Storm of corruption washes over KievCorruption scandals involving the inner circle of Volodomyr Zelensky are overshadowing even the jarring military setbacks taking place along the front lines in Ukraine. Zelensky is the unelected ‘president’ of the government which came to power in Kiev through a paramilitary coup in February 2014For almost one year now, there has been an undeclared war in Ukraine between the ‘Office of the President’ of Volodomyr Zelensky (which happens to control Ukraine’s special services police agency) and anti-corruption voices grouped around the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP). These still-fledgling, anti-corruption institutions, holding little more than symbolic power, were created in 2015 and have barely made a dent in the crimes they are supposed to investigate.
The embassies of the United States and the countries of the European Union were the driving forces in creating these two ‘anti-corruption’ institutions; this in order to project images of law enforcement in a country otherwise run by a thieving political and economic elite. Since 2015, there has been little punishment of corrupt officials meted out, even when sufficient evidence for prosecutions or more drastic measures has been gathered.
As a rule in Ukraine, a ‘corruption investigation’ typically ends with the corrupt official being caught red-handed and then making a deal with investigators by paying a portion of his or her illegal takings in the form of fines or of ‘donations’ to officials. In this way, corrupt officials who have been exposed simply carry on their practices, but now in collaboration with Western-funded institutions possessing compromising information on them. Paradoxically, Western embassies quickly develop an interest in working with such individuals because they are now under watch and closer control.
Kiev's efforts this past summer to accuse anti-corruption institutions in Ukraine of having ties to Russia led to protests by Western-funded NGO activists as well as outcries from Western embassies, all of which gained headlines in the West. Some embassies even threatened to cut off funding to the Zelensky administration.
King Midas and his followersIn recent weeks, anti-corruption institutions have published recordings of conversations between Zelensky's entourage, his ministers, and other top officials of his administration. These reveal the vast extent of corruption that has permeated the Ukrainian regime.
About 70 legal searches have been conducted in Kiev against officials and businessmen associated with Zelensky. These operations were codenamed 'Operation Midas' (‘Ryoshyk’), after the legendary king of Greek mythology for whom everything he touched turned into gold. (According to myth, King Midas nearly died of starvation as a result of his newly-obtained, magical powers.) Investigators say the searches were the result of 15 months of work by NABU and SAP, including "1,000 hours of audio recordings". Only two-to-three per cent of the recordings have been made public. The two agencies embellished their published reports with images of bundles of hryvnia, euro, and dollar bills that were seized during searches.
The essence of the accusations delivered to date is that Zelensky's entourage steal practically everything they can get their hands on, including Western aid supposed to pay for “energy security”. For example, Western countries (mainly the member countries of the European Union) have transferred large sums of money for the construction of fortifications around power plants and for the purchase of damaged or worn electrical equipment. Typically, no equipment purchases nor work were carried out. The money was immediately laundered and cashed out, and then it was said that the Russian army had “bombed all the work” that had been done.
Some of those involved in the corruption have succeeded in placing their people in key government positions in the energy industry. A ‘cut’ of ten to 15 per cent of the funding of energy industry projects is common for such officials to claim and receive. As reported on Telegram on November 13, one of the figures investigated by ‘Operation Midas’ reportedly complained that it was difficult for him to carry $1.6 million in cash to the office where the money was to be laundered.
According to a commentary in the Ukrainian newspaper Strana (online, founded in 2016), information about widespread corruption among top officials reportedly has a demoralizing effect on Ukrainian society. The fact that millions of Ukrainians are living without electricity while news reports detail how officials of the Zelensky administration rob the energy industry of funding is hardly comforting news as the war being waged against the Russian Federation drags on, seemingly without end.
EU insists on giving money to thievesAgainst the backdrop of these scandals and accusations in the Western press, the European Union announced on November 13 a further allocation of €6 billion to the Zelensky-led administration. Upon receiving the news, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán commented that “Europe is transferring money to Zelensky's military mafia”.
According to Alexander Dubinsky, a former Zelensky ally and critic and a former legislator, in custody since November 2023 on charges of treason, this latest transfer of funds is further proof of his earlier statements that the EU is demanding of Zelensky that he and the administration he heads continue the war “until the last dead Ukrainian”.
It is noteworthy that during this same period of corruption revelations, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, aware of the shortage of personnel in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, has requested that Zelensky ensure that young Ukrainians (those below the age of military conscription of 25) be prohibited from travel to Germany and instead remain in Ukraine and serve in the armed forces. “I have asked the Ukrainian president to ensure that young men from Ukraine do not come to Germany in large numbers, but stay to serve their country. They are needed there,” said Mertz, as reported by Strana.
In a recent interview with Politico, Kiev Mayor and former Euromaidan leader Vitali Klitschko voiced his view that the age of conscription in Ukraine be lowered to 22. Klitschko acknowledges that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are facing “enormous problems” in finding new soldiers due to the numbers of military-age men fleeing abroad. “There are no people, it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold the front,” the mayor of Kiev has admitted.
Klitschko’s call for the age of conscription to be lowered will hardly be popular with the majority of the residents of the Ukrainian capital. But that is not who Klitschko is trying to please. He demonstrated his military belligerence and willingness to tighten conscription on the opening day of the Welt Security Forum. This was a gathering of Western hawks who are unhappy with the recent advances of the Russian army. Among those in attendance were high-ranking German generals as well as representatives of the German military-industrial complex, all of whom are interested in prolonging the military conflict and have economic interests in making things so.
In his speech in Berlin, Klitschko stated that the future of all of Europe, its security, and its stability is being decided in Ukraine. Therefore, he said, it is important for Western backers to increase their military aid.
Amid rumors that a corruption scandal could force Zelensky to step down, Klitschko is showing he is fully prepared to offer his services for the continued ‘busification’ of Ukrainians. (The term ‘busification’ has entered the popular discourse in Ukraine, referring to conscripts being carted away in minibuses to short stretches of military training followed by grim assignments to the front lines, poorly trained and poorly armed, where life expectancy is often very short.)
Ukrainian political scientist Kost Bondarenko compares Klitschko's conscription proposal to the situation in Russia in 1917. “Figuratively speaking, the situation in Ukraine resembles the aftermath of the February Revolution of 1917, when so many of Russia’s people expected peace to come. But Alexander Kerensky assumed power as prime minister and declared instead, ‘No, we will continue to fight.’”
For now, despite the historic parallel being discussed by many, the European Union intends to continue supporting Zelensky. To achieve this, the EU is alleging that Zelensky knows nothing about the actions of those around him. Such tactics have been used since ancient times; a common saying back then was ‘The king is good, but alas, he doesn’t know that his lords are doing bad things to the common people.’
EU diplomats say they consider the admitted “rampant corruption” in Ukraine's energy industry to be “repulsive”, but they have no plans to stop providing financial assistance, as Politico.eu explained on November 14. “So far, the scandal — the worst to hit Zelenskyy since he took office in 2019 — is not prompting allies to threaten to cut aid to Ukraine,” it wrote.
Moreover, officials in Kiev expect Brussels to “maintain its general taboo on public criticism of Ukraine”. However, such persistence in allocating billions to a corrupt regime may also indicate that Western officials themselves are in on the thieving, with the situation providing big earnings for them at the expense of their own countries' budgets.
Zelensky's mafia clanSome of the main figures in the unfolding corruption scandal are a group of seven big businessmen and financiers who are also long-time friends of Zelensky and have profited from pilfering the energy industry. Most of them are Israeli citizens. On the eve of searches by detectives from NABU, the main figures in the corruption case managed to flee to "Israel".
Zelensky pretends that he knows nothing of the case and has nothing to do with it. He has used the publicity surrounding it to repeat earlier promises to ‘fight corruption’. He promised this during the presidential election of April 2019 (the last presidential election to take place in Ukraine), when the then-incumbent, now-former, President Petro Poroshenko was mired in corruption scandals. Now it is the turn of Poroshenko and his entourage to accuse Zelensky and his associates of corruption. (Poroshenko was ‘elected’ president less than three months following the February 2014 coup in Kiev, which he vigorously supported.)
The main figure in the corruption accusations is Timur Mindich, whom the media calls ‘Zelensky's wallet’. He is one of the president's closest business partners, a Ukrainian-Israeli businessman and a co-owner of the Kvartal-95 television studio, founded in 2003, where Zelensky rose to fame as a comedian and actor.
After Zelensky took office as head of state in April 2019, Mindich's businesses began to flourish. According to a feature report by Ukrayinska Pravda, Mindich managed to get his people into the government, earn big money on state contracts awarded to the drone and missile manufacturer Fire Point (whose main production facility is located in Denmark), and conduct pilfering schemes in the energy industry. It was precisely the latter activities that led to the recent searches of his premises.
Ukrainian-Israeli oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi recalled in the Ukrainska Pravda report that it was Mindich who introduced him to then-comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, whom Kolomoyskyi subsequently elevated into a political star. (As president, Zelensky later imposed sanctions on Kolomoisky, taking away part of his business.)
The corruption case also involves brothers Mikhail and Alexander Zuckerman, who ran Mindich's business. The FBI in the United States is also interested in the Zuckerman brothers and Mindich, again as reported by Ukrainskaya Pravda.
Throughout Zelensky's years in power, these financiers remained in the shadows while not a single major tender in the energy industry passed them by. Now they, too, have fled to "Israel".
According to Ukrainian media reports, Rustem Umerov, briefly Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine in 2025 and before that Minister of Defense from 2023 to 2025, also has close ties to Mindich-led companies. NABU claims that Mindich exerts influence over Umerov.
Ukrainian media is reporting that Mindich pressured Umerov to purchase Israeli body armor for the Armed Forces of Ukraine in February 2025 at an inflated price, in which Mindich himself invested. ZN.ua has called that contract “scandalous”.
Politico.eu reported on November 13 that Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities are preparing for a series of exposés, specifically aimed at the Ministry of Defense. It writes, “Defense procurement corruption is also in the sights of investigators and, according to people close to the investigation who asked not to be identified, more raids will take place shortly on the Ukrainian defense ministry as part of a probe into inflated procurement contracts.”
As soon as this became known, Umerov hastily left for Turkey, allegedly to settle issues related to exchanges of prisoners of war with Russia. (At the time, there was no Russian delegation in Turkey with which to meet.) He then flew from Istanbul to Qatar, from where analysts in Ukraine doubt he will ever return.
Ukraine’s ministers of justice and energy resigned as news of the corruption spread. They, too, are protégés of Zelensky's mafia group.
Who would replace Zelensky?According to a number of Ukrainian analysts, the corruption scandal could lead to Zelensky's resignation, but it is unlikely to lead to an end to the war or a change in the country's political course.
Western institutions and embassies criticize Zelensky for corruption, but they do not criticize his regime’s forced conscription. Indeed, Zelensky claims in interviews that the West is demanding that he strengthen conscription, and pronouncements to this effect by Western leaders appear to confirm this. In other words, in the eyes of the Western powers, the corruption scandals enveloping the Zelensky administration are not so much about the troubling fact of widespread corruption as they are about searching for leaders who can more effectively wage war against Russia, given the retreats and ceding of cities now taking place by the Ukrainian army.
Strana writes that the internal political confrontation is intensifying in Ukraine and moving to a fundamentally new level. Government and civil society structures associated with the Democratic Party in the US, Poroshenko and his entourage, and Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko—all intertwined with regional economic and political elites and Western NGOs—are uniting against Zelensky.
Ukrainian political analyst Kost Bondarenko believes that the West is looking for a replacement for Zelensky, especially after the growing list of military disasters under his command, notably the encirclement of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the strategic city of Pokrovsk. He notes that the court ruling on corruption investigations of high-ranking officials associated with Zelensky appeared as early as October 24, nearly one month ago. But the searches themselves took place only on November 10.
“The searches occurred suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, at a time when we are losing Pokrovsk, when a new cauldron (encirclement) has formed near Mirnohrad, and a second cauldron has formed near Kupyansk. The situation on the front is dire. So now they are finishing off Zelensky with corruption allegations; we will see what comes next.”
In Bondarenko’s opinion, this is why the current US administration is sounding out the idea of new talks with the Russian president and government. Other Ukrainian analysts note otherwise: that the anti-corruption agencies attacking Zelensky were created under the patronage of the Democratic Party and are likely under the control of officials of the previous US administration.
These days, official media and government officials in Ukraine contradict each other when talking about events, plans, and the situation on the front lines. The official websites of state-owned companies publish reports and comments daily, but a couple of hours later, they delete the posts and change their assessments.
Even Ukrainian military units are receiving contradictory orders: one day, to advance; the next day, to retreat. On all fronts, the state and government apparatuses of Ukraine are behaving as broken mechanisms.
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