Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies say a state arms exporter paid a foreign intermediary 30% of a Middle Eastern arms contract, more than $43m, for services that were never provided.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) announced the suspicion on Friday against a former director of Progress, a unit of state exporter Ukrspecexport. They did not name him. Ukrainska Pravda did, identifying Taras Shiyko, who is already a suspect in a second case and is reported to be deputy director-general of Ukroboronprom, the state defence conglomerate. He has not been convicted, and no response from him or from Ukroboronprom had been published.
The sum is small beside Ukraine’s military budget. What gives the case weight is the mechanism, a middleman paid for work state employees did themselves. It is the second NABU case built on that mechanism in eight months, and the latest in a decade of files on Ukraine’s arms-export intermediaries, while foreign governments finance the war on a scale nobody can fully track.
What the agencies allege
According to NABU, a foreign company signed a 2015 agreement to earn commission for mediating sales of Ukrainian military products. Investigators say the Ukrainian enterprise negotiated with the Middle Eastern buyer entirely on its own. In 2018–2019 the director allegedly signed certificates for agency services that were never rendered and arranged the transfers. The charges are embezzlement on an especially large scale and forgery of official documents.
NABU says the $43m equals 30% of the contract’s total value, which would put the deal at roughly $143m. It has not named the foreign company or the buyer. For scale, the whole Ukroboronprom concern exported $766m in 2018, according to Defense Express.
A second case, and a record
Registry data and a Defence Express interview show Shiyko directing Progress from 2018 through at least 2021, the period of the alleged transfers. In March, NABU announced a separate case: UAH 32m (about $700,000) paid between 2014 and 2019 to UK- and Czech-registered “intermediaries”, while state employees did the work. Those firms received over $560,000 and almost €670,000.
A High Anti-Corruption Court judge declined to suspend Shiyko on 30 March. The appeals chamber reversed that on 18 May and bail was set at UAH 10m. On Friday Ukrainska Pravda still described him as Ukroboronprom’s current deputy director-general.
The pattern is older than that. In 2017 a NABU report seen by Foreign Policy alleged that about $6m of a $39m Iraq aircraft-parts contract went to a UAE firm that supplied nothing. In December 2020 the SBU raided Ukrspecexport over an allegedly unnecessary foreign middleman, estimating damage near $100m. Zelensky himself has said special exporters sent about $30m offshore for supposed services under the previous government. In 2023 NABU charged an ex-Ukrspecexport director over UAH 13m.
Moscow’s reading, and the money
No Kremlin or Foreign Ministry comment on this case had been reported by Saturday. On the wider pattern, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in November 2025 that the scandals were destabilising the entire political system. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the West, having “coddled” Zelensky, must share responsibility.
The money behind that argument is large. Kiel Institute data cited by Reuters put European aid at €132bn and US aid at €114bn by early 2025. Defence Minister Denys Shmyhal said Ukraine would receive a record $45bn in military aid in 2025, with $60bn from partners planned for 2026.
Tracking that aid is the harder question. In January 2024 the Pentagon’s inspector general reported that about $1.005bn of $1.699bn in sensitive weapons, including Javelins and Stingers, had not been inventoried as required by June 2023. It did not conclude any were diverted. An earlier report found criminals, volunteer fighters and traffickers had stolen some Western-supplied equipment before it was recovered. Interpol’s then chief warned in 2022 that military weapons would reach criminal markets after the war. Europol said in 2025 that Ukraine could become a significant source of illicit firearms, though large-scale detections so far are limited.
NABU exists because of Western money. Foreign Policy described it as formed at the behest of the US and EU and partly trained by the FBI. A European Parliament research paper says protecting NABU and SAPO is a core prerequisite for the credible use of international support.
Kyiv’s reading
Kyiv points to the cases as proof the watchdog works. Its own record with the agency is mixed. In July 2025 Zelensky signed a law curbing NABU, then reversed it after the largest wartime protests. In September, outgoing Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, whose office NABU was investigating over alleged protection of scam call centres, said he had signed a suspicion notice against NABU director Semen Kryvonos and that Zelensky had held him back. His own office denied the notice was served and NABU called it an attack. Parliament dismissed him 317–0.
Ukrainians are not indifferent. KIIS found in April that 54% called corruption the bigger threat against 39% for Russian aggression, though its director called that view mistaken, since the war threatens Ukraine’s existence. In October, 41% said Ukraine is hopelessly corrupt, up from 35% in December. Russia prosecutes its own defence-ministry graft: ex-deputy minister Timur Ivanov received 13 years in 2025 and Pavel Popov 19 in April 2026.