Time and again, successive governments in Ukraine have blazed a speedy trajectory – within five years, formerly ardent reformers and anti-graft crusaders morph into something resembling a criminal gang.
A gang with its own enforcers, cashiers, "overseers", and wads of dollar-denominated cash.
Reform the courts, or use them as a "big brother" in schoolyard scraps with opponents? Dismantle corruption schemes, or run them? Privatise state companies, or continue to feed off them? This marathon – an undeniably hard one without independent institutions – can get started in different ways, but it always ends in the same place.
But some of the formulas drawn up by Ukrainian history have long since crystallised into laws.
For example, power multiplied by friends nearly always equals corruption.
Friends don't need to spend decades working their way to office, they carry no burden of responsibility, they assume they'll stay in favour if they make mistakes, and they don't expect jail time if they steal. All they need to gain influence is to have gone to school with you, studied with you at university, served with you in the army, become your child's godparent, or be friends of the family.
Yushchenko's "dear friends", Yanukovych's "family", Poroshenko's business partners.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy's presidency did not result in a political monopoly in Ukraine. And it has the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO).
Different groups compete for influence and turf, because in this world, money matters a great deal. The perpetual infighting keeps the waters moving – even in the SAPO chief's aquarium (where listening devices were found in 2018).
And if absolute power is multiplied by friends, the only outcome is absolute corruption. Add in the permanence of power, and… welcome to 2025.
How has President Zelenskyy, in the second half of his seventh year in office, found himself in the political trap that has ensnared almost all his predecessors?
And why does the President's Office regard the fight against corruption as a fight against the President's Office?
Ukrainska Pravda has unpacked what has unfolded between the President's Office and the anti-corruption agencies in recent weeks.
By the looks of it, the president can't really avoid jailing three of his friends – in line with Lee Kuan Yew's dictum – if he is to maintain any claim of effective governance.
Then again, there's always the option of having another go at dismantling NABU and SAPO, which the President's Office and its satellites have not left in peace for a single week since their first attack in July this year.
Mindich: the elephant in the room
On Monday 10 November at 06:30, two minibuses and a jeep stopped outside the infamous monster building at 9a Hrushevskoho Street in Kyiv's government quarter. NABU officers crowded into the lobby of the building where Tymur Mindich, a friend of Zelenskyy's and co-owner of Kvartal 95 (the TV production company Zelenskyy set up before he became president), has apartments on the 14th and 17th floors. Two special forces officers later had to go back to the jeep to collect a heavy tool for breaking down doors and return to the building.
There was no need to smash the front door of Mindich's apartment – it was wide open, whether to spare the locks or perhaps as a show of scorn. Mindich had been so ready for the searches that he was nowhere to be found, either at his address in central Kyiv or indeed anywhere in the country.
The problem was with the doors to the floors.
Since Mindich owned several apartments in the building, the searches took almost 12 hours, from 06:00 until 17:00.
The apartment where Zelenskyy celebrated his birthday back in 2021 in defiance of Covid restrictions is on the 17th floor.
Ukrainska Pravda reported in July this year that it was in this three-bedroom apartment, covering 303 sq m, that listening devices were found. Mindich used the apartment as an office for meetings and decision-making, which is likely why the bugging equipment was set up there.
Mindich actually lived in another apartment on the 14th floor. This is where the famous "golden bathroom", recently revealed in a photo posted by MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak, is located.
According to Ukrainska Pravda sources in law enforcement, Mindich also used two apartments on the third floor, and investigative actions were conducted there as well. However, at the time of the searches, the businessman was reportedly already in Poland.
Mindich crossed the border into Poland at the Hrushiv crossing point at 02:09, just four and a half hours before the searches began.
Sources told Ukrainska Pravda that during searches at other suspects' premises, evidence was found indicating that those involved knew on Friday that operations were being planned for Monday. "We need to have cleaned up by Monday," one participant in the scheme wrote to another.
Friday 7 November was also the day that court rulings related to investigative actions in Operation Midas began to be uploaded to the court register. In theory, the individuals involved could have obtained access to this information through law enforcement officers loyal to them.
Coincidentally, that very same Friday Andrii Yermak, Head of the President's Office, suddenly posted a video address in which he announced that the National Police had detained a dodgy businessman who had been exacting unlawful gains in exchange for arranging jobs at the President's Office by claiming to be a relative of Yermak's.
Sources in political circles told Ukrainska Pravda that the video address appeared at almost the same time as the President's Office was notified that NABU and SAPO were planning special measures, including against Yermak.
According to Ukrainska Pravda sources in law enforcement, one of the persons of interest in the case returned from a two-week holiday in the Maldives on Saturday 8 November, at a time when scheduled power outages were already in effect.
This is the same individual who'd complained that "carrying US$1.6 million isn't exactly fun". Sources say this was the criminal organisation's chief accountant, Ihor Fursenko, aka Roshyk. But either he wasn't warned in time, or he wasn't considered worth saving.
Sources in law enforcement say NABU and SAPO have information that SAPO Deputy Head Andrii Syniuk may have leaked information to some of the participants in the scheme. At that time, however, Mindich's name was not in the electronic materials.
Following this leak, Mindich's chief financier Oleksandr Tsukerman, aka "Sugarman", fled the country.
Tsukerman flew to Israel with Mindich on 29 October to attend a friend's celebration.
Mindich returned to Ukraine on 4 November, while Tsukerman remained in Israel.
The truly shameless detail is this: after the mid-October leak, the media reported that SAPO head Oleksandr Klymenko could be served with a notice of suspicion by the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) following a testimony by MP Fedir Khrystenko, which would have resulted in his suspension.
The Prosecutor General's Office, which is seen as aligned with the President's Office, moved quickly to say that Klymenko's deputy, Andrii Syniuk, would take over his duties if he was suspended.
However, sources in law enforcement say the Prosecutor General's Office and the SSU have lately been playing a game of hot potato over Klymenko's notice of suspicion, each ducking responsibility for why it remains unserved.
One person who may have received advance warning was then justice minister and former energy minister, Herman Halushchenko. In the second half of October, he suddenly moved out of a mansion that once belonged to the fugitive minister Vitalii Zakharchenko in Tsarske Selo, an exclusive residential area in central Kyiv. The mansion is currently administered by the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA), which is responsible for finding, tracing and managing assets derived from corruption and other crimes. Yet the night before the searches took place, Halushchenko unexpectedly decided to spend the night in the house.
Svitlana Hrynchuk, then the energy minister, also came to the mansion. Strangely enough, she left minutes before law enforcement officers arrived next morning.
The law enforcement bodies controlled by the President's Office may have been monitoring NABU officers in order to obtain information about potential risks in cases involving members of Zelenskyy's inner circle.
This is evidenced by the fact that a dossier on NABU chief Semen Kryvonos and Operation Midas lead detective Oleksandr Abakumov was found in a safe house belonging to one of the suspects in the Energoatom embezzlement case.
The suspects would not have been able to access information about the movements of NABU personnel from the official databases without assistance from law enforcement agencies.
Sources within the anti-corruption agencies told Ukrainska Pravda that immediately after the searches at Mindich's house, NABU and SAPO began receiving threats that there would be a "response".
Ukrainska Pravda has information that since July this year, the President's Office has been trying to behave as though "Mindich doesn't exist". Yet not only did he continue to exist within the system, the investigative materials published suggest he may have continued to take an active part in the plundering of the state and more besides.
Dynasty
In the third part of the Operation Midas revelations published by NABU and SAPO, "Karlsson" (i.e. Tymur Mindich) discusses the freezing of a certain construction project and the involvement of "Che Guevara", the codename used for former deputy prime minister Oleksii Chernyshov.
This exchange took place around the time a Bihus.Info investigation revealed that four mansions were being built in Kozyn, a village in Kyiv Oblast, during the full-scale invasion by individuals linked to Chernyshov.
"If it comes out that he's involved, we're f**ked!" Mindich says to a person who is supervising the construction.
And Chernyshov's involvement did come out. On 23 October, in an investigation named "Dynasty" after the four-mansion site being built by Chernyshov, Ukrainska Pravda reported that NABU and SAPO were investigating the construction of the four mansions, had already conducted around 20 searches, and possessed evidence that it was Chernyshov who had commissioned the building works.
Chernyshov's wife, Svitlana Chernyshova, attempted to hide documents relating to the building project at her workplace at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, but it was searched as well.
Overall, most of the sources Ukrainska Pravda spoke to who knew Chernyshov prior to his meteoric rise up the "career elevator" during Zelenskyy's presidency stressed that he would have been unlikely to reach such dizzy heights under any other circumstances.
Influential political sources recalled that back in 2019, Chernyshov would be "pacing from wall to wall in the President's Office" and could "wait for hours in reception rooms – not even for a meeting with the president, Bohdan or Yermak, but with their deputies". [Andrii Bohdan was the head of the President's Office in 2019-2020; Andrii Yermak currently holds that position – ed.]
Later, according to Ukrainska Pravda sources, it was Mindich who recommended Chernyshov to Zelenskyy as a "good guy", and Chernyshov's wife became friendly with First Lady Olena Zelenska.
"They're close friends. Everyone knows that. The first lady is Chernyshov's daughter's godmother. Their families were always spending time together," one senior Ukrainian official adds.
The following photo was included in the case materials during a July court hearing to decide on a pre-trial restriction for Chernyshov. It was taken at one of their family gatherings and dates back to late 2022.
In July this year, Ukrainska Pravda reported that the decision to protect Chernyshov – and consequently to attack NABU and SAPO – was driven specifically by his close personal ties with the head of state.
Political sources who spoke to Ukrainska Pravda pointed to this same factor when explaining why a year earlier, after it emerged that Chernyshov might become a NABU suspect, Zelenskyy not only refrained from removing him as head of Naftogaz, Ukraine's largest national oil and gas company, but went so far as to make him deputy prime minister and put him in charge of the Ministry of National Unity, a ministry invented expressly for Chernyshov. This high-level appointment just happened to coincide with his wife's birthday.
Sources close to the President's Office told Ukrainska Pravda that in June, when Chernyshov was served with his first notice of suspicion for abuse of power and extracting illegal gains, the predominant sentiment was that "Chernyshov has thrown everyone under the bus". At that point, it appears, the President's Office did not yet grasp the full scale of the problem.
That first case was quickly followed by a second – Chernyshov was found to have arranged jobs for his personal household staff at state institutions, including Naftogaz, which he headed.
And almost immediately after that, a third case surfaced – the one about the mansions in Kozyn that had been under construction from July 2022 until the summer of 2025, when Mindich first raised the need to put the project on ice for discussion on the tapes.
It is therefore reasonable to assume that this entire grand construction project in Kozyn may have been financed out of Mindich's shadow cashbox, which was being topped up by embezzlement from the Ukrainian energy sector during the war.
That assumption is backed up by the fact that the investigative materials already published by NABU indicate that Chernyshov and his wife personally received over US$1 million in cash at the criminal organisation's covert offices.
While the content of the tapes has more or less clarified the situation around the houses linked to Chernyshov and Mindich, one question that remains unanswered is who the largest mansion and the one next door to it were being built for.
Ukrainska Pravda has information that it is now highly likely that Chernyshov will flee or be spirited out of the country. Both the former deputy prime minister and his wife risk ending up behind bars, or agreeing to a plea deal – and no one apart from the investigators and Chernyshov himself has any interest in that outcome.
Cashout or blackout?
One influential source within the law enforcement system said: "At Bankova [the President's Office], right up until the first publication of the Midas tapes, they didn't even try to fight against the impression that the people at fault where the ones who were talking about corruption, not the ones who were stealing from the energy sector while there's a war on."
"Why couldn't they just stop stealing?" another senior law enforcement official added.
Ukrainska Pravda sources say the political crisis triggered by the systemic looting of the state budget by Zelenskyy's closest friends is already being discussed within US President Donald Trump's circle and the American establishment.
Last week, Ukrainska Pravda reported that the FBI is investigating money laundering involving both Tymur Mindich and the very same "Sugarman" from the NABU tapes (Mindich's chief financier, Oleksandr Tsukerman).
As of now, according to Ukrainska Pravda sources in business circles, both individuals are in Israel and have no intention of returning to Ukraine to be served with notices of suspicion.
"They are the worst students. They never learn. This country has a history. There are things you can do and things you absolutely cannot," one formerly influential Ukrainian political heavyweight said in frustration, speaking off the record.
The president finally responded more than 24 hours after NABU and SAPO began their operation, announcing sanctions against Tymur Mindich and Oleksandr Tsukerman.
Yet it remains unclear how these sanctions can affect the suspects if all the criminal group's "earnings" were unofficial and channelled through front men.
Zelenskyy also insisted that Halushchenko and Hrynchuk had to resign.
But many questions still remain unanswered. How did Mindich's people end up in senior positions across ministries, state companies and other official institutions, staying there for years? Why was a phenomenon like "Mindich" even possible? How many more files and recordings have NABU and SAPO not yet released? What was the extent of the corrupt influence that the president's friends exerted on the state? And who was Mindich, in truth – the mastermind, or merely the bankroller?
The files released by the anti-corruption agencies show that the president telephoned then energy minister Herman Halushchenko after receiving a personal message from Tymur Mindich. And that suggests this could be only the first season of this Ukrainian anti-corruption-themed situation comedy so revealingly titled Midas.
I seem to recall that the last Ukrainian-made sitcom about anti-corruption that was this eagerly awaited by the public was called Servant of the People. But at some point, it appears, the actors, screenwriters and producers strayed so far from the script that they risked turning into the very people they had once fought against.
Author: Mykhailo Tkach, Ukrainska Pravda
Translation: Ganna Bryedova and Anna Kybukevych
Editing: Teresa Pearce