A €600 million ($707 million) deal to expand Ukraine’s nuclear capacity collapsed in April when Bulgaria unexpectedly walked away. Now a Ukrainian MP claims that was the point—that he and allies gutted the legislation to block what he calls a kickback scheme run by President Zelenskyy’s inner circle.
2,200 megawatts
Yaroslav Zheleznyak’s claim matters for one reason: the alleged conspirators he named in February were confirmed in November by anti-corruption investigators. If Zheleznyak is right about the sabotage, Ukraine avoided a massive theft while Russia bombs its power grid. If he’s exaggerating, Ukraine lost 2,200 megawatts of nuclear capacity—enough electricity for a million homes—for nothing.
Ukraine generates over half its power from nuclear plants.
Russians have struck its grid relentlessly, leaving citizens with 12-hour blackouts. The Khmelnytskyi plant in western Ukraine was supposed to expand. Old Soviet-era reactor equipment sitting in Bulgarian warehouses could have made that happen within years. Instead, the deal died, and Ukrainians froze.
Russian strike triggers blackout in Khmelnytskyi Oblast, home to key Ukrainian nuclear plant
The claim
On 29 December, Zheleznyak, an opposition lawmaker from the Holos party, posted a video claiming credit for killing it.
“The scheme that Mindich and Galushchenko were pushing would have let them skim 10-15% on construction worth hundreds of billions,” Zheleznyak said, naming businessman Timur Mindich and then-Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko. “And yes, the President personally demanded parliament urgently pass this law.”
Parliament voted 261-0 in February to authorize the purchase. But Zheleznyak claims he and allies rewrote the text the night before—permitting Ukraine to buy the reactors but not install them. Construction would have required a separate law, which never came.
“After the vote, the President’s Office reviewed the text and realized the main thing was missing—the ability to steal anything,” Zheleznyak said. “Bulgaria then announced they’d changed their mind about selling.”
Some of this checks out. The legislative procedure was unusual—multiple outlets reported that an unrelated business bill had its entire text replaced before the final reading. Zelenskyy did publicly back the project, calling it “a key to energy independence,” The Kyiv Independent reported.
And Bulgaria did walk away in April, though Deputy PM Atanas Zafirov cited Bulgarian energy security, not Ukrainian legal games.
And yes, the corruption network Zheleznyak named proved real.
What NABU found
In November, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau unveiled Operation Midas—15 months of surveillance, 1,000 hours of recordings, and charges against seven people running a protection racket at Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear operator.
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Contractors paid 10-15% kickbacks or watched their payments freeze. Mindich, identified as the scheme’s organizer, fled Ukraine hours before raids. Halushchenko resigned.
The money trail led somewhere troubling.
NABU found the laundering operation in a Kyiv office owned by the family of Andrii Derkach—a former Ukrainian MP whom the US Treasury sanctioned in 2020 as “an active Russian agent.” Derkach fled to Russia in 2023 and now serves as a senator in Moscow.
Some of the stolen funds allegedly flowed toward his network.
During a war.
What remains unproven is Zheleznyak’s specific claim: that he orchestrated the legislative sabotage, which led to Bulgaria’s loss of interest. No other MPs have confirmed participating in the rewrite. Bulgaria’s stated reasons mentioned nothing about Ukrainian legal technicalities.
Also, Zheleznyak offers no direct evidence that Zelenskyy knew of or supported any corruption scheme—he implies it but doesn’t prove it.
Zheleznyak warned about Mindich and Halushchenko before investigators confirmed them.
That earns him some credibility. Whether it validates his account of the mechanism is another question.
What’s certain: Ukraine needed nuclear capacity. The deal collapsed. The men Zheleznyak accused are gone—Mindich is hiding abroad, and Halushchenko is out of government. And Ukrainians still sit in the dark.
