scandal ignited in Ukraine, and three days later a group of generals — not Witkoff” — the New York real estate mogul who is new to diplomacy, his prominence due entirely to his old friend Donald Trump — “and not Kellogg” — Keith Kellogg, a retired U.S. lieutenant general, is Trump’s special presidential envoy for Ukraine — but a different group of U.S. generals come to Ukraine and bring the peace plan proposal.

“So right after NABU ignites a political crisis, we learn that a group of American generals arrive in Kyiv and present Zelensky with a new peace plan that was proposed by the White House.

First, “why generals?” Mr. Smukler asked rhetorically, and then answered himself. “Because they’re all specialists. They know exactly what is going on in the front lines. So they bring this ‘peace plan,’ which is a capitulation, to provide pressure on Zelensky as they explain that militarily Ukraine will lose the war, and very soon.

“To show that Zelensky has no card to play, and he has to expect capitulation.”

His lack of any card includes the fact that “the opposition already is demanding the immediate resignation of the Zelensky government. It’s not including Zelensky yet, but it is asking for the second most important player in the political scene, Zelesnky’s chief of staff, Andrii Yermak, to go.

“Yermak is very well known in the West. He’s always with Zelensky for important meetings. The opposition is now demanding that he must resign.” But Zelensky can’t afford to lose him.

Zelensky now faces many serious problems. First, there’s Yermak, “Zelensky will be a lame duck without him, and he will lose his power and his popularity.”

The second danger is “if NABU releases information about who told Mindich and Zuckerman about the arrests, and allowed them to leave the country. It has to have been someone on the highest level of government — maybe the presidential level — who could have protected and defended them.”

The third danger to Zelensky comes from his political opponents. “The military leadership, including Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who is in London” — and who basically was exiled there, with an ambassadorship to the United Kingdom, because he is popular and posed a threat to Zelensky — “is a powerful group of people who are waiting to take over the political stage in Ukraine.”

The situation on the front lines is grim too. “It will be dormant in the winter. It will be very cold and foggy — it’s foggy there. Now. In the winter, rain, snow, and fog prevent the use of drones, which is now the major weapon in the war. So I think that the frontlines will be sustainable for the next three to four months.” But after that, Russia will start offensive operations, and he fears that the Ukrainian defenses “will collapse. It is at risk of losing another 20 percent of its territory during a Russian offensive next spring and summer.

“That is why it is most important today for the Ukrainian president to decide if he will accept a 28-paragraph plan proposed and baked by two people. Mr. Witkoff is one of them.” As for the other, “many sources are saying that it was given to Witkoff by the Russians, and I have reason to think that’s true.”

Mr. Smukler thinks that it is likely to have been written by Kyril Dmitriev, Putin’s envoy, the man with whom Witkoff shared breakfast in Moscow a few months ago.

In the last few days, the question of who wrote the plan has become the source of black humor, as Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has claimed that Russia wrote it, then denied his own claim, and then bounced back and forth between the two options.

Either way, it is clear that the plan gives Russia almost everything that it wants — all of the Dombas, Ukraine giving up most of its armed forces and its chance to join NATO, in return for a security guarantee much like the one that Ukraine accepted in 1994 but meant very little, as Putin’s invasion in 2022 showed.

“Right now, Zelensky has to make a decision to continue to fight, with the huge risk of losing more territory, or to accept the peace plan, which was proposed and brought to him by the U.S. generals. He is under enormous pressure, and it seems to me that someone is again sending him a message, saying, ‘Hey, guy, you have such bad cards in your hand.’”

So let’s go back to the timing.

“I think there is nothing random about when the peace plan was presented,” Mr. Smukler said. He thinks that the information that NABO found was real, but “I am 100 percent sure that some very influential player within NABO was holding it back, waiting for the signal to release it.”

NABU has had the goods on Zelensky’s friends for about a year, he said, it was released “suddenly, right before the new peace plan — capitulation — was presented to Zelensky.

“An incredible amount of work was done under the table to prepare the peace plan,” Mr. Smukler said. “I can imagine Putin is just waiting for Zelensky to say yes.

“Zelensky fully understands that winter is coming, and it will be enormously hard for the people in Ukraine, because Russia has destroyed the energy-producing power stations and people will be without electricity for 15 to 16 hours a day in the big cities.

“Winter will be very cold.”

There are very few Ukrainians left to mobilize for the war. “So no matter what military equipment you supply, they cannot operate it, because there are no people and no morale. People are tired. On February 24, it will be the four years. So most of the experts who analyze the internal situation in Ukraine agree that if they do not receive very substantial military and economic help it cannot sustain itself. Russia could possibly break through its defense lines and occupy it, including the major cities in western Ukraine. If that happens Ukraine probably will not be able to sustain itself as an independent state.”

So to get back to the peace-or-more-accurately-capitulation plan. Mr. Smukler believes that the release of NABU’s explosive revelations not only was orchestrated, but was only the top layer of deeper corruption.

“I am sure, although it is not publicized, that NABU could release much more dangerous files against Zelensky and his inner circle is he does not accept the plan.”

To be straightforward, Mr. Smukler is suggesting that NABU is blackmailing Zelensky by holding some very nasty information over his head.

He doesn’t think that there will be a coup. “There are so many eyes and hands involved in Ukraine today — and it depends so much on  European and U.S. help — and I don’t think the allies will let there be a coup. But Zelensky would lose his position and he would have to resign.

“This is the most dangerous and difficult time that Zelensky has faced. He has to make a decision, and obviously the clock is ticking, because the person in the White House needs him to make a decision. He understands — he is made to understand —that he has no cards.

“For all these months, the plan to remove him was being prepared. I think that he’s getting messages that if he accepts the peace plan he will be able to go somewhere safe and continue his life in some European country or the United States, and nobody will touch him. He already has put his name in the history of Ukraine. But if he doesn’t accept the plan, it probably will lead to enormous problems for him.

“I don’t know how he will sustain in such circumstances.”

Zelensky has withstood great pressure before, but this pressure is even greater, and like all other Ukrainians, he’s been worn down by it.

If he accepts it, Mr. Smukler said, “Putin will be completely out of the corner that he put himself fin. The plan will lift all the sanctions from Russian. It will pardon all the military criminals and get the international criminal court to pardon them. It will release all the war prisoners.

“Then Putin will be out of the corner, but Zelensky will be cornered.”

It still is true that people are unpredictable, and that there are so many moving parts in this story — outrage in Europe, incompetence in the United States, self-serving and selflessness all over — that what will happen next might be predictable, but it is not inevitable.

We will keep watching and reporting back.