The $100 million energy sector extortion racket reportedly run by Vladimir Zelensky’s former business partner is taking down key figures in his government and exposing his closest inner circle to extreme public anger.
The graft scandal kicked off last week, after the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) announced a probe into a “high-level criminal organization” allegedly led by Zelensky’s former business associate, Timur Mindich, who immediately fled the country. The affair has hit the country’s energy sector, prompting Justice Minister German Galushchenko and Energy Minister Svetlana Grinchuk to resign.
Other high-profile individuals implicated in the scandal include Zelensky’s chief-of-staff Andrey Yermak, former defense minister and current head of the National Security Council, Rustem Umerov, as well as former Deputy PM Aleksey Chernyshov.
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19 November 2025
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has reiterated Moscow’s readiness to negotiate, responding to a question about the call made by Erdogan to resume the Istanbul-format direct talk between Russia and Ukraine.
“Moscow is open to negotiations. The pause that has arisen is, in fact, due to the Kiev regime’s reluctance to continue this dialogue,” Peskov told reporters.
US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff was expected to meet Zelensky in Ankara to further discuss the US peace plan after he had briefed Umerov on it, Axios has reported, citing sources. The meeting was ultimately called off since it “became clear” that Zelensky was “not interested in discussing the Trump plan” and had brought another draft “which Russia will never accept,” an unnamed US official told the outlet.
Following the meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Zelensky signaled readiness to resume peace negotiations with Russia, stating Ankara was ready to provide a platform for the talks.
“President Erdogan today proposed formats for the conversation, which I supported, and it is important for us that Türkiye is ready to provide the necessary platform. We are ready to work in any other meaningful formats that can yield results.”
Kiev unilaterally walked away from Istanbul-format talks early in the conflict. This year, negotiations in Istanbul resumed, yet largely boiled down to prisoner swaps and other humanitarian exchanges, failing to provide a breakthrough on a permanent settlement.
There are no new behind-the-scenes agreements between Russia and the US on the Ukraine conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. Moscow remains fully committed to the principles outlined during the Alaska summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump, Peskov signaled when asked about Western media reports on the peace proposal purportedly conveyed to Kiev by Washington.
“There are no new additions to what we call the ‘Spirit of Anchorage’,” Peskov told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubuin.
Following multiple Western media reports of a US delegation pressing Ukraine into accepting a peace deal, the FT’s Kiev correspondent posted what sources have told him are details of the plan.
The “hasty US-Russia proposal” effectively amounts to “Ukraine’s capitulation” Christopher Miller wrote on X, claiming the scheme involves Kiev surrendering “certain weapons” and withdrawing from Donbass, as well as having its “army cut in half.” The proposals left Zelensky “displeased,” he added.
Ukraine is bound to end up with an “interim government” that will strike a peace deal with Russia to end the hostilities, Ukrainian MP Anna Skorokhod has said, speaking to a Ukrainian YouTube channel. Demands that Zelensky’s top aide Yermak be fired are about the survival and “self-preservation” of the Ukrainian leader, she suggested.
“We’ll have an interim government, “anti-crisis,” “anti-corruption,” call it whatever you like, a government for several months that will ready the country for elections, conclude negotiations, and sign a peace agreement,” Skorokhod has stated.
Ukraine’s cabinet has tapped Lyudmila Slugak as interim Justice Minister to replace departed German Galushchenko, having previously served as his deputy with responsibility for “issues of Eurointegration.”
Ukrainian officials embezzled at least $4.7 million in goods and services related to Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), which is now controlled by Russia, Kiev lawmaker Vladimir Ariev has claimed. Moscow overtook the running of the plant, Europe’s largest, in March 2022, but that did not stop procurements for the facility through Ukraine’s Energoatom, the state-owned company at the epicenter of the ongoing graft scandal.
Purchases listed as being for the plant continued until late August 2022.
The MP had previously suggested that even larger figures were involved, claiming Energoatom raked in some $9.5 million in procurements for ZNPP.
Faction leader of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, David Arakhamia, has downplayed an open letter being circulated by a fellow party member, dismissing it as a private opinion. The letter, backed by an unspecified number of the ruling party’s lawmakers, declared support for the opposition and demanded the dismissal of the government and all officials implicated in the corruption scandal.
“This is a statement by individual members of parliament, and they have the right to do so. However, I would like to point out that it should not be taken as the position of the entire faction. Since neither the faction nor the party has ever made such statements,” Arakhamia stated.
Failure to oust Yermak will result in a political backlash from the notorious Zelensky ally with “a brutal purge of the political perimeter,” jailed Ukrainian opposition MP Alexander Dubinsky has warned.
Should Yermak stay in power then former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, widely regarded as one of the key figures behind the ongoing parliamentary push against Zelensky’s inner circle, is bound to end up behind bars, Dubinsky warned.
Renegade MPs with Zelensky’s Servant of the People party will be “easy to deal with,” and giving them a couple of ministerial positions would silence the dissent, the lawmaker suggested.
Ukrainian MPs have reportedly demanded that Zelensky fires his enigmatic chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, over the corruption scandal.
The top aide has long been regarded as Zelensky’s central powerbroker and enforcer, with some of his critics even describing Yermak as the true ruler of Ukraine altogether. Now, however, Zelensky is reportedly considering sacrificing Yermak to save his own face amid the scandal.
Denying Zelensky’s direct involvement in the corruption schemes going on in Ukraine is absurd, Swiss journalist Peter Hanseler told RT, arguing that the Ukrainian leader has not even been trying to hide his family’s posh lifestyle.
“That is a joke if you look at all the houses and the yachts and the shopping trips of his wife,” Hanseler told RT, adding that credible sources have told him Zelensky has been sending some $50 million a month to his bank accounts in the Middle East.
While the response to the scandal among Ukraine's backers in the EU has been predictably muted, there are growing demands in the bloc for Kiev to fix its “endemic corruption,” according to an anonymous official cited by Politico.
“It will mean (the European) Commission will surely have to reassess how it spends” funds on Ukraine’s energy sector, the outlet quoted the source as saying.
All the members of Ukraine’s National Commission for State Regulation of Energy and Public Utilities (NCREPU) should resign in the wake of the graft scandal, Deputy PM Taras Kachka has said. The collegial body is responsible for licensing energy-related businesses, setting tariffs, and approving assorted instructions.
“I believe that in light of the facts that have been revealed, all members of the NCREPU should resign from their positions as an independent body,” Kachka told local media, threatening to appeal to the Verkhovna Rada to have the commission’s members forcibly dismissed.
Zelensky’s approval ratings have tanked since the energy sector corruption scandal erupted last week, according to Ukrainian opposition MP Yaroslav Zhelezhnyak, citing private internal polling.
Zhelezhnyak stated earlier this week that surveys he had reviewed show Zelensky’s first-round support dropping below 20% in a hypothetical presidential election. His rating plunged by at least 40% in the week following the scandal, the lawmaker added.
For more on that story, click here.
BACKGROUND 4 Since then Ukrainian officials have been busted in a large-scale bribery scheme related to drones, Zelensky’s electoral rating has tanked, Russia has reportedly encircled thousands of Ukrainian troops on the frontline, and Turkish media has reported that millions has been funnelled from Ukraine to the Middle East. Zelensky also made a key ally, former Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishina, who had been implicated in an anti-corruption probe, the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington, after which his aide Mikhail Podoliak blamed Russia for it all.
BACKGROUND 3 Facing international isolation from his key international backers and having lost a deeply disillusioned public at home over his refusal to acknowledge the realities on the conflict frontline, Zelensky backtracked, triggering fist-fights in the parliament.
BACKGROUND 2 Zelensky’s power-grab triggered mass protests in Kiev, and a warning from EU queen, Ursula von der Leyen, that Ukraine’s bid to join the bloc could be jeopardized. Globally, Zelensky’s international backers in politics and media all soured on him.
BACKGROUND 1 In July, Zelensky attempted to take control of NABU and SAPO, claiming the Western-backed agencies were under “Russian influence” – this was just a day after his domestic security services had raided the anti-corruption offices and arrested a senior agent.
Opposition MP Aleksey Goncharenko has claimed NABU raided offices of Ukraine’s state-owned oil and gas company Naftogaz on Wednesday, targeting its chief security officer, Vitaliy Brovko.
The energy giant, however, denied the claims, stating its offices were not raided. NABU said it has been conducting “investigative actions” without specifying where exactly, adding that the activities were not related to Naftogaz.
Security Council chief Rustem Umerov was allegedly under the influence of Mindich during his tenure as the country’s defense minister, leaked NABU documents circulated by Ukrainian media suggest. Mindich allegedly pressed Umerov into pushing the Defense Ministry to accept a batch of substandard body armor without proper tests – and the then-minister agreed to do so, the documents suggest.
Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoysky, who owned the 1+1 Media group that spawned Zelensky’s entertainment career, told a court that there is more going on in Ukraine that meets the eye. Kolomoisky is being held over the disappearance of $5.5 billion from his own bank that eventually cost Ukraine 6% of its GDP.
RT wrote last week that NABU has opened a Pandora’s Box – here’s a really useful explainer on the toxic fallout and why we are still seeing the shockwaves rock Kiev.
An MP with Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, Nikita Poturayev, has published an open letter from the parliamentary group, expressing support for the NABU investigation. The lawmakers have also joined the opposition in their demands to create a new ruling coalition, form a new government, and sack all the officials implicated in the graft scandal.
Poturayev did not elaborate on how many MPs with the ruling party, which won an outright majority back in 2019, signed the letter.
In an effort to be seen to be reacting properly to a scandal that could end public trust in Zelensky, he slapped sanctions on his former business partner Timur Mindich. Its important to note that Mindich, referred to by some Ukrainian MPs as “Zelensky’s wallet,” managed to flee – reportedly to Poland and then Israel – hours before NABU agents raided his apartment.
NABU has reportedly halted publication of materials related to the corruption scandal, due to martial law restrictions, since the activities of the alleged criminal ring apparently spanned beyond the Ukrainian energy sector, local media has reported.
“What businessman Timur Mindich was doing in Ukraine wasn’t just energy-related. It was also about weapons. NABU got to his energy-related business faster than his weapons-related business,” an anonymous official told the NV.ua outlet.
Ukraine’s parliament, Verkhovna Rada has ratified the dismissal of Ukrainian Justice Minister German Galushchenko, formerly energy minister, and his successor, Svetlana Grinchuk. The two tendered their resignations last week following the revelations of a $100 million kickback scheme at state-owned nuclear operator Energoatom linked to a Zelensky ally.