{"id":1498,"date":"2026-08-24T17:51:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T17:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/08\/24\/volodymyr-zelenskys-other-war-ukraines-endless-struggle-with-corruption\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T17:51:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T17:51:36","slug":"volodymyr-zelenskys-other-war-ukraines-endless-struggle-with-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/08\/24\/volodymyr-zelenskys-other-war-ukraines-endless-struggle-with-corruption\/","title":{"rendered":"Volodymyr Zelensky\u2019s other war: Ukraine\u2019s endless struggle with corruption"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukraine celebrated this year\u2019s independence day on August 24 in the presence<\/a> of key allies and amid the unfolding<\/a> of another major corruption scandal. <\/p>\n

It all started when Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine\u2019s defence minister until his dismissal as part of a government reshuffle last month, posted a nine-minute video<\/a> on August 19 that was widely seen as a direct challenge to the country\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelensky<\/a>. One part of the challenge was what amounted to a call for an election<\/a>, despite the fact that the ballot would have to be held in wartime. This is something that both Zelensky and a majority of Ukrainians have repeatedly rejected<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The other part of Fedorov\u2019s challenge was his diagnosis of a \u201csystemic crisis of governance\u201d. He is not wrong. Corruption in Ukraine is no longer simply about this<\/em> scandal or that<\/em> minister. It is a pattern of elite behaviour that has outlasted every Ukrainian government since independence. It survived revolutions in 2004 and 2014 fought explicitly in the name of ending it. And it\u2019s now undermining a war for national survival.<\/p>\n

The depth of this problem has become more obvious over the past year. In November 2025, a bribery scheme<\/a> worth an estimated US$100 million (\u00a373 million) in the energy sector reached into Zelensky\u2019s inner circle, forcing out his justice and energy ministers. Both have denied any wrongdoing<\/a>. As part of the fall-out from that scandal, Zelensky\u2019s long-time chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, resigned<\/a> the same month. Yermak\u2019s legal counsel has denied<\/a> any involvement in illegal activities.<\/p>\n

In July 2026, Fedorov\u2019s own removal<\/a> from his post as defence minister came after a rift with the armed forces\u2019 commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi. The rift was partly about strategy and partly about procurement reforms<\/a> \u2013 allegedly threatening entrenched interests \u2013 that Fedorov had been keen to push through. Like a year earlier, large-scale public protests ensued. <\/p>\n

On August 5, Olha Stefanishyna, the former deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, former justice minister and former Ukrainian ambassador to the US, was formally charged<\/a> with illicit enrichment and filing false asset declarations. She denies the allegations. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile a separate investigation<\/a> into her time overseeing Ukraine\u2019s asset recovery and management agency \u2014 where contracts allegedly went to companies linked to her ex-husband \u2014 remains open but hasn\u2019t yet led to formal charges. <\/p>\n

And as if Fedorov\u2019s point about systemic corruption needed any further proof, Iryna Mudra, the deputy head of Zelensky\u2019s presidential office, who oversaw judicial reform and the special tribunal on Russian aggression, was dismissed by the president on August 19. His decision came after Ukraine\u2019s anti-corruption agencies launched a new investigation<\/a> into allegations of money-laundering.<\/p>\n

These are not just five unrelated crises. They are symptomatic of exactly the accusation that Fedorov made: that corruption has led to a systemic crisis of governance. <\/p>\n

What Fedorov didn\u2019t specifically mention was that none of this is new, or peculiar to Ukraine in wartime. The new country emerged from the Soviet collapse with an economy substantially captured by a small circle of oligarchs who controlled industry, media and \u2013 at various points \u2013 the presidency itself.<\/p>\n

The Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Euromaidan revolution a decade later were explicitly in response to widespread anger at public perceptions of official corruption<\/a>. Zelensky himself was elected in 2019 on a platform<\/a> built largely on fighting corruption.<\/p>\n

What the war has changed is not the underlying motivation of corruption \u2013 human greed, pure and simple \u2013 but where the opportunities are to realise it. The privatisation auctions of the 1990s<\/a> and the gas-trading schemes of the 2000s<\/a> created a class of oligarchs that have come to dominate Ukrainian politics for the past three decades. The procurement contracts and reconstruction funds<\/a> of the 2020s are simply the new assets up for grabs that the same oligarchic networks are fighting over now.<\/p>\n

Arguably, though, the damage they do is compounded by the war. A 2023 sham contract<\/a> for undelivered mortar munitions worth some US$40 million left a critical gap in an already stretched defence budget, straining frontline capabilities. A US$100 million scheme in 2025 which syphoned off<\/a> funds intended to protect Ukraine\u2019s energy grid damaged both the economy and made ordinary Ukrainians\u2019 lives more miserable during the winter.<\/p>\n

The crisis now reaches deep into the Ukrainian parliament. On the day that Mudra was charged, the Ukraine\u2019s parliamentary law enforcement committee blocked five bills<\/a> intended to strengthen the country\u2019s fight against corruption. These bills are a non-negotiable EU requirement for releasing over \u20ac2 billion (\u00a31.71 billion) of aid to Ukraine before the end of the year and a key item on Kyiv\u2019s to-do list for the accession negotiations.<\/p>\n

Corrupt system \u2018protects itself\u2019<\/h2>\n

Fedorov\u2019s video is both the statement of a deeply felt personal grievance and a diagnosis of a system that may be beyond the point of repair. Fedorov alleged<\/a> that his own reforms of defence ministry procurement, worth billions of dollars a year, were what cost him his post. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe old system,\u201d he said<\/a>, without naming Zelensky directly, \u201clives by its own rules too often. It protects itself. It is scared of change.\u201d The asymmetry he is describing is stark: reformers get sacked while insiders with the kind of connections implicated in the November 2025 scandal seem able to avoid prosecution<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Zelensky was elected in 2019, ending corrosive corruption looked mostly like a matter of political will But if Zelensky ever had this will, many of those around him clearly did not. More than four-and-a-half years of full-scale war later and corruption is now embedded in sectors \u2013 arms procurement, air-defence contracts, energy-grid protection \u2013 where failure costs soldiers\u2019 lives and adds yet more misery to the plight of ordinary Ukrainians.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s survival as an independent state has always depended on not losing the war against Russia. But it depends just as much on winning the older, quieter war against a system that, in Federov\u2019s words, is still \u201cscared of change\u201d. Fedorov\u2019s solution of holding an election is unlikely to be a solution on its own \u2013 and western pressure has clear limitations.<\/p>\n

But without a solution, the problem will continue to fester and lead to more alienation between state and society in Ukraine. Finding and implementing a workable solution will be impossible without a change of culture among Ukraine\u2019s elite. This will determine how good a wartime leader Zelensky ultimately proves to be and how sincere his partners are in supporting not just him but the survival of a democratic Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the Nato Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He also regularly provides advice to governments and international organisations. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Tetyana Malyarenko receives funding from the Research Council of Norway (project WARPUT, 361835, implemented by Norwegian Institute of International Affairs).<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ukraine celebrated this year\u2019s independence day on August 24 in the presence of key allies and amid the unfolding of another major corruption scandal. It all started when Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine\u2019s defence minister until his dismissal as part of a government reshuffle last month, posted a nine-minute video on August 19 that was widely seen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}