happened, he proposed that NATO would be "soiling its pants and buying Pampers." Meanwhile, striking "a more assertive tone", Zelenskyy was pushing for membership of the European Union and the NATO alliance". In response to the announced of US sanctions against Kolomoyskyi in April 2021, the Office of Ukrainian President released a statement declaring “Ukraine must overcome a system dominated by oligarchs” and acknowledging that “Ukraine is grateful to each partner for its support along the way”. In October 2021, the Pandora Papers revealed that Zelenskyy and two of his Kvartal 95 associates operated a network of offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize dating back to 2012. Zelenskyy’s office sought to justify the network as having been a means of protecting him against the aggressive abuse of tax inspection powers by President Viktor Yanukovych. Potentially more damaging than the appearance of tax evasion was the charge by a political ally of Poroshenko, the journalist Volodymyr Ariev, that the network had laundered some $41 million in funds from Kolomoyskyi’s Privatbank. While investigative journalists suspected that channels of communication with the president remained open, Kolomoyskyi insisted that he no longer communicated with Zelenskyy. He explained that his former protégé "has chosen his path". As president Zelenskyy "has his own vision, program, plans" and as he, a businessman, no longer wants anything from the state, they have nothing to talk about. Kolomoyskyi had the reputation for being able to dictate the votes of deputies within Zelenskyy's parliamentary faction by phone but press reports before the Russian invasion suggested he had "disappeared", staying deliberately away from politics. Despite this, in January 2022, Zelenskyy's Justice Minister Denis Malyuska proposed that Kolomoyskyi's was an "obvious" name to be entered on the register of the new anti-oligarchic law that was to come into effect in May 2022. In the wake of the Russian invasion, Zelenskyy was seen to be under increased pressure to counter Ukraine's reputation as a kleptocracy and respond to the ongoing investigation of Kolomoyskyi in the United States. In both Washington and European capitals, proponents of large-scale assistance to Ukraine contended with Transparency International's European ranking of Ukraine as second only to Russia in institutional corruption. Due to accountancy concerns, approved funds were not being released. Revocation of Ukrainian citizenship and subsequent activities On 28 July 2022, Zelenskyy appeared to confirm the authenticity of an 18 July presidential decree published