Both Denmark and Norway are allowing Ukrainian companies to produce drones and rocket fuel on their territory. It is a continuation of the offer to train Ukrainian soldiers in NATO countries such as the United Kingdom. But weapons production entails a different type of involvement, which makes Denmark and Norway participants in the war.
The road to war is incremental. First, the prohibition against exporting weapons to a war zone was lifted. Then it was accepted that Ukraine abolished the prohibition against the use of cluster munitions.
Kongsberg Våpen has become busier and can point to good results. Norway and the United Kingdom have entered into an agreement to build up the Ukrainian navy, among other things by means of unmanned drone boats.
Last summer Denmark announced that it would allow the company Fire Point to build a rocket-fuel factory in Vojens in Southern Jutland. The population was not particularly enthusiastic. They knew that they would become targets of Russian interest.
But politicians such as Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Jonas Gahr Støre do not consult the voters. They hide behind idealistic goals about helping a friend at war.
The Ukrainians have been clever. They are not allowed to join NATO, but by placing production in NATO countries, they gain entry through the back door. An attack on Ukrainian factories in these countries would be perceived as an attack on a NATO country.
But this legitimacy may be undermined if it turns out that Ukrainian companies are deeply embedded in corruption.
That is precisely what has happened. The company Fire Point, which Løkke Rasmussen and Støre were so enthusiastic about, turns out to be part of a corruption ring belonging to Zelenskyj’s closest associates, and he himself is part of it.
Berlingske accompanied Løkke Rasmussen to Kyiv on 20 September 2025. After a charm offensive at one of Fire Point’s factories, he met two representatives from the anti-corruption units NABU and SAPO at the Danish embassy in Kyiv. The journalist Magnus Kraft was direct:
Do you actually have a sense that Zelenskyj is obstructing your work in combating corruption?
“I know that he is. The country is governed by very few people: Zelenskyj, his chief of staff, and five or six others. They are typically business associates or friends of Zelenskyj. Parliament is weak and votes as Zelenskyj wants it to. That is why, in July, one saw a parliament voting to limit the independence of NABU and SAPO.”
There was a popular reaction to this, and parliament was forced to reverse the law. The damage had been done. Zelenskyj and his circle had shown their hand.
The attempt to clip their claws was intended to prevent the scandal surrounding Energoatom from emerging. The “circle” of friends had helped themselves generously from all energy agreements: One billion had disappeared.
The scandal is almost like a film: At the centre stands the oligarch Timur Mindich. When the Energoatom scandal broke, he managed to flee the country in a taxi. He evidently knew whom to bribe in order to escape.
India has Bollywood; films could also be made about Russian and Western oligarchs with their football clubs, yachts and empires. For that is the hallmark: an insatiable appetite for money, in other words the “Midas effect”.
Trump has secured loyalty from American tech titans who are eager to be on the winning side. But in Europe they are only drawing ever closer to their Ukrainian partners. That has a price.
Aftenposten dared to place the corruption surrounding Zelenskyj on the front page on Tuesday. Per Andre Johansen dared to bell the cat:
– Certain people simply burn themselves into one’s memory, said an enthusiastic Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre when he arrived at the Hotel Intercontinental in Kyiv after a secret visit. Støre was impressed by the drone and missile manufacturer Fire Point and the company’s chief executive Iryna Terek.
– She heads a company that produces drones, drone technology and air-defence technology, which are clearly important potential partners for Norwegian companies, but also for Norway in our own defence planning, said Støre. The company also has cooperation with the Norwegian defence industry.
Now the company has ended up in the middle of the largest corruption scandal in Ukraine. The reason is new leaks of intercepted conversations in the corruption-suspected network within the circle of friends around President Volodymyr Zelenskyj.
Now this corruption has gone several rounds, and it returns to the starting point: Zelenskyj and his circle.
It must have been extraordinarily difficult for Aftenposten to expose both the golden boy from Kyiv and the Prime Minister. But they did it. Kudos for that:
Last summer it became known that the anti-corruption bureau Nabu had managed to place hidden microphones in the luxury apartment of Zelenskyj’s old friend and business partner Timur Mindich, where Zelenskyj among other things celebrated birthdays. The operation was called “Midas”.
Four former ministers and a number of top executives have been charged. According to the indictment from Nabu, they were part of a criminal organisation that stole and laundered money from the energy sector in an office in central Kyiv while the war raged.
– It is very heavy carrying a bag with 1.6 million dollars, complained the group’s accountant. He was photographed carrying sacks and bags of cash to Zelenskyj’s corruption-suspected friends.
Mindich fled to Israel just before the arrest, but the accountant was caught.
Mindich availed himself of the Jewish right of return. That it also encompasses criminals is extremely poor publicity for Israel, which does not extradite to other countries. Criminals therefore enjoy immunity if they manage to get there.
The scandal has been christened “Midas” after the king in the Greek legend whose wish that everything he touched should turn to gold was granted.
The name probably refers to a toilet in Mindich’s apartment that was made of pure gold. Here Mindich and his friends have held parties. It is clear that such extravagant symbols mark a culture that resonates extremely poorly during a war, especially if the money comes from foreign donors. Støre must feel uncomfortable. While Ukrainian soldiers die at the front, the clique in Kyiv lives lavishly on stolen money from naïve donors such as Norway. It is not his own money that Støre is giving away.
The special aspect of the attempt to clip the claws of NABU and SAPO last year was precisely the brazenness, which caused even Ursula von der Leyen to say that enough was enough.
Now Denmark and Norway are directly implicated: Mindich instructs Defence Minister Rustem Umerov. Umerov looks like a bandit, and is one. He is now head of the national security council. Mindich orders Umerov about and speaks of Fire Point as “ours”.
It is no wonder the Ukrainians love Norwegians and Danes.
Støre has allocated NOK 12 billion to the Ukrainian drone programme. Defence Minister Sandvik, Barth Eide and Støre have emphasised that Ukraine now gives Norway’s defence an advantage: We are learning from them, and this is happening through weapons production here at home. But are we also learning corruption?
We have an intelligence service here at home. Is it not monitoring corruption in Ukraine, into which Norway is pouring NOK 85 billion this year? Or has one become blinded by speed? Is the stream of money so torrential that corruption is accepted as part of the slaughter season? That is how it appears.
Several people have pointed out that the war in Ukraine is a gigantic money-laundering operation.
It began with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The sums of money were so enormous that hardly anyone noticed if one stole from the pile. Eventually the money found its way back to Washington, where many fine villas were built during twenty years of war.
Luxury villas have also been built in Kyiv. They are called “The Dynasty” and stand in a row. The fourth is reserved for Vovo, regarded as a pet name for Volodymyr. These buildings do not fit the image of the Prime Minister sacrificing everything for his country.
“The Dynasty”: One house for Timur Mindich, who is called Zelenskyj’s old friend, one for the Deputy Prime Minister, who is suspected of corruption, one for Andrij Jermak, whom Zelenskyj had to be forced to dismiss, and one for “Vova”. Photo: Telegram / The Ukrainian opposition politician Jaroslav Zheleznyak
These villas are in the same mode as the one with which the oligarch Biden family cooperated; Mykola Zlochevskyj owned the gas company Burisma. In order to have political backing, he gave Hunter Biden a place on the board at 80,000 dollars a month. Hunter was expensive to maintain. Zlochevskyj said that Hunter was so stupid that his dog would have done a better job.
When the Ukrainian Prosecutor General wanted to investigate Burisma, Joe Biden threatened President Poroshenko that if he did not dismiss him, Ukraine would lose one billion dollars in support. Biden was foolish enough to boast about the corruption at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in 2020. That was only six years ago. Biden lies at the bottom of history’s sea as in a modern version of “The Godfather”. The Democrats would later concoct a story claiming that it was Trump who threatened Zelenskyj with halting a loan guarantee of one billion dollars. This led to the first impeachment trial against Trump. There the diplomats lined up one after another and attempted to trap Trump in a corruption network of which they themselves were part.
The Norwegian media have never covered, still less acknowledged, that it was the Democrats who did everything they accused Trump of. That is why they could be so creative and scheming in their accusations. They themselves had committed the acts.
In Ukraine the Democrats arrived at a laid table. To flourishing corruption. They could do business. The question is whether Norwegian politics and business have also acquired such a matured corruption culture that one hand washes the other. The Epstein scandal is a warning of what has built up over time.
The aid budget amounts to nearly NOK 60 billion. Several people, such as Minister of Education Sigrun Aasland, are indirectly implicated in a straw-culture through her husband. They are insiders who know how to obtain project support without competition. The Storting’s chief legal adviser Njål Høstmælingen did the same. Not to mention Grete Faremo, who, after being forced to resign from UNOPS, received the job of overseeing the intelligence services in the EOS Committee.
It is entirely Ukraine.
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