Ukraine's leadership is leading the country toward a widespread catastrophe, but is hiding its incompetence by blaming the war for the existing problems, according to a false narrative taken up by pro-Kremlin propaganda.
NEWS: The government's organizational incompetence becomes most visible in critical situations. When things seem to be functioning normally, it is difficult to assess the real capacity for governance, writes former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov on his Telegram channel, using the regime in Kyiv and its leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, as an example.
"When a critical moment arises, it becomes clear that a populist, who presented himself as a new type of politician, is not an organizer and is not capable of making competent decisions," Azarov argues.
According to him, a catastrophe of epic proportions is currently unfolding in Ukraine. If the West were to stop deliveries — from weapons and generators to financial support — collapse would immediately follow. "Pension and salary payments would cease, and there would not even be enough funds to keep the infrastructure running," the former prime minister stressed.
Azarov also claims that Zelensky's team is willing to exploit in the media even possible deaths caused by frostbite or repeated interruptions in heat supply, as this provides a convenient pretext for placing all responsibility on the "Russian aggression" rather than on their own administrative errors and professional incompetence.
NARRATIVES: 1. Ukraine's energy and economic crises are the result of poor management, not war. 2. Western financial and military support is artificially keeping the Ukrainian state alive. 3. Ukrainian authorities blame the war for problems they are responsible for.
PURPOSE: To downplay the Russian Federation's responsibility for the destruction; to undermine the legitimacy of the Ukrainian leadership; to shift the blame from the aggressor to the victim.
Russia has caused hundreds of billions of euros worth of damage in Ukraine and is responsible for the economic, energy, and social crisis in that country
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: Mykola Azarov does not express a perspective from within Ukrainian society. He has not been on Ukrainian territory for over a decade and does not participate in any way in the political, social, or administrative life of the state. His analyses are formulated from the Russian Federation, a state that is aggressive towards Ukraine, and are constantly promoted by the pro-Kremlin media.
At the beginning of his message, Azarov deliberately omits the fundamental context of the war started by the Russian Federation in February 2022. He shifts the focus from the crimes and destruction caused by the Russian army on civilian infrastructure to the alleged incompetence of the Ukrainian leadership, reversing the cause-and-effect relationship. Responsibility for the energy crisis is attributed to administrative decisions in Kyiv, even though Ukraine's energy infrastructure has been the target of thousands of missile and drone attacks. According to estimates by the World Bank , the European Commission, and the UN, the value of the destruction and economic losses caused by the Russian aggression exceeds 520 billion USD—an unprecedented amount in Europe since 1945, representing nearly three times Ukraine's gross domestic product.
It is cynical, to say the least, to present the difficulty of managing such a crisis as proof of incompetence, given that no European state could manage a war of such intensity without major disruption. Azarov suggests that invoking the Russian aggression is a rhetorical device, a formulation that relativizes the invasion, ignoring the documented reality of war crimes, including the massacres in Bucha, Irpin, and Mariupol, confirmed by international investigations and satellite images.
The Russian Federation's missile and drone attacks on Ukraine's energy and heating infrastructure have intensified recently. In February 2026, authorities reported that over a thousand residential buildings in Kyiv were left without heating, and the strikes also affected other urban areas, including the city of Kharkiv.
International bodies note that these attacks are not accidental. UN human rights experts have warned that strikes on energy infrastructure directly expose civilians to serious dangers, increasing the risk of hypothermia and causing disruptions to water supplies and other essential public services. In January 2026, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights reported attacks on several cities and regions, including Dnipro, Zaporizhia, Lviv, Odesa, and Chernihiv, emphasizing that these strikes delay repairs and leave millions of people without vital services in sub-zero temperatures. From the perspective of international humanitarian law, the repeated targeting of infrastructure essential to the survival of the civilian population, with predictable effects on the heating of homes and the functioning of hospitals, schools, kindergartens, and other public services, is a major indicator of serious violations that must be investigated as possible war crimes.
At the same time, the claim that Western financial and military support is artificially keeping the Ukrainian state alive overlooks the fact that Ukraine's functioning in wartime is based on internal political decisions, the mobilization of institutions, and the efforts of the army and society itself. Western assistance supports this capacity, but does not replace it, nor does it explain the resilience of the Ukrainian state.
CONTEXT: Mykola Azarov was Prime Minister of Ukraine during the pro-Russian regime led by Viktor Yanukovych. In 2014, following the Euromaidan protests and the collapse of the regime, Azarov fled Ukraine and settled in the Russian Federation. He subsequently became a figure constantly promoted by Russian propaganda as the "voice of Ukraine," intended to suggest the existence of internal opposition to the current leadership in Kyiv. Although presented as a former prime minister of Ukraine, he lives in Russia, constantly promotes pro-Kremlin narratives, and has been convicted in Ukraine , in absentia, to a severe sentence for serious crimes, including treason.
GRAIN OF TRUTH: The EU is Ukraine's main financial supporter, having provided over 85 billion Euro in financial, military, and humanitarian aid to date, including direct budgetary assistance for the payment of salaries and pensions, macro-financial assistance, military support, and funds for the reconstruction of infrastructure destroyed by Russian attacks. However, the budget imbalance is not the result of internal political decisions, but of the massive redirection of resources to defense in the context of military aggression. The main cause of the crisis remains the invasion by the Russian Federation.
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