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Sacked Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has said that President Volodymyr Zelensky has questions to answer about corruption in his government, linking the issue to a money laundering investigation announced last week. Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau reported that the scheme misappropriated more than $3 million in local currency to pay bail for a former energy minister already accused of laundering, leading to the dismissal of a senior official from the president’s office. Fedorov, who served just six months before his removal amid tensions with armed forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, told the BBC he had worked to eliminate corrupt elements from defence procurement yet warned that such practices still undermined frontline capacity. An assessment from the OSW Centre for Eastern Studies published in July 2026 attributed the dismissal in part to resistance against Fedorov’s reforms that digitised tenders and based awards strictly on battlefield performance data from systems like DELTA.
Fedorov called for presidential elections despite martial law that has barred voting since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, framing the discussion as a moral right and a test of Ukraine’s democracy. “We should not be afraid of discussing it,” he said. “That’s what democracy is all about. If I cannot share my ideas and be open about them with my own society, then what are we fighting for?” He added in a separate video statement that people cannot endlessly live in a state where they do not understand why certain decisions are made, remarks that drew weekly street protests in Kyiv from his supporters until they ended on Wednesday after his replacement was confirmed.
Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index scored Ukraine at 36 out of 100, ranking the country 104th out of 182 nations and reflecting a one-point gain from the prior year. The organisation noted that while Ukraine has advanced steadily since 2015, the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region continues to suffer from widespread impunity that fuels corruption. Fedorov had earned praise for modernising the defence ministry and challenging outdated structures during his tenure, according to reporting by the Kyiv Independent and other outlets that highlighted his focus on transparency in arms contracting.
During his time as minister, Fedorov expanded the Army of Drones programme under which Ukraine produced around 250,000 unmanned aerial vehicles monthly and secured tactical drone superiority in multiple frontline sectors, data from the Institute for the Study of War show. The approach enabled long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries, military depots and naval assets far behind enemy lines while minimising Ukrainian casualties by substituting technology for manpower, he explained. Forbes reporting on his ouster noted that these innovations had raised interception rates for drones to 91 percent and for cruise missiles to 87 percent, achievements now at risk of slowing without his leadership.
The United Kingdom has committed £16 billion in military assistance to Ukraine as part of a broader £25 billion support package that includes non-military funding and export finance guarantees, according to a July 2026 factsheet from the UK government. Fedorov expressed appreciation for British contributions, including the recent use of UK-made drones against Russian targets, but criticised bureaucracy and red tape for delaying deliveries across donor nations. “Governments are lagging behind the realities on the ground,” he stated, adding that timely direct funding for Ukrainian drone manufacturing would save lives on both sides by shortening the conflict rather than relying on outdated equipment repairs.
Fedorov said he had received no unlawful instructions from Zelensky during their collaboration and possessed no evidence of personal corruption by the president, though he had no contact with him for a couple of weeks following the dismissal. A spokesperson for Zelensky told the BBC it seemed odd for Fedorov, who had served in government since 2019, to present the problems as belonging to administrations excluding himself given his earlier silence on such matters. The former minister denied immediate political ambitions but left open the possibility of a future presidential bid depending on the restoration of elections, his team’s strength and whether voters would trust him in the role.
