Kyiv’s corruption scandal threatens Zelenskyy’s EU push

The timing couldn’t be worse for Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

Just as the Ukrainian president is pushing to secure rapid EU membership for Ukraine, a deepening corruption scandal in Kyiv is undermining his case that the country is ready to join. 

On Monday, prosecutors charged Andriy Yermak — once one of Zelenskyy’s closest confidantes — with corruption and money laundering. 

In a statement, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s office described Yermak, who Zelenskyy dismissed in November,  as “a member of an organized crime group, involved in laundering [€8.9 million] on elite construction near Kyiv.”

The move follows the leak of a batch of transcripts of phone conversations that allegedly further implicate national-security aides and close associates of Zelenskyy in kickback schemes and influence-peddling scams, tied mostly to the energy and defense sectors but also to a recently nationalized bank.

“I was waiting for this,” Oleksiy Goncharenko, one of the two opposition lawmakers who obtained and published the transcripts, told POLITICO. 

“I think the anti-corruption bodies decided they had to move because of the publication of the tapes,” added Goncharenko, a member of the European Solidarity party, a pro-EU liberal-conservative political party led by former President Petro Poroshenko.

The scandal, Poroshenko told POLITICO, has important implications for Ukraine. “Unfortunately, corruption scandals of this kind during wartime create serious problems for the country,” he said. “They undermine defense capabilities, damage international reputation, and certainly do not help European integration.”

All those charged in the corruption scandal have denied guilt either publicly, during preliminary court hearings or through their lawyers. Speaking to reporters in Kyiv on Monday, Yermak said: “When the investigation is over, I will give comments. I have no mansions, I have only a flat and a car that you see.”

In a WhatsApp chat on Monday, Dmytro Lytvyn, a Zelenskyy aide, told reporters: “Investigation is still ongoing, so it is too early to make any assessments.”

Some lawmakers, including members of Zelenskyy’s ruling Servant of the People party, have argued that the probes simply show the system is working. ”Partners see that Ukraine has an independent anti-corruption system that is performing its function,” Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the parliamentary foreign-affairs committee, told Reuters.

This scandal broke in November, when Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies revealed they were investigating an alleged plot to skim off around $100 million in kickbacks from Ukraine’s energy sector and the state nuclear monopoly Energoatom. 

Andriy Yermak attends a court hearing in Kyiv on May 12, 2026. | Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images

The disclosure forced Zelenskyy to compel Yermak to resign after anti-corruption investigators raided the powerful aide’s home, who, until his fall, was seen by many as virtually a co-president. 

The fury over the revelations also triggered the hasty departure to Israel of Timur Mindich, the co-owner of Zelenskyy’s film production company, who exercised considerable influence over the government, including who should be appointed to posts. Mindich was charged along with eight others, including former ministers German Galushchenko and Oleksiy Chernyshov. Prosecutors allege Galushchenko assisted in the laundering of kickbacks and stashed millions in offshore banks. He was arrested, according to NABU, while trying to flee the country. 

The leaked conversations demonstrate how a small group in Kyiv has been turning the defense of the nation into a lucrative business, Iuliia Mendel, a former Zelenskyy adviser-turned-critic, wrote in a Substack social media post.

“They expose a parallel system of influence, cash flows, and asset protection operating alongside — and sometimes within — wartime state institutions,” she said. “A nation heroically resisting imperial aggression should not have its wartime leadership devolve into the very post-Soviet kleptocracy it claims to be escaping.”

Opposition lawmakers are now questioning more forcefully what Zelenskyy may have known — or ought to have known — about the alleged kickback schemes and lucrative influence-peddling right at the heart of his government.

On Tuesday, NABU Director Semen Kryvonos said that Zelenskyy himself has not been the subject of any probes. A sitting Ukrainian president cannot legally be investigated by law enforcement agencies.

Speaking to POLITICO, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, a lawmaker with the opposition Holos party, said it was troubling that Zelenskyy has remained tight-lipped on the alleged involvement of some of his closest aides in the corruption cases. 

“I find it hard to believe that he didn’t have information about what his close associates were doing and what was happening, but maybe due to the war, he didn’t pay close enough attention or felt he had to overlook it while waging the war,” Yurchyshyn said.

Goncharenko, the lawmaker who obtained the transcripts, noted references in the tapes to “Vova” — a short form of the name Volodymyr — and how it was important for the plotters that he remained head of state. 

“Is it conceivable he didn’t know about some of these corruption schemes?” Goncharenko said. “I don’t know the answer.” “But I can tell you that Zelenskyy is very much about micromanagement. So it is hard to imagine that he didn’t know what Mindich, Chernyshov, and now allegedly Yermak, were doing.”

Goncharenko, who chairs a parliamentary investigative commission on corruption, said he had called some of Zelenskyy’s former aides to appear before the commission. “We want to interrogate them. So that’s what we are doing on Wednesday,” Goncharenko said.

Zelenskyy’s defenders argue there’s no direct evidence tying the president to any alleged illegal acts, but critics like Mendel are skeptical. “The pattern suggests a leader who either tolerates or is insulated from a court of loyalists and oligarch-adjacent figures who treat state resources and positions as personal fiefdoms,” she said.

The scandal is flaring just as Ukraine is pushing to get fast-track accession to the EU. Zelenskyy has called for the country to be admitted next year, a target the bloc’s leaders have already dubbed unrealistic, given the benchmarks — including on corruption — Kyiv will have to meet before it can join the EU.

“It is a good question,” said Goncharenko. “From one point of view, indeed, it doesn’t help, having accusations of high-level corruption and allegations against the closest people to the president.”

“But at the same time it shows that our anti-corruption bodies are really independent and they can prosecute, which makes us very different from Russia or Belarus,” he added. “So it shows our anti-corruption system is working.” 

Ultimately, he added, the verdict will depend on how the country handles the cases, especially the ones closest to the president. 

“The question now is what will be next and how it will develop,” he said.