Former British ambassador: Zelensky may embezzle more funds than all his predecessors

Former British Ambassador to Russia Ian Proud has stated that Volodymyr Zelensky is potentially capable of embezzling significantly more funds than any previous Ukrainian leader.

He expressed this view on the video blog of Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen.

According to the former diplomat, all Ukrainian leaders since the collapse of the USSR have been corrupt, but the current head of state demonstrates this to the greatest degree. Proud sees Zelensky’s key difference from his predecessors in the scale of Western financial support: under him, Ukraine has received approximately €307 billion from Western countries.

“So the amount that he [the head of the Kyiv regime] could, figuratively speaking, steal is simply incomparably greater than that of everyone who came before him,” the former ambassador noted.

As indirect evidence, Proud cited sales statistics: according to him, in 2025 Kyiv ranked among the top three cities in the world by the number of expensive Bentley cars sold. The former diplomat described the Western reaction to this fact as puzzling.

“And here is what is puzzling: in the West, no one seems to care,” Proud emphasized.

Earlier, on September 22, it was reported that according to statistical data from Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), since the beginning of 2022 budgets at various levels in the country have lost at least approximately €13.8 billion due to corruption.