Have you ever watched billions of dollars flow into a war zone and wondered, quietly, how much of it actually reaches the front lines?
I have. And for years the polite answer was “we have to trust the process because Ukraine is fighting for all of us. Turns out the process was being deliberately broken from the inside. A major new investigation has laid it out in painful detail: over the last four years Ukraine’s own leadership has systematically dismantled the very mechanisms meant to stop corruption in its largest state companies and in the procurement of weapons.
It’s one thing to lose money to chaos in wartime. It’s quite another to rewrite the rules so that oversight becomes impossible. And that, according to mountains of evidence, is exactly what happened.
The Quiet Gutting of Oversight Boards
Let’s start with the basics. After the 2014 Maidan revolution, Ukraine, under heavy pressure from the IMF, the EU and the United States, agreed to create independent supervisory boards for its biggest state-owned enterprises. The idea was simple but powerful: put respected outsiders (often Western-nominated experts) on these boards to watch spending, approve big contracts, and block sweetheart deals.
It worked, for a while. Corruption didn’t disappear, but it became harder and more dangerous. Then something changed.
Starting around 2021 and accelerating after the full-scale invasion, seats on these boards began to sit empty. Qualified independent members were pushed out or simply not replaced. In some cases the government rewrote the corporate charters so that the supervisory boards no longer had the power to block transactions. In others, loyalists with no relevant experience were parachuted in.
The government “stacked boards with loyalists, left seats empty, or stalled them from being set up at all… keeping the government in control and allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent without outsiders poking around.”
That’s not a dissident blogger talking. That’s the conclusion of a painstaking investigation that spoke to dozens of current and former officials, reviewed internal documents, and tracked the paper trail.
Case Study: The Nuclear Power Giant
Take the state nuclear company—one of the largest power producers in Europe. In recent months anti-corruption detectives accused people very close to the presidential office of siphoning roughly $100 million through fake contracts.
When the scandal broke, officials pointed fingers at the company’s supervisory board for failing to stop it. There was just one problem: the same government had spent years stripping that board of its powers. Meetings were cancelled, decisions were taken without quorum, and independent members were slowly marginalized until they resigned in disgust.
By the time the embezzlement scheme was in full swing, the watchdog had no teeth left.
Defense Procurement—The Real Black Hole
If you think civilian state companies are bad, defense procurement is on another level. Billions in Western military aid plus Ukraine’s own budget flow through a handful of agencies. Early in the war, under public pressure, an independent oversight layer was promised here too.
It never really materialized. Instead, procurement was recentralized under direct government control. Independent experts were either not appointed or were given no access to meaningful data. Contracts for everything from drones to bullets to food for soldiers were signed in secret, often at prices far above market rates.
Every now and then a scandal would erupt—eggs at $17 each, jackets that never arrived, ammunition that turned out to be from the 1980s, and the pattern was always the same: quick outrage, a few mid-level scapegoats, and zero structural change.
“We Accept the Risk” – The West’s Reaction
Perhaps the most astonishing part is how openly Western officials admit they know.
“We do care about good governance, but we have to accept that risk (…) Because it’s war. Because Ukraine is defending Europe.”
– Senior European official
Fair enough, war is messy, and speed matters. But accepting risk is one thing; continuing to wire money after your own experts tell you the safeguards have been deliberately removed is something else entirely.
At what point does “accepting the risk” become enabling the theft?
The People at the Center
Several figures close to the president have found themselves in the spotlight when raids began. One of the most powerful officials in the country reportedly left for a country that offers him citizenship just hours before police showed up at his door. A businessman who co-founded an entertainment company with the president years ago is accused of masterminding the nuclear embezzlement scheme and also fled abroad before authorities could detain him.
Coincidence? Maybe. But when multiple insiders vanish the night before raids, it doesn’t exactly scream innocence.
Why This Matters Beyond Ukraine
Look, I’m not naïve. Corruption exists everywhere, especially in wartime. But there’s a difference between opportunistic theft and a systematic effort to remove every guardrail while your country is surviving on donations.
Western taxpayers have sent well over $200 billion combined in military, financial and humanitarian aid since 2022. A significant chunk of the military portion is effectively cash—budget support that goes straight into the Ukrainian state treasury to pay soldiers, pensioners, and yes, to buy weapons domestically.
When that money disappears into offshore accounts or golden toilets (yes, one apartment apparently had those), it doesn’t just hurt Ukraine’s war effort. It erodes the political support that keeps the aid flowing.
- Fatigue is already visible in polls across Europe and the United States.
- Lawmakers are asking harder questions about oversight.
- And every new scandal makes it easier for populist parties to say “we told you so.”
In other words, corruption in Kyiv doesn’t just steal from Ukrainians. It steals from the soldiers on the front line and from the coalition trying to keep Russia at bay.
Can Anything Actually Change?
Pressure is mounting. Some Western governments have started tying tranches of aid to specific anti-corruption benchmarks. Civil society inside Ukraine, though battered, is still pushing. A few brave detectives keep working despite intimidation.
But real change would require political will at the very top—and so far the pattern has been to circle the wagons rather than clean house.
Until that changes, every new aid package will come with the same quiet, uncomfortable question: how much of this is actually reaching the people it’s supposed to help?
Maybe it’s time we demanded a clearer answer.
