Another scandal with the elections to the Public Anti-Corruption Council of the Ministry of Defense: will there be re-elections?
9 January 2025 11:45
on January 7, a second vote was held for the members of the new Public Anti-Corruption Council under the Ministry of Defense. The re-vote took place, but ended in a new scandal. Not all participants are ready to accept defeat, and those who lost complain about violations. The complaints are no longer about the voting process, as they were two weeks ago, but about the allegedly unfairly compiled list of candidates. [ Kommersant looked into what went wrong with the voting for the Defense Ministry’s public anti-corruption council.
on December 26, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine postponed the voting for members of the Public Anti-Corruption Council to January 7, 2025, due to a technical glitch.
on January 7, a second vote was held for candidates to the Public Anti-Corruption Council at the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
Deputy Minister of Defense Kateryna Chernogorenko posted on Facebook that the results would be made public within five business days
“We have successfully held online elections to the Public Anti-Corruption Council of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine,” she said.
The official reminded that the first vote had to be postponed due to a system failure.
“DDoS attacks, including from the enemy, who cannot hold fair elections in their country, did not stop us. During the voting, we blocked more than 1.1 million requests to the server that constituted a potential DDoS attack (including more than 300 thousand from Belarusian IP addresses). Thanks to the work of our Cyber Incident Response Center, the attackers did not manage to compromise the voting results,” she emphasized.
The Ministry of Defense announced that 101,215 Ukrainians voted.
“Special attention was paid to ensuring the possibility of voting for the military at the front. Thanks to access to the site through Starlink terminals and technical support, defenders were also able to take part in the election of the Anti-Corruption Council,” the ministry added.
They added that the results have been submitted to the Commission on Ensuring the Conduct of the Competition for verification and will be made public within five business days.
Who ran in the election?
40 candidates from 19 public associations took part in the competition.
Among them are veterans of the Russian-Ukrainian war, public figures Yuriy Hudymenko and Oleh Chernov; Oresta Brit, volunteer and head of the BON Charitable Foundation, advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Zaluzhnyi in 2022-2024; Tetyana Nikolayenko, journalist of the Censor.Net publication; Anastasia Shuba, lawyer and member of the NABU Public Control Council; Olena Tregub, co-founder and head of the NAKO organization that fights corruption in the national security sector, and others.
List of participants
Anti-Corruption Axe:
- Olena Nyshporka,
- Mykyta Solovyov,
- Anastasia Shuba
Ukrainian Bar Association:
- Andriy Romanchuk
Charitable Foundation “Charitable Association of the Nation”:
- Oresta Brit, former advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, volunteer
Anti-Corruption Bureau:
- Serhiy Rusakov
Veteran’s axe:
- Yuriy Hudymenko
- Mykyta Shtankov
All-Ukrainian Bureau of Lustration and Anti-Corruption:
- Rudolf Hakobyan
Detector of power:
- Veronika Hryshko
- Anna Yurchenko
Defense-E:
- Ruslan Melnyk
Kyiv Union of Veterans of the War with Russia:
- Oleksandr Olivinskyi,
- Oleksiy Svynarenko
People’s Anti-Corruption Oversight:
- Roman Kutnyi
- Oleg Rozum
National Anti-Corruption Center of Ukraine:
- Viacheslav Levchenko
- Tetiana Rybalko
National Center for Human Rights Protection:
- Hanna Ploska
- David Pshenychnyi,
- Yelyzaveta Yatsyniak
Independent Anti-Corruption Commission:
- Maksym Kostetskyi,
- Tetiana Nikolaienko,
- Olena Tregub
Together against corruption:
- Ihor Korolev
- Yevhenia Ryabeka,
- Yevhen Slesarenko
Union of Officers of Ukraine:
- Ostap Osinchuk
Statewatch:
- Kateryna Mitieva
- Inna Popovych,
Ukrainian Law Society:
- Viktor Bishchuk,
- Vitaliy Masyuk,
- Oleg Chernov,
DEURE Foundation:
- Anna Kalynchuk,
Center for Combating Raiding and Corruption:
- Oleksandr Gerashchenko,
- Hennadii Kryvosheia,
- Bohdan Yarova
Center for Public Control:
- Kateryna Datsenko,
- Anton Mykytyuk,
- Viktor Prudkovskyi
Unofficial voting results
Veteran Yuriy Hudymenko has released unofficial voting results. He received the largest number of votes, more than 65 thousand.
Other preliminary members of the Public Anti-Corruption Council under the Ministry of Defense are Tetyana Nikolayenko, Anastasia Shuba, Mykyta Solovyov, Mykyta Shtankov, Oresta Brit, Olena Nyshporka, Oleh Chernov, Maksym Kostetskyi, Viktor Bishchuk, Olena Tregub, Kateryna Datsenko, Anton Mykytyuk, Vitaliy Masyuk, and Viktor Prudkovskykh.
Hudymenko emphasized that the results are yet to be approved and published by the Ministry of Defense.
Voting scandal
During the re-vote for the Public Anti-Corruption Council at the Ministry of Defense, Bohdana Yarova, a civic activist who had previously worked with various military projects, received unexpectedly low support, although she was considered a well-known and energetic representative of the public sector and was the second most popular candidate in the previous vote.
Yarovaya has admitted that she lost, but she is obviously not going to accept it.
“I kept silent for a long time about what was going on behind the scenes of the voting for free work in the Anti-Corruption Council, I kept thinking that they would come to their senses. But no. I’ll gather my thoughts and write how technically you, the public, are n**** today,” the candidate wrote.
Later, she spoke about the violations. Yarovaya reminded that the Regulations stipulate that the candidates’ documents are reviewed by a commission approved by the Minister of Defense.
This time, the commission consisted of 7 people. 4 of them are affiliated with the civil society organizations that submitted the documents.
“The commission was supposed to review the documents for 5 days. Instead, it took over a month to review them.
I’m sitting near Vovchansk, I get calls and messages: ‘Yarova, you are being shot down by the commission, as I told you in my interview with Borislav Bereza. They didn’t risk shooting me down. You remember the elections of December 26, 2024. You also remember how the voting went. Here I would like to emphasize that my personal friends from the EU supported my team then,” the activist wrote.
Yarovaya also voiced her version of why the previous vote was canceled.
“On 12/26/2024, when the voting started, the server went down. You know this. It went down because people who really needed to get their people elected realized that everything was not going according to plan. At the same time, I was being blackmailed. I am more than sure that soon I will be able to voice the name of the person who did all this. But for now, I can’t. Next. I kept telling Kateryna Chernogorenko and Serhiy Stepanyan, the head of the anti-corruption department of the Ministry of Defense: “What are you doing, there is a complete connection of people there”. They told me: “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it,” she said.
Questions to the council: the majority is from Democratic Ax
The activist noted that most of the people on the successful team were members of the same party. “Democratic Ax.
“Even more so, in the vote on January 7, 2025, absolutely all known MEPs in full support of the other party. The Democratic Ax. Even my personal friends did not answer me. The entire EU party supported the Democratic Ax in its entirety. Dear friends. This is a specific lobbying of a specific political force.
You have created a small pocket public council. A public council, which, as you yourself say, was formed by a coalition. A team,” Yarovaya wrote.
She stated that the public council was composed of people who are connected to people in the field of defense procurement.
“The team members write that they came to control the Defense Ministry. What exactly do you want to control and what exactly do they want to influence? The conclusion of contracts in the defense sector? Do you consider this control? This is politics and open lobbying for the financial interests of certain groups. The country is at war. But the council is clearly filled with people who have the ears of people who make money in defense procurement,” the activist emphasized.
Yarovaya announced her refusal to make further attempts to join the council and questioned the very essence of the structure’s activities.
“I did not pass, but I do not need membership in such an anti-corruption council. All I have is my family and my good name. And I’m not ready to tarnish it in fraud. What are we fighting for then? What are people dying for? And one more thing. If the Minister of Defense does approve this composition of the Anti-Corruption Council, we will all see the light very quickly. For some, it’s war, for others, it’s their mother’s house,” the activist added.
Yarovaya also hinted at possible pressure or even threats against her or her family.
“The only thing I would like to add is that if something happens to me or my children, all the documents will be sent to all law enforcement agencies at once. I have already taken care of this,” she summarized.
Oksana Hryhorieva, Gender Advisor of the Land Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, also pointed to alleged violations during the competition.
Grigorieva claimed that she had put a mark of support opposite the names of candidates Yarova and Kryvoshei, but the system did not show that the votes for these people were taken into account.
“Imagine my surprise when I saw everyone I voted for in the voted list, except for Gennadiy Kryvosheya and Dana Yarova. How is this even possible? It is impossible to re-vote to add two more candidates, because this IP has already voted, but there are questions about where the people disappeared and who is to blame,” Grigorieva wrote.
Who wants to challenge the results of the voting to the Public Anti-Corruption Council at the Defense Ministry and why
After the preliminary data was made public, candidate Gennadiy Kryvosheya threatened to sue over alleged violations that accompanied the competition.
“I will go to court. After all, there are clear violations in the voting,” Kryvosheya wrote on Facebook.
The candidate called the violation not the voting process itself, but the list of candidates admitted to the competition, hinting at the overwhelming number of representatives of the Democratic Ax and a whole network of organizations close to it. For example, Yuriy Hudymenko, in addition to being the chairman of the board of Veteran’s Ax, is also a member of the board of the Center for Public Control, whose candidates also participated in the competition.
Tetyana Nikolayenko, a member of the Anti-Corruption Public Council of the Ministry of Defense, who was elected to the new council, said that they are now trying to change the election results through a complaint, using the provision of the law “On Public Procurement on Related Parties.”
“I’ll start with the background: to run for any city council election, you need to be nominated by an NGO. No more than three people. Veteran’s Ax and Anti-Corruption Ax participated in these elections. It is clear that they are related to Demosokyra. And everyone knows it. But in the elections, the Defense Intelligence Agency filed a complaint against 4 CSOs regarding compliance with the norm on related parties. In the context of these CSOs, from which different candidates were nominated, the only person who connects them is Taras Kotov, who is not participating in these elections,” she explained.
According to her, the coalition was not only for Demsoyra.
“Bohdana Yarova also had it. And all three organizations through which her candidates ran are affiliated with Oleksandr Herashchenko. Youcontrol is here to help. Moreover, some of the documents of Yarovaya’s team are written in the same way. The latter was the reason why it took three weeks from the moment the documents were submitted to the determination of the list of 40 candidates. Because the members of the competition commission did not know whether to disqualify or not. And to avoid scandals, they allowed everyone to write personal opinions. In general, it is completely strange and unprofessional to apply the rule on related parties in this context. It is not provided for by anything at all,” summarized Nikolayenko.
Given the public outcry over the formation of a new composition of the Anti-Corruption Council at the Ministry of Defense, the issue of re-election is becoming increasingly relevant. The independence and transparency of this body is a key requirement of society, especially in times of war, when every resource spent must be closely monitored.
It is currently unknown whether the Ministry of Defense plans to announce a second competition or change the selection rules. However, according to the procedure, the official results must be published within 5 days after the end of the voting. This means that the final composition of the council and the ministry’s decision will be known in the near future.
