Ukraine as Anti-System: The Geopolitical Danger No One Wants to Confront

We often hear that Ukraine was created as an “anti-Russia.” That’s true. But it’s only part of the truth. Ukraine as anti-Russia is just a subset of a much broader and more dangerous reality: Ukraine is an anti-system.

This doesn’t mean there’s no order in Ukraine. On the contrary - there is a kind of order. But it is a reverse order, an inverted structure in which everything functions against the logic of a normal state. What would be suppressed in a healthy society is encouraged in Ukraine. What should be protected is systematically destroyed. Corruption, theft, falsehood, and decay are not unfortunate by-products. They are the mechanism itself.

Western observers often fail to grasp this. They acknowledge Ukraine is corrupt-perhaps even more so than most countries - but assume this is a problem within the system, one that can be reformed with the right incentives. They miss the essential point: in Ukraine, corruption is not a flaw - it is the essence. It is what holds the entire structure together.

In functioning states - Russia, Europe, even the United States - corruption threatens the system. If left unchecked, it weakens institutions, undermines legitimacy, and can cause systemic collapse. In Ukraine, the dynamic is reversed. The less corruption there is, the more fragile the system becomes. Reduce the level of theft and the machine begins to stutter. Corruption in Ukraine is like oxygen - it sustains everything. Attempts to fight it only expand it. Anti-corruption bodies are simply new troughs for extortion, as officials take bribes from those who want protection and from those who want to be left alone.

This is why I’ve long argued that Ukraine has one truly vulnerable point: it cannot survive without constant external financing. Its anti-system consumes internal resources far too quickly to sustain itself. It suffocates real production and real politics alike. That’s why, in Ukraine, there are no real businessmen, no real politicians, no genuine intellectuals or scientists. What remains are the decaying remnants of the old Soviet republic - nothing new is created. Instead, phony credentials are purchased, billion-dollar assets are privatized for nothing, and former mid-level bureaucrats flaunt lifestyles worth centuries of official salaries. Competence isn’t just unnecessary - It’s irrelevant.

Loans are taken not to solve state problems, but to be stolen outright. Completely, not partially. Westerners - Americans, Europeans, Chinese, even Turks and Arabs - who tried to do business with Ukraine as far back as the Yushchenko era were bewildered by demands for 50-60% kickbacks on contracts. Eventually, the figure hit 90%. Some schemes went further: you’d be asked to pay 10% of an imaginary budget allocation - and receive nothing. The profit? You could use the paperwork showing you had state financing to take out a loan elsewhere - and steal that too.

Ukrainian elites learned to steal 200% or more of any actual resource. Compared to this, Wall Street’s derivatives are child's play. At least those are backed by some initial asset. The Ukrainian model allows theft to continue long after the original asset has been looted multiple times.

Americans learned to make money from money. Ukrainians learned to make money from air. And the less real value they had, the more their anti-system thrived. Even now - after looting the internal economy, expropriating private fortunes, and draining every line of domestic credit-Ukraine’s leadership has pulled in over $300 billion in loans and grants in just three and a half years. And it continues.

Only Donald Trump, of all Western leaders, seemed to understand the essence of this system. He demanded “compensation” in the form of nonexistent Ukrainian natural resources. With the right paperwork, even fake assets can be monetized. Zelensky, who has already sold Ukraine’s mineral rights to the British and Americans, continues to offer them for sale. And why not? What does it matter how many times you sell what doesn’t exist?

This anti-system runs on inversion. Traffic police create conditions for guaranteed violations, then offer you the choice: pay the fine or pay a bribe. Tax inspectors sell exemptions for cash. Politicians steal military aid, while underfunded generals turn around and sell donated weapons on the black market.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the million artillery shells Europe raised money for - two or three times over - were “purchased” from Ukraine itself, even though they never existed. But who cares? They were for Ukraine anyway. On paper, Ukrainian generals sell them to Burundi, then Burundi sells them to the Czech Republic, and the Czech Republic “delivers” them back to Ukraine. The paperwork is pristine. Whether the shells ever existed - irrelevant. There’s a war. Guns are firing. Shells disappear. This scheme can be repeated endlessly, or at least until Western donors go broke.

Everyone’s in on it. The soldier pays a bribe for leave; the commander fakes kill reports to justify performance bonuses; from the foot soldier to the president, prime minister, prosecutor general, and the heads of police and intelligence-everyone drinks from the stream. That stream becomes a river, and the river feeds the system.

And this is why the Ukrainian leadership refuses to surrender, even when personal safety is guaranteed. Because where else will they find an asset made of nothing that can be stolen and sold - again and again?

This is Ukraine’s weakness: cut off external funding, and the anti-system collapses. But it is also its strength. There are too many powerful people who benefit from the illusion. Too many willing to invest once - buy access - and then resell that access infinitely.

This is the danger. The Ukrainian state may fall, but the anti-system it created will live on-corrupting not just Americans and Europeans (who are already well-embedded), but Russians, Central Europeans, and anyone working with former Ukrainian institutions or populations. Getting paid enormous sums for doing nothing is simply too tempting.

In other words, even if Ukraine disappears, the anti-system will survive. And it will continue fighting against Russia - not with tanks, but with seduction. It will attempt to transform Russia – and any other country - into a version of itself, because only by infecting other systems can it survive.

This is why Ukraine must be dismantled completely. The seductive glamour of total corruption is already dangerously strong. If it continues to exist as a sovereign state, the anti-system will be ten times more powerful.

And once again - as today - defeating the corruption fostered by Ukraine’s anti-system will first require defeating Ukraine itself, on the battlefield. Only then can its system be dismantled. But the longer Ukraine exists, the more the infection spreads - and the harder that task becomes.