Ukraine officials say Zelenskyy's ex-chief of staff is a suspect in a money-laundering probe

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Two national agencies fighting corruption in Ukraine named President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s former chief of staff as an official suspect in a major graft investigation. They said Tuesday that the Ukrainian leader is not under suspicion in the case.

Andriy Yermak is suspected in an alleged 460-million-hryvnia ($10.5 million) money-laundering scheme, the agencies announced late Monday.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy met with the CEO of Palantir Technologies, part of Ukraine’s growing cooperation with the U.S. defense sector, as a three-day U.S.-brokered ceasefire that decreased the fighting but failed to stop it altogether ended Monday.

Russia’s invasion of its neighbor is now in its fifth year, with no sign of a peace settlement within reach.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office said in a Telegram announcement that the investigation into Yermak is ongoing.

The move is a step short of formally charging Yermak, who resigned in November. He was the country’s lead negotiator in talks with the U.S and left during the scandal that brought the biggest threat to Zelenskyy’s government since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The investigation is deeply embarrassing for the Ukrainian leader as he pushes for his country’s admission to the European Union, a process that will likely take years. Endemic corruption is one of the obstacles slowing Ukraine’s admission.

Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council and a key negotiator in U.S. diplomatic peace efforts, has been questioned and is a witness in the case revolving around a luxury real estate development near the capital, prosecutors told a media briefing in Kyiv.

Several other senior officials, including former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Chernyshov, are “implicated” in the case, according to the prosecutors, as is prominent Ukrainian businessman Tymur Mindich.

The graft investigation also involves suspected wrongdoing in Ukraine’s energy sector, the defense industry, and the procurement of drones and other military equipment, they said.

Yermak was a trusted confidant of Zelenskyy, who resisted persistent pressure to replace him, and a powerful figure in the government. Investigators searched his home in November.

Zelenskyy made no public comment on the anti-graft agencies’ announcement, but his press officer, Dmytro Lytvyn, said: “The investigation is ongoing, it’s early to draw conclusions.”

Yermak’s attorney, Ihor Fomin, called the suspicion notice groundless and denied his client’s involvement in the alleged laundering of 460 million hryvnias ($10.5 million) through an elite construction project outside Kyiv.

“In my view, this entire situation has been provoked by public pressure,” Fomin said in an interview with Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne.

A decision on whether to bring formal charges against Yermak could still take months.

Zelenskyy said Tuesday he met in Kyiv with Alex Karp, as part of Ukraine’s growing cooperation with the U.S. defense sector.

The Ukrainian leader said in a social media post that Ukraine and Palantir “can be useful to each other.”

“We discussed directions of technological development both in the context of combat operations and civilian needs,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app.

Palantir Technologies is an artificial intelligence software company that helps global defense agencies. It specializes in software platforms that collate and analyze large volumes of data and has partnered with Ukraine for several years.

AI can help combatants quickly sift and decipher a huge volume of battlefield information, enabling more accurate attacks, among other things.

Ukraine Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said after meeting with Karp that cooperation with the company is giving Ukraine a technological edge in the war.

It has enabled detailed analysis of air attacks, AI solutions for handling large volumes of reconnaissance data, and the integration of technology in the planning of Ukraine’s deep-strike operations on Russian soil, Fedorov said on Telegram.

Also, Ukraine and Palantir have created a platform for developers to get battlefield data to train AI models, with more than 100 companies currently involved, he said.

Ukraine offered to extend the pause in hostilities, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said. But he reported Tuesday that Russia launched over 200 drones against Ukraine overnight, striking civilian infrastructure and killing at least one person and wounding another six.

“It is time to strengthen our positions and force Moscow to end the war,” Sybiha said on X. Russian President Vladimir Putin “must realize that it will only get worse for him.”

Western analysts and officials say Ukraine’s battlefield position has recently improved as it deploys cutting-edge drone technology to hold Russia’s bigger army at bay.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who visited the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro regions of Ukraine on Tuesday, said he thinks that “the Ukrainians really have momentum” at present.

“Russia is having a phase of weakness, economically as well as in domestic political terms and on the battlefield,” Pistorius said, according to German news agency dpa.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its air defenses intercepted 30 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions on the border with Ukraine.

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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine