Imagine scrolling through social media after another anxious day of war news and seeing a video that appears to confirm the worst suspicion about your government: thick stacks of cash, reportedly more than $140 million, packed into fridge boxes at the home of the man who until recently ran Ukraine’s defence procurement. It feels like the kind of bombshell that could change everything overnight. But Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, known as NABU, says the whole thing never happened. In a statement issued on September 25, the bureau said the footage was a fake created using artificial intelligence, and that no search of Arsen Zhumadilov’s premises had taken place. Zhumadilov served as head of the Defence Procurement Agency until September 1. The clip, which began spreading online on September 24, even showed a box marked “For the servant of the people”—a sarcastic jab at President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose political party and former television series share that name. The slogan was a deliberate signal, meant to make the fake feel internally authentic to Ukrainian audiences. NABU responded firmly, warning that material of this kind is designed to discredit the bureau, undermine trust in state institutions, and damage Ukraine’s image abroad. It also appealed to citizens to rely on official channels and not to share unverified “sensations.” For anyone following Ukrainian affairs, the warning is understandable. The fake did not need to be true; it only needed to be plausible. And in an information environment poisoned by years of hybrid war, plausibility is enough to cause real damage. The video exploited genuine public anger about corruption at a time when people are exhausted, frightened, and hungry for answers. That does not excuse the lie—it explains its sinister power. The irony is that the video used NABU’s own name, making it look as though the agency had conducted a dramatic raid and then leaked the shocking footage. In reality, the agency was left in the absurd position of denying a search that viewers had practically seen with their own eyes. Deepfakes have moved beyond political memes into the realm of organised disinformation, and this clip was a textbook example: a local detail, a familiar face, a sensational sum, and a partisan slogan all wrapped in the visual language of an official operation.
Disinformation rarely works in a vacuum, and this fake did not travel alone. According to Ukrainian outlet ZN.ua, pro-Russian and foreign media were among the first to spread the claim, giving it an air of legitimacy before official voices could push back. A day before NABU’s denial, the story had already been published as fact by nvukraine.com, a website carrying the branding of the Ukrainian outlet NV—yet NV’s own English-language edition never ran any such story. In other words, a lookalike or repurposed platform helped give the fabrication a familiar name and a false archive. This is a classic information-operation tactic: dress up a lie in the logos and typography of a trusted newsroom, then let algorithms and anxious citizens do the rest. The timing was also no accident. The fake landed at a moment when Ukraine’s anti-graft agencies are navigating the treacherous waters of Operation Midas, an investigation built on secretly recorded tapes that have reached into Zelenskiy’s own inner circle. At the same time, the government is scrambling to plug a hole in its defence budget, and international donors are asking hard questions about where their money goes. In such a climate, a video of a former procurement official hoarding $140 million is not just a rumour—it is a strategic weapon. It feeds existing narratives of official corruption, complicates Ukraine’s case for continued Western support, and distracts from the actual, painstaking work of accountability. The people behind NABU know that they are fighting two wars at once: one on the front lines, and one for the confidence of a battered public. The second war is harder to see, but no less real. Every fake video, every leaked recording, every half-verified accusation chips away at the civic trust that Ukraine’s defenders are trying to preserve.
One figure caught in the middle of this storm is Arsen Zhumadilov himself. Before the AI video turned him into an internet sensation, he had already been drawn into a real, flesh-and-blood inquiry. Zhumadilov ran the Defence Procurement Agency until September 1, and in May he was questioned by NABU as a witness in connection with recordings that allegedly discussed body armour contracts. According to the Kyiv Independent, he acknowledged meeting businessman Timur Mindich and then defence minister Rustem Umerov in March 2025, but he denied any wrongdoing. He has not been charged with anything. That distinction matters. In a country at war, procurement is one of the most sensitive and scrutinised jobs there is. Every accusation of graft in the defence sector resonates far beyond one individual: it raises doubts about whether soldiers have enough equipment, whether allies can trust Kyiv’s accounting, and whether the state is truly on the side of its citizens. At the same time, the lack of formal charges against Zhumadilov is a reminder that suspicion is not guilt. The Operation Midas tapes, however uncomfortable they are for the political elite, are part of an institutional process that is supposed to separate rumour from evidence. But the process is messy, and the human cost is real. Officials under investigation live under a cloud; witnesses like Zhumadilov face public trial by media; and ordinary Ukrainians, who just want their country to survive and win, are left to sift through competing claims with incomplete information. In that vacuum, AI fakes are especially dangerous. They do not simply report on corruption—they create a parallel reality in which every official is corrupt, every institution is rotten, and the whole idea of holding power to account becomes just another weapon in an information war. The truth of Zhumadilov’s own case will be determined by evidence, not by viral clips; but by the time the truth arrives, the damage to reputations may already be done.
Meanwhile, a separate drama has been unfolding around Ukraine’s former Prosecutor General, Ruslan Kravchenko. On September 23, Ukrainska Pravda reported that Kravchenko and his wife have registered as residents of Vienna, at an address in central Vienna: 7 Jordangasse. But that address is not an apartment or a family home. It is the office of CS Corporate Services, a company that sells registered addresses, secretarial services, and ready-made shelf companies. The discovery suggests the registration is more about paperwork than about living arrangements—a detail that might seem mundane but carries a distinctly bad smell. Kravchenko resigned as Prosecutor General on September 7, just days after NABU searched his office as part of an investigation into an alleged protection racket for scam call centres run out of the Prosecutor General’s Office. In that investigation, a senior prosecutor described as Kravchenko’s “confidant” was charged. The timing of Kravchenko’s departure and his subsequent movements have raised eyebrows. He left Ukraine on September 14, ostensibly to attend a conference in Paris. But when the Kyiv Independent contacted the organisers, they said they had not expected him to attend at all. So what was the trip really about? No one has provided a satisfying answer. For a senior official who had just resigned amid an investigation, the choice to leave the country—and the discovery of a nominal address in Vienna provided by a commercial services firm—hardly inspires confidence. It also feeds a broader narrative that some powerful figures are finding ways to put distance between themselves and the legal consequences of their time in office. Kravchenko’s lawyers might have explanations, but the public, with limited access to the inner workings of high-level anti-corruption probes, is left to connect dots that may or may not form a coherent picture. The fact that this story emerged in Ukraine’s own media, rather than in a foreign paper, is a small sign of institutional resilience.
The circumstances surrounding Kravchenko’s departure are even murkier because of what he did on his way out. On the same day he left Ukraine, September 14, he approved charges against NABU’s director, Semen Kryvonos, and an unnamed close associate of Oleksandr Klymenko, head of the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). The move was widely seen as a vendetta—retaliation against the very people who had been investigating him. That same night, his office cancelled the charges. Parliament dismissed Kravchenko on September 15, and after he failed to return when his official trip ended, he quit the prosecution service altogether on September 22. The whiplash is almost nauseating: charges approved, then annulled; a resignation, then a disappearance; a trip that was not really a conference. Into this chaos stepped Anton Kovalsky, the chief prosecutor of Khmelnytska oblast, whom Zelenskiy appointed as acting prosecutor general on September 17. But Kravchenko is not the only powerful Ukrainian now based abroad. He follows MP Vadym Stolar, who was charged in absentia in August in a corporate raiding case that reached the president’s office. By the time the charges were announced, Stolar had already been out of the country for more than a month. For many Ukrainians, the pattern is all too familiar: investigations, charges, then a quiet trip to a foreign capital, a registered address at a commercial services company, and a legal battle waged from afar. It is a story of institutions trying to do their work while the people they target slip through cracks in the system—or, depending on one’s perspective, a story of politically motivated prosecutors going after their rivals and then facing the consequences. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but the judicial and political drama unfolding in Kyiv is unmistakable. Each twist adds to the sense that the rule of law in Ukraine is not a finished product, but a work in progress—often ugly, sometimes infuriating, and always under stress.
What does all of this add up to? On the surface, it is a series of news items: an AI fake, a witness questioning, a prosecutor’s departure, a registration in Vienna, a cancellation of charges. But underneath the headlines is a much more human story about trust, exhaustion, and the frightening power of modern disinformation. For Ukrainians, every fake video, every escaped official, every cancelled charge chips away at the belief that their institutions can protect them. Yet the fact that NABU openly identified the video as fake, that journalists at ZN.ua and Ukrainska Pravda are digging through registries and contacting conference organisers, that the Kyiv Independent is tracking every twist—that is the counterweight. Accountability is not a straight line. It is a slow, messy, often contradictory process in which officials sometimes behave badly, prosecutors sometimes overreach, and the public sometimes has to tolerate uncertainty. The human response to that uncertainty is often to seek simple villains and easy stories. That is exactly what the creators of the AI video were counting on. By understanding how the fake was made, who amplified it, and why it was timed to land at this fragile moment, citizens can arm themselves against the next fabrication. The fight against corruption and the fight against disinformation are not separate battles; they are two fronts in the same struggle for a functioning, accountable state. No institution is perfect, and Ukraine’s anti-corruption machinery is still young, overburdened, and operating under the extreme conditions of war. But the willingness to call out a fake, to ask uncomfortable questions about a prosecutor general’s Vienna registration, to report on charges that were approved and then cancelled on the same day—that willingness is a form of resilience. It will not satisfy everyone. It will not produce a neat ending. But it is the only path that keeps the door open to the possibility of justice, one hard fact at a time. The ultimate test for Ukraine is not whether it perfectly avoids scandal, but whether its people and institutions can endure the constant pressure of cynicism without losing the ability to believe in each other.