Ukraine's anti-corruption investigations are becoming instruments of political competition as they approach the presidential administration, Carnegie Politika argued in a commentary published on August 31, by political scientist Balazs Jarabik.

The Verkhovna Rada's confirmation of the last two ministers in a long-delayed reshuffle, including Yevhenii Khmara as defence minister with an emphatic 312 votes, showed that the presidential administration can still assemble a broad majority when it needs one. It also stopped the revolt by Mykhailo Fedorov, the former defence minister, whose late-night video calling for elections had aimed to derail the appointment. Opposition factions voted with the majority.

The following day the anti-corruption agencies charged Iryna Mudra, deputy head of the presidential administration, with money laundering. With an investigation into Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine's former ambassador to the United States, Jarabik reads that as exposing the fragility of the model: "Although the president himself remains unchallenged, investigations surrounding his office are becoming instruments of pressure, mutual deterrence, and political competition. The system can still sacrifice individuals, redirect allegations, and fight back, but it is gradually losing its ability to control the wider process."

Fedorov challenge fades, but he still matters

Fedorov is the first senior figure from Zelenskiy's original 2019 team to publicly challenge Zelenskiy’s rule during the full-scale war. But his bid to force early elections appears to be falling on stoney ground. He miscalculated badly: high approval ratings, a reputation as a modernizer, relationships with anti-corruption activists, Western connections and support in the defence-technology sector did not convert into parliamentary influence, Khmara's standing as a wartime hero made opposing him difficult, and opposition parties had no interest in building up a new rival.

His August 18 video, accusing the authorities of systemic corruption and dysfunctional governance and calling for a public discussion of wartime elections, went out late at night immediately before the vote, without a coalition, an organisational structure or a credible proposal for how elections could be held during hostilities, which polling shows most Ukrainians oppose while the war continues.

Jarabik nonetheless warns against writing him off: "He is not merely a dismissed minister, but a national figure openly questioning the competence, legitimacy, and strategic direction of the war." Fedorov departed from official rhetoric by saying Ukraine was "gradually, slowly losing" and that it lacks an overall theory of victory, which the commentary expects to find an audience in a society determined to resist but sceptical of how the war is being managed.

His strategy appears to rest on Ukraine's military and economic position deteriorating over the next six to twelve months, after which voters may credit him with having warned them. Against that, he served at the top of the same system for seven years and denounced total corruption only after losing his job and failing to get it back, which lets the administration cast the revolt as resentment. In the polls the former commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhny remains the obvious alternative to Zelenskiy, while Kyrylo Budanov, the former military intelligence chief now heading the presidential administration, and several prominent commanders have constituencies of their own.

The convergence

Zelenskiy dismissed Mudra quickly, which Jarabik identifies as the established tactic: individuals are sacrificed to stop investigations reaching the centre. But the timing of the case, hours before Khmara's confirmation, fed suspicion that parts of the anti-corruption apparatus had entered the political fight, and some activists who had opposed wartime elections began supporting a debate on them after Fedorov's dismissal.

On the agencies themselves the commentary is careful and unsparing at once. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office "remain essential constraints on the consolidation of presidential power and the corruption accompanying it", but they work inside Ukrainian politics rather than outside it, and "their growing reliance on strategic communication, selective disclosure, and the political timing of cases allows them to influence political outcomes. This makes them inherently political actors, even when the underlying investigations are legitimate."

The consequence Jarabik draws is the uncomfortable one: "The result is disruption, but not necessarily accountability or systemic reform." Investigations and disclosures become instruments of pressure and mutual deterrence within the elite, fragmenting state institutions without reforming them, a dynamic reinforced by the standing rivalry between the specialised anti-corruption agencies and the security services under presidential oversight.

The questions the commentary says Fedorov has reopened, however clumsily, are whether Zelenskiy still has a sufficient mandate for an indefinite war, whether the government can be renewed without elections, and whether national unity can withstand corruption. They do not go away because the man who raised them lost the vote.