Ukraine:
War and Corruption

January 19, 2026

This article is translated from the January 16 issue, #2998 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.

Last November, a huge corruption scandal broke out in Ukraine, implicating the highest levels of government. More revelations keep on coming.

In November, two cabinet ministers implicated in plundering 100 million dollars from the energy sector were dismissed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s business associate who allegedly orchestrated the plundering fled abroad. For his involvement, Andrii Yermak was ousted as head of the Office of the President. He had also led Ukraine’s delegation in negotiations which deadlocked so badly they hardly merited the name of peace talks.

Looting from on high is all the more scandalous when millions of people go without electricity and heat in the dead of winter, due to Russian airstrikes on energy infrastructure—facilities which the country’s leaders had already hamstrung by money grabs.

Another sensitive case broke in the first days of this year. Corruption in the Ministry of Defense allowed millions of dollars to be pocketed from the sale of spare parts to the air force. One high-ranking official even embezzled over 20 million dollars. All this was facilitated by members of Zelenskyy’s political party, whose name “Serve the People” sounds like a bad joke.

Ukraine’s attorney general reported that a private company sold the military 70 million dollars of unusable mines. This is nothing new. Ukraine’s defense department estimates that state losses due to defective war supplies total more than 11 billion dollars!

It seems outrageous, but bureaucrats and private businesspeople inherited their expertise in plundering public resources and the state budget from the days of the Stalinist regime, in Ukraine as in Russia. Every day confirms this.

A former military commander in Lviv was caught red-handed embezzling defense funds. An armored brigade soldier disclosed the rates mid-level and junior officers charge to re-assign troops to cushy office jobs and posts far behind the front lines or even in presidential guard: between six and ten thousand dollars. These rates apply to ground troops, such as conscripts who couldn’t escape military recruitment center (CTR) agents who ruthlessly round up, mobilize, and extort men whether young or old, able-bodied or not.

These practices are so widely known that Zelenskyy’s new chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, quickly announced he would fight corruption by CTRs. Sure.

High-ranking officers benefit from this system. But while profiting from draining new recruits away from the front, they still have to grab enough bodies to hold the line. So CTRs accuse disabled and sick people and heads of large families of being “draft dodgers” and draft them. Local media can no longer ignore this, especially when the family of a conscript reports that he died before reaching his unit or was beaten to death in a CTR center. This happened on New Year’s Eve in Belgorod-Dniestrovski.

Some people’s hatred focuses on CTRs for treating “insubordinate” conscripts like enemies, traitors, and murderers. The Kyiv CTR just revealed that civilians killed four of its agents and attacked 272 others to prevent them from abducting more prey.

Meanwhile Zelenskyy presented two bills in Ukraine’s legislature to extend mobilization and the state of emergency for another 90 days. It’s the 18th extension since the war started. Legislators also want to abolish deferment of military service for men over 25 years old who start university or vocational training.

This war endlessly demands more cannon fodder. From the top to the bottom of the state apparatus, it offers opportunities to get rich at the expense of working-class people who are sent into slaughter. All in the name of defending the homeland.