By Mojmir Babacek

 

Zelensky’s friend Timur Mindich, in whose apartment Zelensky celebrated his birthday in 2021, fled Ukraine for Austria on June 20, 2025, because he was facing charges of embezzling funds while purchasing transformers for the company Kharkivoblenergo.

He was already suspected of corruption in January 2021 because his apartment was bugged by the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) during the celebration of Zelensky’s birthday.

The deputy prime minister of Ukraine Oleksiy Chernyshov was also considered a family friend of Zelensky. On June 14, 2025, while on a state visit to Austria with Zelensky, he was accused, along with five other people, of defrauding the state of more than a billion hryvnia in the sale of a large plot of land in Kyiv. There are articles on the internet in which you can read that both of these people are “Zelensky’s wallets”, although the articles do not explain what this specifically means.

Zelensky returned from Austria, but the accused Chernyshov remained there. A week after Chernyshov’s indictment on June 21, 2025, Zelensky appointed Ruslan Kravchenko as the new Ukrainian Prosecutor General and the day before, he said at a press conference that Oleksiy Chernyshov was on a business trip, carrying out tasks assigned to him by him and the Ukrainian government, and that once he had completed them, he was to return to Ukraine.

Chernyshov was summoned on June 23, 2025, to be charged by the National Anticorruption Bureau (NACB) and Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SACP), but he returned to Ukraine on June 22 anyway. According to information from the newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda, based on its sources, Oleksiy Chernyshov was accompanied on his journey from Austria to the Ukrainian border by agents of the Ukrainian army’s intelligence service, who handed him over to the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) agents at the Ukrainian border. According to Ukrayinska Pravda, the purpose of this action was to ensure that Chernyshov would not be detained by detectives from the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau or the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, which were not subordinate to the Ukrainian government.

Journalist Natalija Moseichuk from Ukrajinskaya Pravda therefore went to see the director of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s intelligence service, Kyrill Budanov, to ask him what role his service had played in Chernyshov’s return to Ukraine. Kyrill Budanov replied:

“In everything we do, I proceed from the premise that I am a leader. In everything we do, when making these decisions, I proceed from the paradigm of a statesman. We will do everything that is good for the state. We will not do anything that is bad. Then there are regulations, legislation, and so on.”

On June 27, at the request of the NACB and SACP, Ukraine’s highest anti-corruption court set Chernyshov’s bail at 120 million hryvnia, ordered him to surrender his passport, wear an electronic bracelet, and comply with other obligations related to his investigation. At its next session, the court considered a request from both anti-corruption agencies to remove Chernyshov from his position as deputy prime minister, but refused to do so on the grounds that the Ukrainian prime minister had written a letter stating that Chernyshov was indispensable in his position. Although Chernyshov was later removed from office, the fight to save him from prosecution continued.

On July 21, detectives from the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) searched the homes of at least 40 detectives from the NACB. The aim of this operation was allegedly to neutralize Russian influence on this agency. The SSU agents did not have a court order for the searches. The newly appointed Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko and the State Investigation Bureau also participated in the operation. During the searches of the NACB detectives’ homes, one of them was beaten until he revealed the password to his mobile phone and was also threatened with death. A day later, an NACB management employee was detained for allegedly passing information about the agency’s activities to Russia. The NACB management wrote on Telegram that there is no evidence that this employee was involved in anti-government activities and that this was confirmed during a joint review of his activities, which the NACB conducted together with the SSU.)

A day later, on July 22, 2025, the Ukrainian Parliament’s Committee on Law Enforcement unexpectedly added to the parliamentary agenda and approved for voting a bill that stripped the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office of their independence and subordinated them to Zelensky’s newly appointed Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko. The day before his appointment, Zelensky called on Chernyshov to return to Ukraine. It was therefore to be expected that Kravchenko, under his newly approved powers, would take Chernyshov’s and probably also Mindich’s case (as well as several other cases) away from both anti-corruption agencies and  then cancel the investigation at Zelensky’s request.

Volodymyr Zelensky signed the law on the same day, bringing it into force. He has never signed new laws so quickly before. That same night, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, appointed by Zelensky the day after Zelensky called on Chernyshov to return to Ukraine, said at a press conference that the search of the NACB offices was not only about Russian influence on this Ukrainian agency, but also about the investigation of a traffic accident, unauthorized legalization of income, and illegal enrichment, but that the prosecutor’s office did not yet have enough evidence to charge the relevant NACB employees. Even after three weeks, however, he has not presented any evidence to support his claims. The SSU had previously mentioned traffic accidents when searching the apartments of NACB employees, but these were accidents that occurred in 2021.

The European Union reacted very sharply to the attempt to strip the Ukrainian anti-corruption agency of its independence. It threatened to withdraw all support from Ukraine, which it had already suspended, and to halt its progress towards EU membership. Protests also took place in Ukraine, with thousands of people taking part. Zelensky backed down, particularly in the face of threats and actions from the EU, and on August 31, he submitted a new law to the Ukrainian parliament on restoring the independence of anti-corruption agencies, which the parliament approved by a majority of 331 votes. On the same day, President Zelensky signed it.

However, this did not save Zelensky’s friends and associates from prosecution, as both anti-corruption agencies should return to their work and continue legal proceedings against them, and Zelensky himself could ultimately be at risk.

On August 8, 2025, the directors of the NACB and SACP, Semen Krivonos and Alexandr Klimenko, held a joint press conference at which they said that their agencies had always been under pressure from the state leadership, including veiled threats. Semen Krivonos said:

“We have undergone a serious test in recent days. We believe we have information that the next attack may be directed at the leadership—something along the lines of, ‘Let’s come up with something, gather a critical mass, and start replacing the leaders of NACB and SACP for various reasons,'” adding that the NACB and SACP know, who is organizing, planning, and evaluating this.

“Yesterday, the same media campaign that was against NACB and SACP started again on the same Telegram channels, only now directly against the leadership. There are a lot of different nonsensical ideas there, but we are ready for it,” Krivonos continued.

SACP Director Alexander Klimenko confirmed this:

“Such information does indeed exist… The next step is to replace the leadership, to simply make the leaders dependent. Such attempts and such obvious first steps are already underway.”

Krivonos added:

“Those who are ordering this are the same people… We all know it, and now they know that we know it“.

The confrontation between the Ukrainian government, the president, parliament, and anti-corruption authorities thus continued.

A victory for the anti-corruption authorities would mean the fall of the government and the hope for them to become top Ukrainian officials.

Several other Ukrainian sources of information also published reports on this press conference, but it did not become a central topic in the Ukrainian media.

Nor did it become a central topic in the Western press.

The Ukrainian and Western press are therefore prepared to grant Volodymyr Zelensky’s corrupt government victory in its fight against Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies.

After all, Zelensky is a pillar of support for the European Union in its efforts to occupy the territory of Ukraine, which has not agreed to membership in the European Union and has even risen up against such membership.

At present, Zelensky is also the most important obstacle to Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine. It is hardly possible that in the next elections someone would win, who would continue Zelensky’s policy. Ukrainians are exhausted by the war. But the European Union wants Ukrainians to continue.

*

Click the share button below to email/forward this article. Follow us on Instagram and X and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost Global Research articles with proper attribution.

Mojmir Babacek was born in 1947 in Prague, Czech Republic. Graduated in 1972 at Charles University in Prague in philosophy and political economy. In 1978 signed the document defending human rights in  communist Czechoslovakia „Charter 77“. Since 1981 until 1988 lived in emigration in the USA. Since 1996 he has published articles on different subjects mostly in the Czech and international alternative media.

In 2010, he published a book on the 9/11 attacks in the Czech language. Since the 1990‘s he has been striving to help to achieve the international ban of remote control of the activity of the human nervous system and human minds with the use of neurotechnology.

Featured image is from the Public Domain

Global Research is a reader-funded media. We do not accept any funding from corporations or governments. Help us stay afloat. Click the image below to make a one-time or recurring donation.

 

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Mojmir Babacek, Global Research, 2025