It beggars belief, our country’s propensity for corruption, said Zoya Kazanzhy in Vysoky Zamok (Lviv). Even as a terrible enemy “rages, kills and destroys” our people on the battlefield, the government of our supposed protector, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is robbing us blind at home. I’m talking about the vast corruption scandal revealed last week by Nabu and SAP, Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies, which for 15 months have been investigating the financial dealings of Energoatom, the state nuclear-power company. High officials involved in negotiating contracts for the company have been collecting bribes worth 10% to 15% of each contract: Nabu estimates that $100 million (£76 million) in kickbacks were laundered through a secret Kyiv-based office. So far, seven people have been charged and two government ministers (for energy and justice) have resigned for their role in the scandal. The alleged mastermind of the whole plot, businessman Timur Mindich, is a long-time pal of Zelenskyy: before Zelenskyy became president, the two men were co-owners of a film company. Mindich fled to Tel Aviv on the morning of the arrests: “you don’t have to be a detective” to figure who warned him. War or no war, “Zelenskyy must go”.

Russia’s latest strikes have targeted the very Ukrainian power plants at the centre of this scandal, said Marina Daniluk-Yarmolaeva on Espreso TV (Kyiv). It is disgraceful that, while millions of us have been sitting in the cold and dark, contemplating a brutal winter, our officials have been filling their pockets with international aid donated to protect our infrastructure from attack. To Ukrainians it all feels “like something between suicide and treason”. Ministerial resignations are not enough, said Serhiy Taran in Vysoky Zamok. Even in our ongoing state of emergency, we need “a drastic change in the culture of Ukrainian politics”, notably a return to open competition for senior roles. Government can no longer be allowed to fill these positions with business mates.

“These are not easy times for Zelenskyy,” said Lorenzo Cremonesi in Corriere della Sera (Milan). Even as “the Russians are pushing hard on the war front, corruption scandals are weakening the domestic front”. All of this, of course, “plays into the hands of the Kremlin’s supporters”, said Gerald Schubert in Der Standard (Vienna): countries such as Hungary are “once again calling for an end to EU accession talks with Ukraine and that all funding be turned off”. We can’t allow that to happen. There is no suggestion Zelenskyy was aware of this plot, and he acted quickly to remove his energy and justice ministers, pledging a “clean slate”. And right now, “Ukraine needs the West’s support more than ever” to strengthen its democratic structures. We saw that support used effectively this summer, when Zelenskyy’s government, under pressure from Brussels, was forced to backtrack in its attempts to restrict the independence of its anti-corruption agencies. And the success of that effort “speaks for itself”: it was Nabu that led the investigation into Energoatom. However, pressure from Brussels will only work if we encourage Ukraine in its hopes of joining the EU, “instead of snubbing the long-suffering country at every opportunity”.

But that’s the problem, said Luís Delgado in Visão (Lisbon). Much of Europe is still incredibly “uneasy” about the current situation. Although “a river of money has been flowing into Ukraine” since 2022, Kyiv’s allies have always been wary of sending it, knowing the country’s reputation for corruption and the potential for a lot of that money to go missing. Now that some of Zelenskyy’s closest confidants are implicated in the graft, urgent explanations will be needed to avoid a freeze in the flow of funds. The worst of it is that all this is happening just as the EU is locked in a debate about lending billions in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. It’s an ugly situation for everyone – everyone, barring Vladimir Putin. He may be the leader “of one of the most corrupt countries in the world”, but he’ll still be gloating.

“I remember singing it in the playground in the late 1970s,” said Guy Walters in The Independent: “Hitler has only got one ball/ The other is in the Albert Hall.” We all assumed the ditty was just a morale-boosting marching song. Now it turns out Hitler really might have been “one nut short of a lunchbox”. For a new Channel 4 documentary, genetics experts analysed Hitler’s DNA, extracted from a bloodied swatch of fabric that a US soldier had cut from the sofa in the Berlin bunker on which the dictator “blew his brains out” – and found that he had Kallmann syndrome. This genetic disorder hinders puberty, often resulting in undescended testicles and, in one in 10 cases, a “micropenis”. The “startling” discovery correlates with notes made by a doctor who had examined Hitler in 1923, and found that he had “right-sided cryptorchidism” (an undescended testicle). There are also stories of Hitler being mocked by his First World War comrades for his “inadequacy”. If his genitals were severely undeveloped, it could go some way to explaining the psychology of one of history’s most evil men.

It certainly raises some fascinating psychoanalytic questions, said Philip Oltermann in The Guardian. Did the Führer “transform a sense of personal deficit” into an ideological cause? Had the documentary, “Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator”, stopped there, it would have been “sensational but also credible”. Instead, it makes a series of more dubious claims. Based on a polygenic risk score (PRS) test, to assess Hitler’s genetic “propensity” for mental health conditions, its makers blithely assert, for instance, that he had a “high probability” of displaying autistic traits and developing schizophrenia. Not only does this risk stigmatising those with these conditions – will they be cast as “Little Hitlers”? – it’s misleading. PRS tests are not diagnostic tools, said Tiffany Wertheimer on BBC News, and their use to assess people’s susceptibility to complex neurological conditions is controversial.

Hitler’s mental and physical health has been the source of endless fascination, said Ben Macintyre in The Times. Over the years, he has been variously diagnosed with syphilis, rotting teeth, Parkinson’s and flatulence – as if the insanity of the Third Reich could be “reduced to one man’s apparent symptoms”. It’s “tempting fodder”, but in reality, genetics cannot explain Hitler or Nazism; neither could have emerged without the social, economic and political conditions of interwar Germany. Hitler’s genes “may have contributed to creating a singular monster. But German society was already fatally sick.”

Maria Alyokhina was first jailed in 2012 for her role in Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer” anti-government protest in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour; in the decade that followed, she was imprisoned several more times for speaking out against the Putin regime. Yet while other dissidents fled Russia, she dug in her heels, refusing to “abandon” her country – until 2022, when she staged an extraordinary escape. With a day to go until a court hearing where she was expected to be sent again to a penal colony, she prised off her ankle tag and dressed as a food delivery driver in order to slip past the undercover police outside her flat. “It was the perfect disguise,” she told Francesca Angelini in The Sunday Times. A friend drove her into Belarus – “it’s basically part of Russia, no problem there” – and at the second attempt, she made it across the border into the EU by posing as an Icelandic actress who’d drunkenly lost her passport on holiday.

Three years on, she lives in Iceland with her 18-year-old son, Filipp, who was only five when she was first jailed. Having been granted Icelandic citizenship, both are safe now; but she misses her homeland acutely, and is tormented by her decision to flee it. “You call it a decision? It wasn’t a decision,” she says. “My escape sounds like a road movie, a fun story, but in reality it’s f**king desperate. I didn’t want to go.”