by Stefano Caprio

Scandals in Kyiv are increasingly intertwined with frequent discussions about Zelensky's departure from power. Justice, transparency, “purity”, and the punishment of the guilty appear to be the priorities under the mounting rubble of war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently confirmed the decision of the National Security and Defence Council to impose sanctions against Timur Mindich, co-owner of the Kvartal-95 studio and a close Zelensky associate, and businessman Alexander Tsukerman, the other owner.

Both Mindich and Tsukerman hold Israeli citizenship, and are currently in Israel with no intention of returning to Ukraine. Mindich managed to leave just hours before the scandal broke.

The Midas operation – so-called in reference to King Midas who turned everything into gold – has caused an outcry around the world, precisely at a most critical moment of Russia's war, against which Ukraine is struggling to resist and for which it increasingly needs the support of its Western allies, who are certainly not inclined to renew it in the face of such wide-ranging scandals.

The outcome of months of investigation by anti-corruption agencies is the culmination of long-running disputes over the division of power with the president, who was elected in 2019 precisely to combat corruption, a scourge inherited from the Soviet system and exacerbated by the contradictory transition to a market economy over the past 30 years.

The public's reaction to these events, which also involves calls for the resignation of several ministers (so far, only Justice Minister German Galushchenko and Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk have done so), runs from anger to resignation, especially among the older generations, who link the scandal to the onset of winter, when everything seems to be collapsing and the country is left in the dark and cold due to Russian attacks. “We'll see if we're still alive in spring,” many wonder.

Corruption, moreover, grows in the wake of military operations, in Russia too, where nearly all top officials in the Ministry of Defence and the Army have been replaced for this reason.

At present, the scandal is accompanied by increasingly frequent discussions about regime change in Kyiv, following possible elections after a ceasefire, or even the resignation of the government or the president himself, prompted by Ukraine’s unicameral parliament (Verkhovna Rada) or street protests.

Various conspiracy theories are floating around, with three main focuses: action by the FBI, which would allow Donald Trump to cut off military aid to Kyiv and reach a final deal with Vladimir Putin; Russian interference to get rid of Zelensky, one of the main objectives of the invasion of Ukraine; and finally, a plan by the Ukrainian president himself, who, by sacrificing some of his most loyal aides, could renew his image as the country's "liberator" from external and internal enemies.

Beyond any hidden agenda, all more or less unlikely, the investigation into King Midas is impressive for the vast scope of the criminal networks in the energy and defence sectors, with over 70 searches resulting in the seizure of mountains of cash in dollars and euros, certainly not Ukrainian hryvnias, along with audio recordings of various officials evaluating the percentages to be handed out, using pseudonyms that are relatively easy to decipher.

Called Carlson, Mindich-Midas managed to cross the border "with all his papers in order”, although it is unclear exactly by which border crossing or airport.

The main bribes were collected by Energoatom's partners, amounting to 10-15 per cent per deal; in fact, Ukraine's leading energy company was managed not by its official directors, but by those behind the scenes.

For this reason, former Energy Ministry advisor Igor Mironyuk and other apparently second-level figures stand accused, some of them linked to former Ukrainian lawmaker Andrei Derkach, now in Moscow serving as a member of the Federation Council, the Russian upper house, further fuelling speculation that the Kremlin is behind the scandal.

This clearly shows how Ukraine, like Russia and almost all other post-Soviet countries, has remained tied to the ways of the Brezhnev era, when, behind the backs of secretaries and directors, it was always the second stringers who decided how to split the money generated by production, whose numbers were then artfully inflated for the final draft of biannual, annual, and five-year planning reports.

Despite his move to Moscow, Derkach maintained an office in central Kyiv on behalf of his family, and it was from here that Ukraine's many corruption schemes were orchestrated, so much so that it was dubbed "the headquarters of the black accountancy," where money was laundered through all sorts of companies at home and abroad.

The former Ukrainian lawmaker stopped attending parliament immediately after the 2022 Russian invasion and came under investigation in 2023, when his parliamentary immunity was lifted.

Late last year, he was picked to represent Astrakhan, a region on the Russian side of the Caspian Sea, while his name appeared in various anti-Ukrainian war propaganda reports in the media.

This typical representative of the darkest "Russian world" is the son of a KGB officer, Leonid Derkach, who in the late 1990s headed Ukraine's security service, eventually becoming a member of the Ukrainian parliament, dying of a heart attack two weeks before the start of the Russian invasion in 2022.

Derkach Sr is also linked to some recorded conversations between President Petro Poroshenko, Zelensky's predecessor and possible presidential rival, and US President Joe Biden and other high-ranking foreign politicians. These conversations were used to discredit Ukraine on the international stage and prevent its accession to the EU and NATO, precisely the motivations that led to the 2014 Maidan protests and the breakdown of relations with Moscow.

These investigations thus reflect Ukraine's recent history and Russia's pre-war interference since. They also feature another protagonist, Andrei Derkach's daughter, a young Ukrainian television presenter known as Tetiana Terekhova, who also suddenly disappeared after 24 February 2022. She likely moved abroad with her children without condemning Russia's actions, but also without her husband, Ivan Lytvyn, the son of a Ukrainian politician, forced to stay behind due to the mobilisation for the defensive war.

Subsequent reports mention a luxury resort in the Zhitomir region, allegedly owned by Lytvyn and where the Ukrainian elite is sheltering, despite a ban on building on agricultural land, further fuelling this never-ending soap about Ukrainian corruption.

The saga becomes even more heartbreaking for Zelensky with the request that he also remove the head of the Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, his closest and most trusted aide, and replace him with Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the US who vainly attempted to defend the Ukrainian president from Donald Trump's verbal abuse in February.

Suspicion of Yermak's involvement in the scandal is backed by rather weak evidence, but his personality has long been a target of criticism from people who accuse him of exerting excessive power and influence, so much so that without him, Zelensky would be unable to survive.

Yermak is credited with the desperate move to shut down anti-corruption agencies in recent months, to avoid the current catastrophe, and it remains to be seen to what extent he too is expendable.

Zelensky himself reiterated that “any action that yields results in the fight against corruption is absolutely necessary," citing his own election campaign six years ago, as an actor and witness to the Ukrainian people's desire to build a different future, free from the constraints of the past.

Justice, transparency, "purity”; and punishment of the guilty are the priorities accumulating under the rubble of war, but they depend on Ukrainians rediscovering themselves and their true identity, even before rebuilding what will be left behind by the games of the powerful.

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• ukraine
• russia
• corruption
• investigations
• zelensky
• putin
• biden
• trump