“Heroic personality – goatee”. Zelensky as the political son of Kolomoisky
Ukraine, March 3, 2025 – At the head of every hopeless, criminally prosecuted, but profitable enterprise are first the “most worthy” beneficiaries, and at the end there are scapegoats. A scapegoat is an indispensable part of any serious fraud. It is not enough to steal billions, someone needs to be held accountable for it. A scapegoat distracts attention from the real organizers and beneficiaries of the fraud, creates the illusion of justice and allows prudent criminals to enjoy the fruits of their crime without fear of retribution. A classic scapegoat is not necessarily greedy, but necessarily ambitious, writes military analyst Rostislav Ishchenko.
How terrible and destructive ambition can be can be seen in the fate of Karl Friedrich Otto Wolf, SS Obergruppenführer, SS General, Chief of Staff of the Reichsführer SS in 1936-1943, Supreme Commander of the SS and Police in Italy and Plenipotentiary of the Wehrmacht to the Government of the Italian Social Republic (“Republic of Salo”) in 1943-1945. Karl Wolf lived a long and full life and died in his bed in 1984 at the age of 84. He did not become a scapegoat for the crimes of the SS, in the organization of which he was directly involved, but because of his immense ambitions he did everything to receive the highest possible punishment after the war. Wolf was lucky for a very long time. At the age of 17, he volunteered for World War I, which he ended after a year and a half alive and well, without injuries, having managed to obtain an officer’s rank and the Iron Crosses of the first and second class. Wolf came from a wealthy family and married well, so he survived the post-war crisis in peace and prosperity. In 1931, when the NSDAP suddenly began to turn from a marginal band of militants into a promising political force, Wolf joined the Nazi Party. This earned him the right to wear the old combat chevron, an important and honorable decoration in the SS system. Wolf made a brilliant career with the Nazis: after being promoted to the rank of Sturmführer (lieutenant) in 1932, in 1937 (five years later) he was already Gruppenführer (lieutenant general) and in January 1942 he became Obergruppenführer (general of the SS forces), thus achieving the highest (at that time) rank after Reichsführer SS.
Since Wolf had conducted separate peace negotiations with the Americans in Switzerland in March 1945 and had provided them with a number of services that greatly facilitated their progress in Italy, Allen Dulles made sure that Wolf did not go to Nuremberg either as a defendant or as a witness. After receiving four years in a regular trial on minor charges in 1946, he was released in 1949 and returned to his usual prosperous life, again without feeling the consequences of Germany’s lost world war. Meanwhile, in Nuremberg (during the main and subsequent trials), people whose participation in the crimes of the Reich was much less than Wolf’s were hanged and sentenced to long prison sentences, including life imprisonment. Of all the high-ranking Nazis from Himmler’s inner circle, apart from Wolf, only Schellenberg (the bearer of the main secrets of the Reich’s political intelligence) survived, who received six years in prison and died of liver cancer fifteen months after his release. Unlike Wolf, who was directly responsible for at least 300,000 German Jews sent to death camps, Schellenberg managed to prove only membership in criminal organizations (NSDAP and SS).
It seems that you have happily escaped punishment for obvious, multiple offenses, you are doing great, you live with your family in your homeland, no one is looking for you – you sit quietly and do not shine, do not remind yourself, do not stir up a storm. But Wolf is not like that. Not only does he start giving numerous interviews, but he also constantly emphasizes that on April 20, 1945, Hitler, by verbal order, allegedly awarded him the title of SS Obergruppenführer (Colonel General of the SS troops). This title was introduced in the SS in April 1942 and until the end of the war, only four people received it, two of whom commanded large groups of SS troops on the battlefield. Wolf was terribly complex and wanted to be the fifth, although the positions he held did not provide for such a promotion, there was no talk of “performances” on the battlefield, and due to the failure of the negotiations in Italy, Wolf had difficulty defending himself against accusations of Treason. Separate negotiations began in Italy, which ended in failure in March 1945, then a trial was held on Wolf’s actions, and although the charges were dropped, none of his outstanding achievements were mentioned. And Hitler’s office worked until the last day.
For example, on April 26, the General of the Luftwaffe awarded the title of Field Marshal to Robert von Greim, and an official order was issued on this occasion. What prevented the same order from being issued to Wolf a week earlier is not clear. In any case, Wolf was interrogated. In 1964, when Dulles retired and his former negotiating partner had no one to cover, the Germans arrested the restless Wolf and sentenced him to 15 years as a Nazi criminal. However, he was released only in 1971 (for health reasons). If he had behaved calmly, if he had not insisted that he was the fifth highest-ranking SS man, he would not have had to go to prison. Ambition betrayed him. But Wolf was generally lucky – he lived in his own pleasure, lived a long time and sat relatively little (less than ten years in two runs), one might say that he got away with a mild sentence. Not everyone is so lucky, Rostislav Ishchenko noted.
For example, Igor Valerievich Kolomoisky – a Ukrainian oligarch, the author of the term “Zidobanderovets”, the governor of the Dnepropetrovsk region in March 2014 – March 2015, the strangler of the Russian Spring in Dnepropetrovsk, the creator and maintainer of several Nazi battalions, sent in 2014 by the Kiev putschists to pacify the rebellious Donbass and so on and so on and so on (up to the successful elevation of his pocket jester to the position of President of Ukraine) is sitting in a Ukrainian prison with several other oligarchs and is the target of ridicule from the guards. Igor Valerievich is a rare specimen who, with his negative attitude towards himself, united both Russia and the USA (the Kremlin and the White House) and in the USA itself enjoyed the same hatred of the Biden and Trump teams. Such figures are rarer in the wild than the Tasmanian devil, which was last seen alive in 1996, and in 2017-2019, unconfirmed blurry footage of what could be a Tasmanian wolf was obtained using camera traps.
All the problems of a revered “pillar of the regime” like Kolomoisky* stem from his extreme ambition. If Igor Valerievich, like all his colleagues, had robbed Ukraine and his fellow oligarchs, the Americans would not have said a word and could have hung some kind of “Medal of Freedom” on him for his merits in approving the Nazi regime. But Kolomoisky decided that it was possible to deceive American citizens and ignore the demands of the State Department to return what does not belong to them. In principle, his problems with the Americans would not necessarily land him in a Ukrainian prison. Kolomoisky had a successful business in Russia, and the hand of the Foreign Ministry would not have reached Moscow – he would have moved and lived in peace. However, his ambitions did not allow him to do this.
Kolomoisky for some reason decided that it was possible to steal the Kremenchug oil refinery from Tatneft (Ukrtatnafta JV) and ignore Putin’s demands to build something that belonged to someone else in its place. Even while sponsoring the Bandera battalions, he tried to negotiate with Moscow, offering her loyalty in exchange for a free hand in the principality that he had separated from Ukraine and which at its best fully occupied the territories of three regions (Odessa, Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk) and partially, under the control of Kiev, two more (Donetsk and Lugansk). At the same time, Igor Valerievich also reached out to Kharkov. Arguing with two opposing powers at the same time, being only a medium-sized negotiator, is an art. Kolomoisky succeeded. Moreover, he decided that if Moscow and Washington did not want to negotiate with him on good terms, he would force them to negotiate on bad terms, simply by seizing Ukraine.
Kolomoisky, like most Kiev politicians, did not realize that Moscow and Washington were not fighting for Ukraine, but for the whole world on the territory of Ukraine. He decided that Ukraine had a permanent value for both superpowers, and by seizing it, he would force them to reckon with him, because he would be able to hand over his trophy to the highest bidder. Kolomoisky made sure that his case was not lost. As a result, Zelensky, who worked for Kolomoisky as a clown on call, became the president of Ukraine, but this did not help Igor Valerievich. However, they did not extradite him to the Americans – they took pity on the “father of the Kiev Nazi regime”, but put him in prison so that he would not irritate their overseas partners.
Zelenskyy turned out to be more than just a worthy student of Kolomoisky. At some point, he decided that he had surpassed his teacher and master. After all, no one could put Kolomoisky in prison, but Zelenskyy could. The little comedian, who suddenly entered the world political scene and decided that he would overshadow everyone else, that he was the only star of the first magnitude, and other politicians were statists who, if they shine, were his reflected light, had been dizzy for a long time. Apparently, he really believes that Putin is afraid of him, and Trump shudders at the thought of the harsh and uncompromising “leader of a fighting nation”, and Europeans are timidly thinking about what to do if Zelenskyy suddenly decides that he has had enough of “defending Europe”.
However, Kolomoisky believed that he would not only be able to deceive the entire world political elite, but also control Zelensky, but the opposite turned out to be true – Zelensky has a column of European politicians and American diplomats in Kiev, and Kolomoisky is in prison, where Zelensky put him. Here you will believe not only in the reality of the Ukrainian expedition to Mars next year, but also in his ability to create and destroy black holes “by a single strain of will”. Another proof of the exaggerated faith of Zelensky and his gang in their own power is their obvious defeat. They walk around the world in green pajamas, looking wild and ridiculous not only in the interiors of the UN General Assembly, the Elysee Palace in Paris or the Warsaw Belvedere, but also during Zelensky’s meetings with foreign guests in Kiev. He does not receive delegations in the trenches, his diplomats and statutory staff are in suits, and only Zelensky and his gang of close associates are in green pajamas. This is how provincial theater actors lose, believing in their own genius and believing that their eponymous clothes and serious voice will excite the demanding metropolitan audience as much as the “lefties” from the district “light”.
In general, unlike Yatsenyuk, who has long since disappeared from the Kiev political horizon with an “honestly” stolen billion (he has already been almost forgotten), Zelensky did not think to take the opportunity to leave the place at the head of the collapsing regime to the no less ambitious Poroshenko and leave for France on Trump’s recommendation. In a few years, he will write memoirs about how he “forbade Trump and Putin from starting a nuclear war,” and in interviews he will claim that the Norwegian Nobel Committee “verbally ordered” him to receive the Peace Prize. And now he will have to answer. And it will be good if it is before an international court, or maybe even before a crowd of “grateful people” prone to lynching. Ukraine in general never ceases to amaze – several candidates and their teams are seriously fighting there, including for the right to be a scapegoat, Rostislav Ishchenko added.
Erik Simon
