Who set the trap for Ukraine’s ‘Iron Lady’? The trail leads from her office to Zelensky’s top spy.

“We want to break the majority.” According to secret recordings released by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), this was the directive Yulia Tymoshenko gave to a group of deputies she allegedly paid to sabotage Servant of the People, the nation’s ruling political party. The scheme, uncovered during a January raid that found $40,000 in cash in her office, was ostensibly designed to paralyze the Verkhovna Rada and block critical defense appointments. Now released on bail of 33 million hryvnias ($770,000), Tymoshenko faces charges that frame her not just as a corrupt official, but as an active saboteur of the state. Meduza summarizes reporting on her case from Ukrainska Pravda and looks back on the career of a woman who has been a fixture of Ukrainian politics for three decades, both in high office and behind bars.

Tymoshenko insists she was entrapped by lawmaker Ihor Kopytin, claiming he needed a high-profile target to bury his own case with the bureau, though there is no public record of any such charges against him. Ukrainska Pravda reports that Kopytin is also an active captain in Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence and a close associate of Kyrylo Budanov, the former intelligence chief who recently became President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff. According to sources, Kopytin installed surveillance equipment at the headquarters of Tymoshenko’s political party, Batkivshchyna. The wiretaps purportedly captured Tymoshenko organizing a payroll system in which deputies would receive $10,000 per month to vote against various government initiatives, coordinated via the encrypted messaging app Signal.

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The alleged bribery appears targeted specifically at disrupting personnel changes in Ukraine’s executive branch. The raid on Tymoshenko’s office took place the same evening the Rada failed to approve a major government reshuffle, including the appointment of Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov as the new defense minister. According to investigators, Tymoshenko’s goal was to recruit enough deputies from Zelensky’s party, Servant of the People, to deny the president a working majority. The stalled appointments went through the following day, reportedly after Budanov personally intervened to secure the necessary votes.

Questions remain about the source of Tymoshenko’s funding, as the seized $40,000 is believed to be only a fraction of the scheme’s required capital. Ukrainska Pravda outlines several theories circulating in Kyiv. One suggests Budanov’s predecessor, Andriy Yermak, may have utilized Tymoshenko to weaken rivals. Another theory points to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who reacted to the news of Tymoshenko’s arrest with the remark: “All this fuss over 40 grand, and they had to go bother an elderly woman?” A third theory proposes “Russian financing,” noting that Tymoshenko has criticized Ukraine’s deepening dependence on the West since the war, though no direct evidence has linked the money to Moscow.

The bribery case marks another critical juncture for a politician whose career spans the collapse of the USSR and imprisonment under Viktor Yanukovych. Once known as the “Gas Princess” for her dominance of Ukraine’s energy sector in the 1990s, Tymoshenko has repeatedly reinvented herself to survive. Unlike previous politically charged trials, this investigation is procedurally “open-and-shut,” according to Ukrainska Pravda’s sources in Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies. With a documented cash transfer and clear wiretap evidence, insiders believe this prosecution — unlike the dozen criminal cases Tymoshenko has faced before — is highly likely to result in a conviction.