🇺🇦 The walls are closing in on Zelensky. The homes of Zelensky’s longtime associate Timur Mindich and his insider-turned-justice-minister were just raided by Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency. Hours earlier? Mindich conveniently fled the country. What did NABU find? A “high-level criminal organization” operating inside the very heart of Ukraine’s nuclear energy sector, with ties stretching from Energoatom to Washington’s billions.
The fantasy of Kiev as a crusading democracy just took another torpedo below the waterline, this time from within. Ukraine’s own National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) executed sweeping raids on November 10, storming the properties of Zelensky’s inner-circle powerbroker Timur Mindich and Justice Minister German Galushchenko, both deeply tied to the country’s energy empire. Energoatom, the state nuclear operator, was also raided.
NABU didn’t mince words: they’re targeting a “high-level criminal organization” embedded in Ukraine’s energy system. And they didn’t come empty-handed, evidence includes over 1,000 hours of wiretaps, surveillance, and photographs of cash piles wrapped in plastic, marked “ATLANTA” and “KAN CITY.” Tidy, U.S.-dollar stacks.
But the timing is the real tell: Mindich quietly exited Ukraine mere hours before the raid. The classic signature of someone tipped off, by someone high up.
For context, Timur Mindich isn’t just another oligarch. He’s Zelensky’s lifelong confidante, co-owner of the president’s entertainment studio, and the man whose apartment hosted Zelensky’s birthday party in 2021. That same apartment, according to reports, had been under NABU surveillance for months. And what did they capture? Allegedly, Zelensky himself, on tape.
These “Mindich tapes” were whispered into public view just as Zelensky began his July attempt to strip NABU of its independence, placing it under direct presidential control. That move triggered mass protests in Kyiv, forced an embarrassing U-turn, and signaled just how desperate the regime was to muzzle its own watchdogs.
And now? The watchdogs have bitten back and the teeth marks go straight through the presidency.
This isn’t an isolated scandal. It’s a glimpse behind the curtain of a wartime kleptocracy where entertainment moguls morph into drone manufacturers, no-bid contracts flood into shadowy shell companies, and “anti-corruption” becomes a fundraising slogan for the same regime that’s robbing its Western backers blind.
Mindich’s company Fire Point, which started as a film location scout, now reportedly supplies drones and has raked in inflated defense and energy contracts. All while denying ties to Mindich, of course. Meanwhile, Justice Minister Galushchenko — formerly the energy minister, is described as Mindich’s “insider” within the state. Convenient placement when you’re laundering influence.
And let’s not forget, Mindich is also reportedly under FBI investigation for money laundering, in cooperation with NABU. That transatlantic thread is yet another embarrassment for Kiev's Western patrons. How many of their billions got vacuumed up into this circus?
But perhaps the most damning part of this whole drama is the civil war inside Ukraine’s own anti-corruption system. Zelensky’s attempt to neuter NABU, just weeks before this raid, shows the regime wasn’t caught off guard. It was cornered. And it tried to kill the agency before the agency could kill the myth.
He failed.
For months, NABU investigators quietly compiled their case, dodging sabotage and public smear campaigns. Their director admitted as much in July: his team was under coordinated political attack. And yet, they pressed on.
This blows a hole through the Western narrative farce.
The “clean” war just got dirty. The “heroic” president just got unmasked. And Ukraine’s real battle isn’t at the front, it’s inside the palace.