25 April, 11:47
Former Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Stanislav Bronevytsky has published new fragments of the so-called "Mindich tapes" — recordings from the Kyiv apartment of businessman Tymur Mindich that formed the evidentiary backbone of NABU's Operation Midas. The materials, released via Bronevytsky's Telegram channel, were obtained from sources within law enforcement.
This time, the cast includes Mindich himself, then-Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, head of the Defense Procurement Agency Arsen Zhumaldinov — and, in absentia, prominent public "anti-corruption activist" and Victory Drones project director Maria Berlinska.
The conversation is dated July 8. Three episodes, each more telling than the last.
In the first, Mindich asks Umerov whether a certain Mykola could be placed "somewhere" — willing to work for three thousand dollars. In the same breath, a price list emerges: "Igor — 50, Masha — 20, Ira — 50." When the minister asks whether Masha is already receiving payments, the answer explains the logic: "she pushed Defense City through." In other words, the payment is not for a position — it is for a lobbying result.
Defense City is a proposed Ukrainian defense-industrial hub that Berlinska publicly championed. According to the recordings, she was receiving regular payments from Mindich for that advocacy. Bronevytsky refers to her, with evident irony, as an "anti-corruption activist" — though Berlinska has never had any institutional affiliation with NABU or the SAP.
The second episode is starker. Umerov, discussing Berlinska: "she just lives there. Are we paying her a salary?" — "You're paying her." Who lives where exactly is left unstated. The division of financial responsibility between a private businessman and the sitting defense minister speaks for itself.
The third episode concerns body armor. Mindich asks Umerov to "resolve the issue." Umerov calls Zhumaldinov. While the two negotiate what exactly is required, Mindich drops a line in the background: "300 million is invested there, half of it my money." This is the same procurement tender by the Defense Technologies agency for Israeli-manufactured body armor worth 225 million hryvnias in February, in which the company Milikon UA appears as a participant.
For those who missed the earlier installments: the defense-related portions of the Mindich recordings are precisely what NABU Director Semen Kryvonos and SAP Chief Oleksandr Klymenko chose not to make public. What NABU officially released covered the energy scheme — kickbacks of 10 to 15 percent on Energoatom contracts, a laundering operation run through the office of FSB asset Andrii Derkach on Volodymyrska Street, shell companies registered in the Marshall Islands and Saint Kitts and Nevis. Tymur Mindich — codenamed "Carlson" in the files — received a notice of suspicion, then left for Israel before searches could be conducted.
The defense episodes never surfaced. That is not an accident.
NABU released exactly enough material to construct a picture of a successful operation. What remained in the drawer was everything that made the picture inconvenient. The fragments now emerging come from a former SAP prosecutor who was forced out of the office for refusing to endorse a plea deal with Kausman — a deal Klymenko pushed through following a conversation with parliamentary faction leader David Arakhamia.
Three questions remain unanswered — and they are not rhetorical.
First: when will Mindich face suspicion under Article 344 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — interference in the activities of a public official? The recordings show him directly negotiating payment schedules and conditions for "resolving issues" with the defense minister.
Second: if the Office of the President has effectively monopolized Ukraine's volunteer sector, media space, and anti-corruption civil society — placing its own people in each role — what exactly remains of independent civic life?
Third: why have recordings documenting the scale of corruption inside Ukraine's defense establishment not been made available to the public? And who, precisely, benefits from that silence?