KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies announced Wednesday that they are investigating senior officials in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, a day after the country’s recently fired defence minister called for national elections despite the ongoing fight against Russia’s invasion.
The revelation brought another test of Zelenskyy’s political resilience as Ukraine’s war with its bigger neighbour stretches into its fifth year.
Inspectors identified a group of people who laundered 150 million hryvnias (US$3.4 million) to pay bail for a defendant in a major corruption case last year, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau said. That case, involving the state-owned nuclear power company, brought the resignations of Ukraine’s justice and energy ministers.
The latest suspects include a deputy head of the presidential office, a former lawmaker, the chairperson of a state bank’s board and the head of that bank’s supervisory board, among others, the agency said.
Zelenskyy made no public comment on the investigation but issued a decree dismissing Iryna Mudra from the position of deputy head of the Office of the President.
Zelenskyy remains dogged by high-level graft investigations.
Last year, his chief of staff Andriy Yermak resigned and was later named as a suspect in a major graft probe involving a luxury construction project in the biggest threat to Zelenskyy’s government since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
The European Union has identified deep-seated corruption as one of the major hurdles to Ukraine’s desired membership in the bloc.
Zelenskyy’s one-time loyal aide wants a wartime election
Zelenskyy is already under pressure over his firing last month of Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, one of the longest-standing members of his team and a close ally since he helped Zelenskyy win the 2019 presidential election.
Zelenskyy, seeking to reconcile tensions between the defence ministry’s young and tech-savvy innovators and Ukraine’s seasoned, Soviet-trained battlefield leaders, risked angering both sides by reshuffling his wartime leadership. He ousted both Fedorov, whose changes to military procurement aimed to stamp out corruption, and commander-in-chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.
That sparked days of street protests in support of Fedorov. For Zelenskyy, it was the second time in a year that a wartime decision triggered a strong public backlash, after he moved in mid-2025 to curb the powers of anti-corruption agencies.
Fedorov, in a video address posted to YouTube late Tuesday, called for elections to be held in Ukraine in a bombshell statement that appeared to directly confront Zelenskyy, who says a ballot can’t be held under the martial law in place due to the war.
“We must find a legal, safe and realistic mechanism that will allow Ukraine to restore a full democratic process even amid a prolonged war,” Fedorov said.
He said Ukraine is facing a systemic crisis in how it is governed, arguing that the current system is oriented toward protecting itself and resisting change. He also condemned corruption among officials without naming anyone, saying it had weakened Ukraine’s ability to fight the war.
Zelenskyy’s office did not immediately comment on Fedorov’s address. It was not immediately clear whether Fedorov’s appeal for a ballot would resonate with Ukrainians.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has balked at negotiating a peace deal directly with Zelenskyy, asserts that the Ukrainian president is an illegitimate leader because his term expired in 2024.
Ukraine’s Parliament approved Zelenskyy’s candidate, Yevhenii Khmara, as the new defence minister in a vote Wednesday, a move that effectively closes the door to Fedorov’s return to the post, which he has sought, any time soon.
Lawmakers also gave their consent for Andrii Sybiha to stay on as foreign minister after holding the post in an interim role.
Political noise comes after Ukrainian successes in the war
The political disarray comes after recent successes in the war for Ukraine. Using its innovative drone technology, it has repeatedly hit Russian oil facilities, causing fuel shortages. It has also shocked the Russian public by striking warehouses of Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, and stalled front-line advances by Russia’s bigger army.
But Zelenskyy has been unable to get traction in U.S.-led peace efforts, and Ukraine is at the mercy of Russia’s ballistic missiles because more U.S.-made Patriot interceptors aren’t available due to low international stockpiles.
In its latest strike on oil facilities, a drone hit an oil refinery in Ufa in Russia’s Bashkortostan, its Gov. Radiy Khabirov was quoted as saying by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
The city of Ufa is located roughly 1,300 kilometres east of the border with Ukraine. There are three oil refineries in Ufa, and all three have been attacked before.
Russian air defenses overnight intercepted 453 Ukrainian drones over multiple Russian regions, as well as occupied Crimea and the Black Sea, the Defence Ministry in Moscow said Wednesday.
The Defence Ministry said Russian forces on Tuesday evening hit a bulk carrier in the Black Sea, southeast of Odesa, that was carrying military equipment. On Wednesday, the Russian military struck what it said were fuel and lubricant storage tanks for the Ukrainian armed forces in the southern port of Chornomorsk.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, a Russian drone attacked a minibus in the southern Kherson region on Wednesday morning, killing four people, said Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration. Four women were also wounded in the strike and were hospitalized, he said.
Also, a Russian drone struck a civilian car in Kherson city, the region’s capital, on Wednesday, killing a woman, Prokudin said.
Amid the fighting, Russia and Ukraine each sent home 103 prisoners of war Wednesday, according to Zelenskyy and the Russian Defence Ministry.
Hanna Arhirova, The Associated Press
