Zelenskyy’s office faces corruption probe as fired minister demands elections

Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Alex Brandon/AP)

Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies have announced 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 fight against Russia’s invasion.

The political drama is an unwelcome distraction for Mr Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s war with its bigger neighbour extends into its fifth year.

Investigators are conducting an operation to expose a criminal organisation allegedly led by a sitting and a former legislator, involving senior officials from the presidential office and other individuals, according to a statement from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.

The revelation brought another test of Mr Zelenskyy’s political resilience. Last year, his chief of staff Andriy Yermak resigned and was later named as a suspect in a major graft investigation in the biggest threat to the government since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Mr 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 Mr Zelenskyy win the 2019 presidential election.

The president, 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 Mr Fedorov, whose changes to military procurement aimed to stamp out corruption, and commander-in-chief General Oleksandr Syrskyi.

The move sparked days of street protests in support of Mr Fedorov, and was the second time in a year that a wartime decision triggered a strong public backlash, after Mr Zelenskyy moved in mid-2025 to curb the powers of anti-corruption agencies.

Mr Fedorov, in a video address posted to YouTube late on Tuesday, called for elections in a bombshell statement that appeared to directly confront Mr Zelenskyy, who says a ballot cannot be held under the martial law that is 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,” Mr Fedorov said.

He said Ukraine is facing a systemic crisis in how it is governed, arguing that the current system is oriented towards 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.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has baulked at negotiating a peace deal directly with Mr Zelenskyy, says the Ukrainian president is an illegitimate leader because his term expired in 2024.

Mr Fedorov published his speech hours after Ukraine’s parliament received a submission from Mr Zelenskyy nominating Yevhenii Khmara as the new defence minister.

Legislators are due to debate the president’s candidate on Wednesday.

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 frontline advances by Russia’s bigger army.

But Mr Zelenskyy has been unable to get traction in US-led peace efforts, and Ukraine is at the mercy of Russia’s ballistic missiles because more US-made Patriot interceptors are not 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 region, its governor Radiy Khabirov was quoted as saying by Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti.

The city of Ufa is about 800 miles east of the border with Ukraine. There are three oil refineries in Ufa, and all three have been attacked before.

Russian air defences overnight intercepted 453 Ukrainian drones over multiple Russian regions, as well as occupied Crimea and the Black Sea, the Defence Ministry in Moscow said on Wednesday.

In Ukraine, a Russian drone targeted a minibus in the southern Kherson region on Wednesday morning, killing four people, said Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the regional military administration.

Four women were wounded in the strike and were taken to hospital, he said.

Another Russian drone struck a civilian car in Kherson city, the region’s capital, on Wednesday, killing a woman, said Mr Prokudin.