A fresh major corruption scandal has erupted in Kyiv, putting more pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, just as he arrives in Mar-a-Lago for crucial peace deal negotiations with US President Donald Trump on December 28.

“NABU and SAPO, following an undercover operation, exposed an organised criminal group that included current members of parliament,” the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) said, referring to the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).

“Employees of the State Security Department are resisting NABU officers during investigative actions in committees of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine,” it added, referring to Ukraine’s Parliament.

Officers from NABU mounted a fresh raid on the elite government quarter in Kyiv on December 27 and reportedly questioned four deputies from Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party, who are accused of selling their votes to support important legislation. A fifth deputy is included in the investigation, but reportedly fled the country only hours before the NABU raid.

According to liberal MP Oleksiy Goncharenko, affiliated with the European Solidarity party,  NABU and its sister organ SAPO, are expected in the coming days to serve indictments to several sitting MPs accused of receiving off-the-books cash payments from a black fund in exchange for votes.

Panic is reportedly spreading within the ruling party, over uncertainty over how many lawmakers are included in the NABU investigation and who may already be cooperating with investigators, according to local reports.

NABU has confirmed that an undercover operation exposed an “organized criminal group” involving current members of parliament who systematically took bribes in return for votes in the Verkhovna Rada for years. 

NABU raid

After searches the anti-corruption agency NABU issued criminal charges against four members of the Ukrainian parliament from the ruling Servant of the People party.

Zelenskiy's close friends Yuriy Kisel and Yuriy Koryavchenkov (Yuzik) were amongst the targets. Zelenskiy himself is yet to be named in any of the expanding corruption investigations, but many of his friends and co-workers have been implicated. A recent poll found that just over  quarter of Ukrainians believe he must have at least been aware of the various corruption schemes.

Ukrainian media outlet Zn.ua reported that Kisel, head of the parliamentary Transport Committee and an MP from Zelenskiy’s party, was the central figure in the investigation. According to the report, NABU had placed covert listening devices in Kisel’s office over at least two years. Kisel is also an associate of the former head of the presidential administration and Zelenskiy’s right hand man, Andriy Yermak and both formerly worked for the Kvartal 95 media production company.

In 2019 Koryavchenkov was elected to parliament in Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party. Koryavchenkov is a Zelenskiy close friend and associate since their time working together at the media production company Kvartal 95 studio. However, before NABU launched its raid on his home and offices inside the government quarter, he had already fled the country.

NABU has not officially confirmed any of the names under investigation. Still, reports from Ukrainska Pravda and Zn.ua claimed that, alongside Kisel and Koryavchenkov, MPs Yevhen Pyvovarov, Ihor Nehulevskyi, and Olga Savchenko had been named as suspects in the case. None of the three has issued a public statement or responded to media enquiries.

Ukrainska Pravda added that the lawmakers were allegedly given envelopes of cash inside the parliamentary building as part of a coordinated bribery operation aimed at influencing legislative votes.

The escape of one of the accused mirrors the departure of Timur Mindich just hours before his offices were raided at the start of this month. Mindich, a personal friend and former Zelenskiy business partner, is at the heart of the expanding Energoatom $100mn kickback corruption scandal. Bundles of hundreds of thousands of dollars and euros were found in his apartment as well as a solid gold toilet.

SAPO has launched an investigation into allegations that its deputy head, Andriy Synyuk, leaked information allowing Mindich to escape, according to Ukraine's chief anti-corruption prosecutor Oleksandr Klymenko. An internal probe is under way and a criminal case into the allegations is possible.

Mindich was recently tracked down and interviewed by Ukrainian journalists on an Israeli beach where he denied all wrongdoing. Two ministers have already resigned as a result of the scandal and the all-powerful head of Zelenskiy’s presidential office, Yermak, has also quit.

Longtime Kvartal-95 partner Serhiy Shefir and another friend of Zelenskiy, reportedly took over the kickback scheme after Mindich fled the country. According to local reports, NABU has been wiretapping Kisel, recording his conversations with Shefir.

Media reports say the new NABU investigation is focused specifically on MPs closely tied to Zelenskiy and Shefir, most of whom appear to be connected to the Kvartal 95 production company.

Initially the NABU raids were resisted by the Ukrainian State Guard Service, which is under presidential control, who restricted access to the Verkhovna Rada, the transport committee which is at the centre of the investigation.

Fresh corruption scandal adds to Zelenskiy’s pressure

Zelenskiy has come under increasing fire this year after he tried to gut Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms on July 22 by forcing through Law 21414 on July 22 that would put the two main organs under his direct control just as their investigations began to target Bankova’s inner circle. That sparked the first anti-government demonstrations since the war began and forced a rapid climb down.

At the same time, Zelenskiy has been accused of increasing authoritarian traits as he gathers more of the strings of power into his own hands as the war wears on and his popularity falls slowly. 

The latest Rada vote-selling scandal will only undermine his popularity further and could destroy the majority that Servant of the People currently enjoy in the Rada, leading to a coalition government, which would likely be the end of Zelenskiy's rule.

As bne IntelliNews reported, his popularity has already fallen to the point where if presidential elections were held today, he would lose to the two main potential challengers, former commander-in-chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi and Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s spy master and chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.

Fresh presidential elections was one of the points on the 27-point peace plan (27PPP) worked out in a Moscow meeting on December 3 between the US envoys and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since then Zelenskiy has said he is willing to hold elections and last week Rada lawmakers submitted a bill to allow for elections while the country is under martial law - something that is technically barred by Ukraine’s constitution.

US interference

Speculation was swirling in Kyiv, as the local press asked if the US played a role in the fresh accusations that were released just as Zelenskiy arrived in Florida for a crucial peace deal negotiation with US President Donald Trump.

Strana claimed in an editorial that NABU, which operates entirely independently from the government, is funded by the US and was encouraged to announce its latest arrests to weaken Zelenskiy's hand in his negotiations with Trump.

NABU has received funding and support from the US, primarily through USAID, since its establishment in 2015. USAID has been NABU’s primary international partner, providing financial assistance, technical expertise, training, and equipment. In addition, Western countries including the European Union, Canada, and UK have also supported NABU as part of broader anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine.

Lights on in Kyiv

As Zelenskiy travelled to Mar-a-Lago, the lights were back on in Kyiv after an intense bombardment ahead of the meeting on December 28 plunged half a million households into darkness.

The blackout in Kyiv is another point of pressure being brought on Zelenskiy ahead of the key talks with Trump, designed to encourage him to capitulate.

As bne IntelliNews reported, the fierce barrage before the talks was an implicit warning by the Kremlin that if the talks to reach a peace deal fail, Russia could turn up the pressure on Bankova and knock out the crucial ultra-high voltage 750kV substations which if destroyed can black out entire cities just as temperatures fall below zero.

Power has been restored to 748,000 families in Kyiv, authorities reported on the day of the meeting, following a devastating Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital at the weekend.

​This applies to the right bank of the Dnieper River. However, the situation in districts on the left bank remains more complicated. Emergency power outages continue to be implemented there due to overloaded and damaged networks. The night was particularly difficult in Kyiv, as snowstorms continued to sweep across northern Ukraine as deep winter sets in.

The war transitioned this summer from a clash of drones to a missile war where Russia is targeting essential infrastructure to render the economy dysfunctional and incrementally engineer a transport and energy collapse.

Almost all of Ukraine’s non-nuclear power stations have already been disabled and Russia carried out over 1,100 attacks on Ukraine’s rail infrastructure this year, equal to the combined total in 2024 and 2023 - hitting trains, control towers, depots, the bridges the trains pass under and the substations powering the network.