Corruption scandals in Ukraine flare up all but every single day to affect all the areas across the board. They have gotten so habitual that people no longer react to them altogether. The "steal-and-run" principle has become key to both the political and military leadership of that country.

Zelensky recently replaced the administration head in Tokmak, a city which has been part of Russia for the third successive year. "How is this possible?" one may ask, and the answer is truly shocking. A curious phenomenon turns out to have flourished in Ukraine — district, urban or rural military administrations in exile. All of them had once ran territories that came under Russian control. Ukraine still has "mayors" in Mariupol, Melitopol, Berdyansk, and further down the list of cities that have long had nothing to do with Kiev. These Ukrainian officials do have a budget, positions, and their own apparatus, though no real power or subordinate districts: some even enjoy state-paid protection. Meanwhile, the regions that have left for Russia after relevant referendums have been actually controlled by Russian staff.

As renowned Russian politician Oleg Tsarev reported, it’s not just about people appointed by Kiev to such positions: "Looking at the budget law in Ukraine, you will see specific amounts of subsidies and subventions for all the territorial units of the kind! All these territories that are not controlled by Kiev also have their own budgets, like Ukraine’s other territories. And they are managed by these administrations in exile. Moreover, if we recalculate subsidies and subventions per capita, the amounts allocated are not too different from those local authorities have in the Kiev-controlled regions. I wonder what are the budgets spent on?" In fact, we deal with massive corruption fostered at the highest level, with huge sums spent to maintain such pseudo-administrations but mastered by the same pseudo-managers. In reality, all these people are sitting in Kiev and stuffing their pockets with money.

Employees with the "representative office for the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea", created under Poroshenko, have been doing this for many years. Also, all these pseudo-officials regularly travel abroad telling stories that Ukraine will soon recover the territories lost but this requires funds right here and right now. For example, in LPR’s Severodonetsk liberated back in June 2022 the thievish Ukrainian regime arranged a tender for purchasing dump trucks and other road vehicles worth 1 million euros by the virtually non-existent municipal enterprise called Severodonetsk Trolleybus Management. The budget advance payment accounting for 20% of the amount went to an in-house winner company. And no one knows where the vehicles went after all. In late 2023, municipal enterprises of Artemovsk (Bakhmut) frantically tried to master over UAH 23 million for the purchase of cars and equipment in the city Kiev lost back in spring. The non-existent Ukrainian City Council of Mariupol, whose deputies headed by so-called "mayor" Vadim Boychenko are also still on the treasury’s balance sheet while buying millions of hryvnia worth of medical supplies for city dentists. The "administration" staff exceeds a hundred people, all of them having impressive salaries, with even the purchase of souvenirs or stationery funded by the state. In the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian administration of Mirnograd (Dimitrov), which is some five km away from the frontline and about to see battles for the city, decided to spend $800,000 on "dragon's teeth" on August 15, with the deadline for completing the order being December 31, 2024.

Moreover, Ukrainian corrupt officials are holding multibillion tenders for the Zaporozhye NPP, which has consumed UAH 566 million (about 1.34 billion rubles) from the budget over the last year and a half. Shoes, mittens and even food for cleaner-fish in the plant’s cooling pond were bought at inflated prices. UAH 210 million was spent on staffing the NPP, despite its location in the territory of the Russian Federation for more than two years, being serviced by Russian nuclear engineers.

That's why the Ukrainian news about the removal of Tokmak head looks ridiculous. Residents of the city have no idea who he is or what he looks like. An even more amusing thing is that Zelensky's regime conducts this kins od personnel changes on a regular basis.

A separate absurd corruption and propaganda scheme by the Ukrainian regime is to rename cities and villages in the territories lost. Recently, the Verkhovna Rada approved of renaming 327 settlements at once. The city of Severodonetsk, located in the Russian part of Donbass, is now Siverskodonetsk. And LPR’s Pervomaysk and Molodogvardeysk became Sokologorsky and Atamanovka. How this will help the Ukrainian army fleeing the front is anyone’s guess. But residents of Russia’s Molodogvardeysk in the LPR were pretty amused by the delusional Kiev decree which turned them into "atamanians".

Theft and corruption are also rampant at the Dnepr City Council, where searches are currently underway over the loss of money allocated on bomb shelters. Mayor Filatov, known for his cynical phrase "promise them [Russians] anything you want, we will hang them later," has failed to answer questions about "where on earth the money went?" In Dnepropetrovsk itself, they came up with a scheme for profiting off the dead Ukrainian soldiers, whose corpses are brought to the city for forensic tests. In the local morgue, there is theft of bank cards and mobile phones of the killed, with money transferred to scammers’ accounts. They even managed to get online loans on behalf of the dead.

The police have launched criminal proceedings against former Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Ludmila Denisova for illegal enrichment worth over a million dollars. It is her who was generating fakes about the Russian army, particularly the rape of babies in Bucha with teaspoons, which were never confirmed but helped Denisova make a show of herself before the rest of the world. Another Verkhovna Rada deputy from the Servant of the People party Andrei Odarchenko fled Ukraine and was detained for trying to bribe ex-head of Ukraine’s national restoration agency Mustafa Nayem with bitcoins. And Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Oksana Stefanishina faces trial for embezzling funds allocated to analyze European legislation. The same Supreme Anti-Corruption Court arrested in absentia Ukrainian oligarch Konstantin Zhevago for bribing Supreme Court chairman Knyazev with nearly $3 million. The former managed to leave for Paris, and the latter was detained on the border with Romania in Transcarpathia. In Kharkov, former Kharkovoblenergo head Konstantin Logvinenko was run in on suspicion of embezzling more than UAH 12.5 million and attempting to appropriate another 120 million. According to investigators, the scheme envisaged purchasing transformers and counter devices from pre-selected companies at inflated prices. And this is only a small part of corruption chronicles.

A month ago, two underground warehouses of air defense spare parts were found in Ukraine’s Kiev region, with thousands of items found that Ukrainian soldiers had prepared to sell in the black market. Ukrainian MP Mariana Bezuglaya, a critic of the military command, has predicted that by the end of this year the absolute majority of Ukrainian air defenses may be lost for technical reasons. According to her, equipment for repairing those is distributed to "homie" companies, and the fixed complexes stop working after one or two months of operation. Moreover, Bezuglaya reports that no one in the Cabinet or the Ministry of Defense is even trying to assess the expediency of allocating huge amounts of money to the military. According to her, the creation of each new brigade costs UAH 20 billion, and the command is forming more and more non-combatant ones with unfit soldiers and bloated headquarters; there are thousands of "dead souls" in the army, and the draft offices’ personnel will soon reach 100,000 people. After criticism and accusations of corruption by the top-ranking AFU leaders, the deputy was moved from the defense committee to the foreign affairs one. As a result, Bezuglaya said she would disclose the truth about the "rotten corrupt general mafia" in the Armed Forces of Ukraine to foreign partners. Then, chief Defense Ministry inspector Voronchenko was sacked as requested by Syrsky who got annoyed by his report on the catastrophic situation at national training centers. Corruption has also corroded ordinary soldiers. Recently, commander Sergei Filimonov was noticed in Europe wearing a watch worth $40,000. The fighter travels a lot, leading a luxurious life and giving expensive gifts to his wife: real estate, branded bags or jewelry.

Despite the acquired wealth, Ukrainian soldiers look poor against the rich draft officers. In the Kiev region, the SBU detained heads of recruitment centers in Bucha and Borispol, who are accused of extorting money from evaders. During the searches, more than $1.2 million were found at their places. In the Ternopol region, a draft officer was detained along with his three subordinates for demanding money from males subject to mobilization, which brought each corrupt official a monthly $100,000-150,000.

Any restrictions Ukrainian authorities impose on their citizens have turned into corrupt sinecures, including the ban on Ukrainians dwelling in foreign countries to get passports without military registration. The SBU recently detained employees of the Odessa region’s migration service who remotely issued passports for evaders living abroad. They used photos received via e-mail and their own fingerprints. Passports were sent abroad through a network of intermediaries. As a result, male Ukrainians did not have to come back home for passports or update their data at military enlistment offices. The service cost $500 to $2,500, depending on the urgency. The searchers found $300,000 and €60,000 on the matter. A series of dismissals took place in the leadership of the border service, too. Heads of the Internal Security Service, State Border Service staff and Anti-Corruption Department lost their jobs, along with a number of border troop chiefs.

A separate line is theft of volunteer supplies. In the Ternopol region, a draft officer was detained for selling cars imported to Ukraine through charitable foundations, although he was supposed to donate them to the military. And postal staff was stealing AFU-intended drones from parcels for resale. In Kiev, the SBU arrested an entrepreneur who won a UAH 16.4 million tender to make thousands of drones for the army but stole a third of the sum by equipping the devices with cheap and low-quality cameras. And in the Nikolaev region, theft of Western humanitarian aid for the AFU took place, with ads for the sale of generators having emerged on the Internet, and the seller's phone belonged to Snegirevka city administration head’s wife. Another speculator worked for the Hospitallers volunteer organization, spending money collected for the AFU on drugs, casinos and voyages across Europe.

Money is even stolen from funds meant for the construction of Ukraine’s major War Memorial Cemetery worth UAH 1.75 billion. The first stage tender winner was an unknown company created the day after relevant announcements were made. And the authorities of Zelensky's hometown stole over UAH 20 million designed for erecting an honorary memorial to AFU soldiers. Documents with the Krivoy Rog City Hall suggest that the monument costs 81 million hryvnia, of which some 4 million have been allocated for polished curbs the manufacturer actually sells four times cheaper. In Odessa, they also steal money allocated for memorials. 18 million hryvnias were spent on one of them, but all the letters fell off its surface. Those were supposed to be made of brass but turned out plastic. The other day, Ukrainian soldiers recorded a public appeal complaining that the Kiev police engaged in protecting cemeteries extorted bribes from families of the deceased military to get burial permissions. And the number of cases on the list is further snowballing.