Ukraine’s defense ministry reschedules election of anti-corruption council members

Ukraine’s defense ministry is facing unpleasant questions after it annulled the results of the vote for members of the Public Anti-Corruption Council and postponed the new election on Thursday.

The ministry blamed technical issues, citing “website instability and user authentication errors”,  and promised it will fix it before the rescheduled vote.

“The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine sincerely apologizes for the technical malfunctions that occurred during the online voting for members of the Public Anti-Corruption Council,” the ministry stated.

The vote is now set to take place on January 7, 2025.  The move raise eyebrows with some civil activists calling out the defense ministry over what they call a ‘deliberate disruption’.  Among those is Yurii Hudymenko, a war veteran and Democratic Axe civic group leader, who is aso running for a position in the recently established council that must oversee procurement programs in the ministry.

Hudymenko argued that some individuals reported their votes before the official start of the election, suggesting irregularities in the process. “It’s as if the ballots were already in the box before the voting even began,” he added.

In my previous column, I wrote about social innovations in Ukraine. Those innovations are part of civic resilience and the democratization of security, which Europe is paying close attention to right now. The EU is trying to work out how to spread responsibility for its own security across society as a whole, rather than leaving it to institutions alone. It is looking for concrete ways to bring ordinary people into the work of defense and resistance.

Petro Poroshenko’s lawyers have appealed to the High Anti-Corruption Court demanding that NABU be obligated to register proceedings regarding the fact of exerting influence on the court and to recognize Petro Poroshenko as a victim in the case of the Deputy Head of the Office of the President, Iryna Mudra, due to her pressure on Supreme Court judges who were considering a lawsuit to overturn sanctions.

Internationally recognized brands and financial institutions should direct capital to Ukraine now, not waiting for the hostilities to end. This was emphasized by Rinat Akhmetov, president of FC Shakhtar, during a working visit to UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, where he met with UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin.

In recent days, Moscow’s official rhetoric has been dominated by hysteria over the decision of…

In 2025, the deadliest year yet for civilians, Ukraine’s three largest charitable foundations raised a record 105.9 billion hryvnias. It is more than the years 2022–2024 combined. According to the UN, humanitarian aid in Ukraine was delivered by more than 450 organisations, reaching five million people over the course of the year. Civic foundations hold licences to purchase lethal weapons, which is a function states have monopolised for centuries. These record sums were underwritten by international government grants, which means foreign states now channel billions directly through Ukrainian civic funds, bypassing inter-state channels. It is hard to imagine a stronger institutional trust in civil society.