Ukraine faces fresh corruption scandals involving the energy and defense sectors, including a notice of suspicion issued to former Presidential Administration head Andriy Yermak. But context matters: the cases are being pursued by independent anti-corruption bodies established after the Revolution o
Kyiv Post
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Ukraine has a reputation for corruption. This is not unwarranted. There are many ways to frame this issue; one of the weakest is “there’s corruption everywhere,” and while that is true, we can say, for example, that there is corruption in the United States, but that lacks appropriate context. So, it would be more correct to say that there is corruption in the United States and that it is far worse today under US President Donald Trump than it was in the previous administration.
The same is true of Ukraine; there is corruption, but it is nothing like it was in previous times.
There are presently a few corruption scandals in Ukraine. One is linked to the energy sector, and another is linked to the defense sector. Both stink to the high heavens. A former Head of the Presidential Administration, Andriy Yermak, has just been handed a “notice of suspicion” related to the latter, with the preliminary accusation being that he may have been involved with laundering funds that appear to have derived from shenanigans in defense sector funding through a luxury real estate development.
The amount in question in the energy sector case is believed to equate to $100 million. The amount involved in the “notice of suspicion” issued to Yermak is around $10 million. (Note, this notice of suspicion is legal jargon for a stage of investigation; it means that the appropriate bodies have investigated the underlying suspicions, and there appears to be a case strong enough for a person to be told they’re now the specific target of further investigation, most likely leading to charges being brought formally.)
Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies said Zelensky is not involved in the “Midas” money laundering investigation involving a luxury real estate near Kyiv. NABU and SAPO also said parts of the probe remain classified, with investigations ongoing into defense, energy and financial corruption schemes.
Now, the negative perspectives.
This is all bad. Any corruption, especially in a country defending itself from an invasion, is bad. The case regarding the energy sector is particularly bad because the alleged graft may have left power stations without adequate defenses and this past winter has seen millions of Ukrainians struggle through the attacks (which were not just war crimes but crimes against humanity) on crucial civilian power infrastructure, leading to months of prolonged periods without heat or light as temperatures dropped to -20 Celsius.
In the case of excess profits being extracted from the defense sector, and those monies being washed through luxury real estate developments for connected insiders, why are there excess profits being made from defending Ukrainians at all? If your company makes a justifiable profit of 10 cents on the dollar, good luck to you. If your company has taken 50 cents on the dollar, that’s 40 cents out of each dollar that could and should have been spent on the defense of the nation and saving the lives of people in it. To extract obscene profit margins in this sector in wartime is tantamount to treason. Your greed harmed the country.
And the positive perspectives.
These cases are being brought to the public’s attention due to the work of the anti-corruption bodies that have been established in Ukraine following the Revolution of Dignity. They are not only a sign that corruption remains an issue that needs to constantly be fought, but they are also a sign that a.) corruption in Ukraine is being constantly fought, and that b.) Ukraine has competent law enforcement authorities that are taking this fight very seriously. This was not always, and maybe recently might not have been, the case.
The two main offices that are at the center of these investigations are the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutors’ Office (SAPO). At the end of 2025, the independence of those two offices was under threat; some say that they came under threat directly from the Office of the President, and the general feeling at the time was that this was because those bodies were getting very close to leading figures in the presidential administration.
This now appears to be true; again, Mr. Yermak was the Head of the Presidential Administration, and that is one of the most powerful jobs in Ukraine. What is most interesting about that turn of events though, was how the people of Ukraine (once again) dealt with it.
When the independence of SAPO and NABU came under threat, civilians took to the streets in protest. The protests were relatively short-lived, simply because the goals of the protest were quickly acceded to. In wartime Ukraine, there is a curfew as part of the Martial Law that we all live under since the full-scale invasion began in early 2022. The hours of the curfew have varied and are currently from midnight until 5 a.m. But protests in Ukraine have always had (I participated in both the Orange Revolution and the Revolution of Dignity) a round-the-clock nature to them. While, by law, people should have been required to go home, and protesters could have been justifiably arrested for breaking the curfew, the police on hand at those protests stood back and let them run their course.
Arresting people who were (semi) legitimately standing for a cause they believed in was not going to happen. The people I know who participated in that protest were of the younger generation, one told me, “You had your time on the square, now it’s our turn.” And didn’t they do well? They demanded, and won, the continued independence of anti-corruption agencies. The resignation of Mr. Yermak from his post as President Zelensky’s right-hand man followed soon thereafter. His notice of suspicion is the result so far.
We cannot judge, nor must we speculate further about, whether Mr. Yermak will be found guilty of anything, but we can certainly judge to be a fact that the offices set up to address graft in Ukraine will continue to pursue their cases without fear or favor. Nobody is above the law. If the facts and a panel of judges in any of the two cases mentioned herein lead to convictions for breaking laws, that’s what is going to happen, and people will go to jail. This will be proof not that Ukraine is irrevocably corrupt, because it is not; it will be proof that Ukraine takes the fight against corruption seriously.
For another perspective, let’s consider the size of the sums of money that are involved: $100 million and $10 million. And, again, let’s have another little look at history.
The regime of Victor Yanukovych was thoroughly corrupt. That was not a bug; it was a feature. It was not occasional opportunism; it was the norm. The catalyst for the Revolution of Dignity was initially his withdrawal from the planned Association Agreement with the European Union, but it was widespread anger over his corruption that really drove the protests that started as Euromaidan and were later named the Revolution of Dignity. We knew of the contracts being handed to buddies at inflated prices, contracts that were then fulfilled with varying degrees of performance and usually the performance was sub-par.
It was estimated at one point that Yanukovych and cronies were enriching themselves, at the expense of the state, to the tune of about $10 billion per year. That figure is a far cry from the $10 million that is the headline number in the (not to excuse it for a second) Yermak accusation.
So, yes, corruption exists. But the Revolution of Dignity claimed the lives of 100 people, and civil society has never let those sacrifices be forgotten or be in vain. We stood out in the streets for 93 days across a very cold winter and fought hard to remove that mafia clan and put an end to their endemic corruption. That endemic corruption has never returned to Ukraine, and will never return to Ukraine. There are opportunists, but the ways of the old system have been rooted out, and practices that allowed for that vast and wide-scale corruption have been ended. That is Ukraine’s story; those are the perspectives and nuances of corruption in Ukraine today.
In 2013 and 2014, we demanded, and got, change. Together with partners, systems were built to combat corruption. In late 2025, another generation of Ukrainians showed they too have the mettle to stand up for a fairer society, and they got their demands met. SAPO and NABU remain independent, and they will take their investigations wherever the facts lead them.
If the recent scandals show us anything, it is certainly not that Ukraine cannot be trusted with foreign aid lest it all be stolen, but that Ukraine stands bravely against corruption time and time again. The proper perspective, in fact, is that Ukraine is a corruption-fighting champion, and we have once again proven that to be the case.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
