Of all the stupid ideas coming out of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration lately, Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak has seized upon a doozy: He told the Washington Post that he wants a law that would make it a crime to publish secretly taped conversations of public officials.
That’s right, Yermak, it’s not the crimes that are often exposed on the tapes that are the problem, it’s the publication of the tapes exposing the crimes. That’s the twisted logic at work on Bankova Street. It’s hard to see how Ukraine will put up with four more years of this nonsense. Don’t get us wrong: We don’t miss President Petro Poroshenko or any who came before him. But with each boneheaded stunt, it becomes increasingly clear that Ukraine will need to find a better leader than Zelensky soon.
Yermak, of course, is a highly compromised person to be making such a proposal. His brother, Denys Yermak, was caught on tape trying to sell high-level state positions — something he could do only with the connivance presumably of his brother, Andriy, who is close to the president. In a rule-of-law country, the Yermaks would face a criminal investigation. But this is Ukraine. It’s not going to happen, just as credible allegations that members of parliament get under-the-table payments of up to $10,000 monthly and ministers get up to $50,000 monthly will never get investigated or proven.
Ukraine has a long history of leaked tapes, including those showing President Leonid Kuchma was a gangster and quite possibly a murderer. The fever over tapes continues to this day. The Washington Post also reported this week that supporters of President Donald J. Trump spent months in Ukraine looking for recordings that might compromise his Democratic rival Joe Biden, who visited Ukraine seven times as U.S. vice president.
Yermak’s true colors are showing and they are not the colors of democracy, free speech or innocence. It’s not the tapes that are so much a problem (although everyone seems to record everyone else here). It’s the possible crimes exposed by the tapes that are the real problem.
