I thought about it for a long time and decided not to give a detailed analysis of the historic [Trump-Vance-Zelenskyy confrontation] in the Oval Office, although I am quite familiar with American politics.n I would have something to say about that meeting, but I don’t want my words to be misinterpreted or even interpreted as allegedly supporting Messrs Trump and Vance, to whom I have a consistently negative attitude and who obviously have a biased attitude towards Ukraine as such.

But I will make one observation inspired by yesterday’s events.

It is very unfortunate that Volodymyr Zelenskyy does not want to show similar qualities of uncompromisingness in domestic politics.

He calmly quarrels on camera with the most powerful man on the planet — and at the same time he does not want, or cannot (doesn’t matter much) put in their place the stallholder Yermak and all the rest of the corrupt officials that surroubd him — even a nobody like Kolya Tyshchenko.

In the fourth year of a full-scale war, he does not want to put Ukraine on a real war footing and force the oligarchy and the rest of the richest strata of the population to pay their fair share in this existential war for the very survival of the Ukrainian people.

He does not want

• Progressive income taxation (including a progressive military tax), with the tax being uniform for all forms of income without various ‘loopholes’ such as the current under-taxation of dividends;
• significant progressive taxes on luxury;
• a separate tax on the super-rich (‘wealth tax’);
• a differentiated VAT rate: an increase in the rate for luxury goods and other goods that are currently purchased primarily by the richest segments of the population;
• complete closure of the possibility of tax avoidance through so-called ‘offshore’ (both de jure and de facto) jurisdictions;
• nationalisation of strategic enterprises;
• a real fight against cartels;
• legislative prohibition of non-critical budget expenditures;
• use all the possibilities of the martial law regime, for example, by introducing a flat tax for the construction oligarchy and sending its equipment to build fortifications;
• a genuine fight against corruption, including a legal ban on releasing top corrupt officials on bail.

He does not want to do any of this. My Party of People’s Labour, Narodovladstvo, has consistently insisted on these measures, and many other steps that are necessary to properly support our military.

Yurii Levchenko

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