Zelensky’s reasons Ukraine’s president claims anti-corruption curbs will counter Russian influence, but a new report alleges he seeks to shield himself and his inner circle
On July 22, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law that stripped two major anti-corruption agencies of their independence. The move provoked outrage among Western politicians and many Ukrainians, with thousands staging mass protests — the first since Russia’s full-scale invasion began. Just two days later, Zelensky promised to restore the independence of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), while implementing measures to safeguard the agencies from alleged Russian influence.
When Zelensky signed the legislation, he justified the decision as a necessary step to counter infiltration by Russian agents. However, critics argue that the president’s primary motivation for curbing the power of anti-corruption investigators was that they had gotten too close to his own inner circle. In a new investigation from the Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, journalists describe the events that led to the president’s attempt to dismantle the country’s independent anti-corruption infrastructure. Ukrainska Pravda is known for its critical reporting on Zelensky throughout the war and has accused his administration of “systematically pressuring” its newsroom. Meduza summarizes their report.
What do NABU and SAPO do? And what are they accused of doing?
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau investigates major corruption offenses — crimes where the financial value or resulting damages exceed the minimum wage by at least 500 times, or when high-ranking officials are implicated. The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, meanwhile, is a division of the Prosecutor General’s Office that oversees NABU investigations and refers them to Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court.
On July 21, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and the Prosecutor General’s Office announced an operation aimed at “neutralizing Russian influence” within the NABU and SAPO. Officials raided the homes of 19 NABU employees and SAPO’s headquarters. At the time, the heads of both agencies were out of town on business.
Two people were arrested. One was Viktor Gusarov, an officer in NABU’s classified unit. He is suspected of leaking information to a former deputy head of security for Viktor Yanukovych, the ex-president who fled to Russia during the Euromaidan protests. The SBU claims it warned NABU about potential risks associated with Gusarov, but the bureau failed to respond. NABU, however, insists that it jointly investigated Gusarov with the SBU and ultimately found no evidence against him.
The second suspect arrested was Ruslan Magamedrasulov, who headed NABU’s interregional detective unit and coordinated the bureau’s activities in the frontline regions of Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia. According to the SBU’s intelligence, Magamedrasulov concealed his father’s Russian citizenship when applying for security clearance. He also allegedly helped his father sell industrial hemp seeds to Dagestan. As proof of Magamedrasulov’s role as an intermediary, the SBU released a recording of a wiretapped conversation. However, the Anti-Corruption Action Center reports that Magamedrasulov refers to Uzbekistan, not Dagestan, in the phone call shared by the SBU.
Magamedrasulov is also alleged to have maintained contacts with Fedir Khrystenko, a pro-Russian member of the Ukrainian parliament who left the country before Russia’s full-scale invasion. The Ukrainian authorities consider Khrystenko to be an FSB agent responsible for outreach to NABU. Khrystenko reportedly arranged for bureau staff to act as “backup” for oligarch Hennadiy Boholubov, who left Ukraine in 2024 with forged papers. NABU insists that its personnel were on the same train as Boholubov by chance only.
Ukraine’s chief prosecutor has also accused three NABU staff of involvement in road traffic collisions. According to NABU, two of the incidents took place in 2021, and one in 2023. “In each of these cases,” the agency reported, “NABU staff provided first aid to the victims, called an ambulance and the police, and notified the appropriate authorities.”
From a few bad apples to a rotten tree
On July 21, the day of the raids, Ukrainska Pravda suggested three reasons for the attack on NABU and SAPO: (1) the government genuinely wants to purge the agencies of suspected Russian agents, (2) the Zelensky administration seeks to undermine the agencies, framing it as a fight against Russian influence, and (3) the Zelensky administration wants access to classified materials about anti-corruption investigations against government officials.
On July 21, Ukrainska Pravda wrote:
If even part of the accusations involving “Russian” ties are true, it’s obvious that NABU leadership should be eager to root out “Russian agents” and uncover any “moles” in its ranks. […] Yet the majority of arrests and searches targeting NABU detectives [particularly the investigations into old traffic incidents] give the impression that discrediting the agency is one of the key elements in this entire story.
The news outlet suggested that “a bill calling for the immediate re-certification of NABU would soon appear in the Verkhovna Rada.” In fact, lawmakers introduced the legislation the very next day — not to re-certify, but to put NABU and SAPO under the authority of the prosecutor general, who is appointed by the president. The bill was passed within a single day.
Links to cases against Zelensky’s inner circle
On June 23 — a month before it was stripped of its independence — NABU charged Deputy Prime Minister and National Unity Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov with corruption. Investigators allege that he accepted bribes from the developer KSM Group in exchange for construction approval during his tenure as community and territorial development minister from 2020 to 2022. Chernyshov was arrested but posted a bail of 120 million hryvnias ($2.9 million) in less than a week.
Chernyshov built a successful career under Zelensky and was widely seen as one of the president’s favorites and a close friend of Zelensky’s family. According to Ukrainska Pravda, in 2021, he was the only cabinet member invited to Zelensky’s birthday celebration, held during pandemic restrictions. Even when accused of corruption, Chernyshov was not removed from office. Instead, two weeks later, Zelensky reshuffled his cabinet, and Chernyshov’s ministry was simply dissolved.
The confrontation between Zelensky’s office and Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities began with the Chernyshov investigation, argues Ukrainska Pravda. It was the first time such a senior official had been named a corruption suspect either during Zelensky’s tenure or under previous Ukrainian presidents. The controversy could prove damaging to Zelensky’s approval rating, as other scandals had tarnished his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko.
After the Chernyshov case, the president’s office told law enforcement “to do everything possible to destroy the influence of NABU and SAPO,” sources told Ukrainska Pravda. Ruslan Kravchenko, the new prosecutor general appointed by Zelensky, subsequently demanded files involving NABU and SAPO personnel and assigned a special team of prosecutors to review them.
Chernyshov was not the first figure from Zelensky’s inner circle to become embroiled in a high-profile corruption investigation. In 2023, another prominent member of Zelensky’s inner circle — deputy chief of staff Rostyslav Shurma — came under NABU scrutiny. The bureau launched an investigation into reports that Shurma’s brother and a former subordinate had received 320 million hryvnias (about $8.7 million at the time) in state funds for electricity generated by solar plants in Russian-occupied territory that were disconnected from Ukraine’s power grid. Despite the scandal, Shurma remained in his role for another year before resigning and relocating to Germany. His brother also left the country.
But Shurma’s story didn’t end there. On July 15, 2025, he telephoned a senior official in the Zelensky administration to report that NABU investigators, together with local police, had searched his home in Germany, according to Ukrainska Pravda’s sources in the Verkhovna Rada. The raid was reportedly “a final straw” for Zelensky, signaling that he and his closest advisers faced the risk of a corruption scandal with international repercussions.
Another “final straw” may have been NABU’s growing interest in Tymur Mindich, co-owner of the Kvartal 95 studio entertainment production company and a close friend of Zelensky. While Mindich holds no official government office, sources told Ukrainska Pravda that he exerts substantial influence over the administration’s policymaking. In May, the Ukrainian investigative journalism project Bihus reported that companies indirectly linked to Mindich are suspected of price-gouging in military construction projects. In early June, NABU arrested his cousin as part of an investigation into theft at the Kharkiv-based electricity distribution company Kharkivoblenergo. Ukrainska Pravda also claims that “Mindich’s name has come up increasingly often in the context of drone manufacturing,” though Meduza could not independently verify this information.
It is not clear what led anti-corruption authorities to focus on Mindich. On the day NABU and SAPO were raided, a source in those agencies told Ukrainska Pravda that the bureau was about to name Mindich as a suspect. The source suggested Zelensky’s office learned of these plans and “acted preemptively.” Mindich has since left Ukraine and is currently in Austria, according to sources cited by Censor.net.