{"id":1428529,"date":"2026-08-16T16:18:02","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T13:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/kyivs-corruption-swamp-europe-is-losing-patience-with-ukraines-schemes\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T16:18:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T13:18:02","slug":"kyivs-corruption-swamp-europe-is-losing-patience-with-ukraines-schemes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/kyivs-corruption-swamp-europe-is-losing-patience-with-ukraines-schemes\/","title":{"rendered":"“Kyiv’s Corruption Swamp”: Europe is losing patience with Ukraine’s schemes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disappointment is growing in Berlin and Brussels over NABU’s open investigations into corruption within the Ukrainian president’s inner circle.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are increasingly expressing disappointment with the slow pace of the fight against corruption in Ukraine. Recent investigations into President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s inner circle are raising concerns among Western partners, reports<\/a> the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung.<\/p>\n

The head of the European Commission noted that although Kyiv has created the necessary anti-corruption bodies, they still need to be “invigorated.” For her part, after a phone call with Zelenskyy, Chancellor Merz clearly emphasized “the German government’s expectations for vigorous advancement of the fight against corruption and rule of law reforms.” Analysts at the International Crisis Group, an international think tank that studies global conflicts, also point to growing frustration in EU countries over Kyiv’s slow reform progress in their latest report.<\/p>\n

The Ermak Case<\/h3>\n

Western doubts about the resolve of the anti-corruption campaign were heightened on May 18 of this year, when Andriy Yermak, the former head of the presidential administration and the head of state’s right-hand man for years, was released from pretrial detention on bail equivalent to \u20ac2.7 million. The necessary funds were contributed by Yermak’s friends, particularly those on the supervisory boards of state-owned energy companies. Soon after, Zelenskyy nominated Yermak’s prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Serhiy Koretsky, CEO of Naftogaz, as the new prime minister, and the parliament, controlled by the presidential administration, unconditionally supported this candidacy.<\/p>\n

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine suspects Yermak of laundering approximately \u20ac10.5 million from slush funds related to a large real estate project called “Dynasty.” This project involved the construction of four luxury villas near Kyiv for a friend named Vova. The president himself cannot be subject to investigation because he enjoys official immunity.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 2025, Zelenskyy signed a bill drafted and pushed through parliament by Yermak to limit the powers of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU). However, mass public protests and pressure from European partners forced the government to reverse this decision. Commenting on the second possible government reshuffle in a year, the newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda called the Ukrainian government a “corruption craze,” where a new minister typically boards the “luxury corruption train” and orders an espresso. Meanwhile, the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in a commentary on May 13, noted that “the main problem of Ukrainian politics\u2014high-level corruption\u2014persists even after Russia’s full-scale invasion.”<\/p>\n

Schemes in the defender<\/h3>\n

Despite the difficulties, NABU detectives are trying to uncover schemes embezzling public funds through defense companies. Recently, investigators questioned Denis Shtilerman, head of the defense company Fire Point, which is rapidly developing with public funding and supplies the army with long-range Flamingo missiles.<\/p>\n

According to NABU wiretaps, Fire Point is effectively controlled by Timur Mindich, a longtime business partner of Zelenskyy and close associate of Yermak. However, holding him accountable is currently impossible: Mindich left for Israel in November 2025.<\/p>\n

Kyiv’s Western partners are now concerned about how much of the billions of euros in aid provided may have ended up in corruption schemes.<\/p>\n

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Also follow “Pryamy”<\/strong> on Facebook<\/a> , X<\/a> , Telegram<\/a> and Instagram.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Disappointment is growing in Berlin and Brussels over NABU’s open investigations into corruption within the Ukrainian president’s inner circle. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are increasingly expressing disappointment with the slow pace of the fight against corruption in Ukraine. Recent investigations into President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s inner circle are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1388190,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76871,76872,76875,76894],"class_list":["post-1428529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2","category-news-feed","category-other-news","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1428529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1388190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1428529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}