Ebola Spreads In DR Congo As Aid Agencies Brace For Child Victims

Health teams in personal protective equipment (PPE) respond to the Ebola outbreak in eastern DR Congo. Photo Credit: WHO/Joël Lumbala

June 13, 2026 
UN News
By Daniel Johnson

The deadly Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is continuing to spread with a spike in child infections an increasingly likely scenario in the days ahead, UN agencies said on Friday.

“Every day, cases are being identified in new health zones. And that reflects really the scale of this outbreak, a scale that is much bigger than what is being detected and the high mobility of the population in this part of the DRC,” said Dr Olivier le Polain, who heads up epidemiology and analytics at the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the approximately three weeks since the fast-moving outbreak was confirmed, the DRC health authorities have reported 676 cases and 136 deaths from the rare and deadly Bundibugyo species of Ebola virus.

Infections have been identified in a zone spanning from Aru in the north of Ituri province to Miti Murhesa in South Kivu, some 1,000 kilometres. “And we have 34 health zones affected as of yesterday, so, those health zones [with Ebola] continue to expand, with new areas in North Kivu which also reported [cases] yesterday,” Dr le Polain told journalists in Geneva, via videolink from Beni.

Those leading the response stressed that many youngsters in the region are malnourished and unvaccinated against preventable illness. T

his means that they are extremely vulnerable to disease in the resource-rich region where a humanitarian crisis is already playing out, caused by decades of fighting between government forces and armed militia.

Households the new target

To date, most infections have been among adults going about their daily lives, “but as the outbreak evolves, we must be prepared for increasing household transmission which means we may see more children affected in the days ahead”, warned Dr Douglas Noble, UNICEF Global Lead for Public Health Emergencies and Global Incident Manager for Ebola.

“These are already very vulnerable children, so the capacity for this community to absorb any additional stressors was already stretched to breaking point,” he said, noting that more than half of children under five in Ituri province are “chronically malnourished”.
Zero dose

More than one in five are also “zero dose” children, meaning that they have never had their first dose of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine.

Estimating the number of children who may be affected is problematic because sufficient surveillance tracking data is not yet available.

Nonetheless, past Ebola outbreaks in DRC have shown that children “made up a significant share of cases and an even greater share of deaths, with the youngest facing the highest fatality rates and many left orphaned or separated from caregivers”, Dr Noble explained.

As part of its six-month response to help 3.7 million people, the agency has dispatched eight transport flights with more than 100 tonnes of emergency humanitarian supplies to DRC, with support from the European Union.

The emergency cargo includes personal protective equipment for frontline health workers, medicines, hygiene materials and medical supplies to confront the virus in affected communities.

‘Schools can stay open’

Although Ebola can be lethal, it transmits very differently from COVID and commonly via body fluids, so children who can go to school should continue to do so, the UNICEF official stressed.

“There’s no reason for a school to close. Infection prevention and control measures do have to be taken and there does have to be education within the school, amongst the teachers and the staff and amongst the children.”

Unlike for Ebola-Zaire strains of the disease, there are currently no approved Bundibugyo virus-specific therapeutics or vaccines. This highlights the need for greater support for surveillance efforts to contain transmission, said Dr le Polain. “We’re now at just over 70 per cent in terms of the contacts that are being appropriately traced. That’s a huge improvement from where we were about a week or two ago, but it’s still too low to ensure appropriate control.”

Improving local testing capacity is another key factor in overcoming the health threat as the full scale of the outbreak is “not yet clear”, the WHO official explained. He noted that in Beni a testing laboratory processed 500 tests on Thursday alone. “That will really help get clarity about the scale of the outbreak in Beni as well,” he added.

For its part, UNICEF has also deployed more than 1,600 community health workers and mobilisers, and 24 decontamination teams, already reaching more than 160,000 households.

“We can spare children the worst of this outbreak. Fast detection, strong paediatric care, monitoring of contacts and communities that are informed and engaged can help bring this outbreak under control,” said Dr Noble. “What we now need are the resources, humanitarian access and the trusted communities to succeed.”

Ebola outbreak spreads in DRC as misinformation hampers response

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have launched an online campaign to tackle growing mistrust surrounding a deadly Ebola outbreak. The World Health Organization (WHO) says misinformation is hampering efforts to contain the haemorrhagic fever, which broke out in the eastern province of Ituri on 15 May.


Issued on: 12/06/2026 - RFI

Red Cross workers carry the body of a person who died of Ebola into a coffin at a health centre in Rwampara, Ituri Province, DR Congo, Wednesday, 20 May 2026. © AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa

The WHO has declared an international health emergency over the outbreak. Africa CDC said on 12 June that Congo's 17th Ebola outbreak remains far from under control and continues to spread.

The outbreak has now caused 676 confirmed infections and 136 confirmed deaths, up from 635 cases and 114 deaths reported earlier.

The epicentre is in Ituri province, where poor roads and insecurity linked to armed groups have made access difficult.

At the start of the outbreak, only three health zones were affected. Africa CDC says that figure has now risen to 27, and has doubled in the past week alone.

Neighbouring Uganda has also recorded 19 cases, including two deaths, in nearly a month, with almost all involving Congolese nationals who crossed the border.

Surge in misinformation

A wave of misinformation has spread online and in village squares, with some people blaming witchcraft for sudden deaths while others believe Ebola is a hoax designed to attract foreign aid.

Ebola, which spreads through close contact and bodily fluids, has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years. There is no approved vaccine or specific treatment for the Bundibugyo strain behind the current outbreak.

Experts say misinformation accompanied earlier Ebola outbreaks but has grown in recent years with the rise of social media.

The NGO ActionAid estimates that in Ituri province, nearly one in three people does not believe Ebola is real.

The main challenge remains identifying and monitoring people who may have been exposed to the virus. Africa CDC estimates that more than 20,000 contacts may need monitoring, but only 4,955 have been identified so far.

Treatment is being delayed because many patients seek care only at a very late stage, said Saani Yakubu, ActionAid's country director.

The misinformation also makes it harder to trace contacts because families withhold information and health workers fear visiting homes.

To tackle the problem, the government has launched a social media campaign to debunk myths about transmission and encourage people to stay away from dead bodies despite traditional burial rituals.

The Congolese Health Ministry has announced a rapid-test centre through the RadiOne platform in Mongwalu, one of the health zones affected by the Bundibugyo strain, to quickly isolate infected people and prevent further transmission.

Trust crisis

False claims range from denying the disease exists to accusing authorities of inventing it for financial gain, epidemiologist Hemes Nkwa told AFP.

The problem goes beyond a lack of information and reflects a deeper crisis of trust, she said.

"In the DRC, several Ebola outbreaks have taken place in settings shaped by insecurity, political tensions, poverty, and sometimes longstanding distrust of institutions," Nkwa said.

Rumours often fill a gap, helping people make sense of fear or regain a sense of control over the narrative, she said.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned that "misinformation is almost as dangerous as the virus itself, and spreads just as fast".

Community response

The solution is to rebuild trust by working closely with communities, Yakubu said, including training ambassadors who can "share the information in their local languages".

Nkwa said community leaders, survivors and traditional healers, who have "strong social credibility", can also help.

"When they become allies, their influence can significantly boost the public health response," she said.

The WHO says the public health risk is very high in the Democratic Republic of Congo, high at the regional level and low globally.

Among the most recent deaths were two babies from an orphanage in Bunia, in Ituri province.

Buswaza was one of the youngest confirmed victims of the outbreak, dying at just two weeks old in May after losing her mother to Ebola.

The WHO said Ebola has been detected in amniotic fluid and the placenta, making them a likely source of transmission during Buswaza's birth.

Six other babies were identified as suspected Ebola cases at the orphanage, which cares for 69 children.

Another baby, an orphan nicknamed Cherie, was less than one year old when she died on 10 June.

Children account for nearly one fifth of confirmed Ebola cases since the outbreak began on 15 May, according to preliminary Unicef data.

The WHO says children make up a smaller share of cases than other age groups, but the current Bundibugyo strain, which is rare, has been less studied and is less understood in terms of its impact on children.

The WHO and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Protection launched a €445 million plan on Friday to fight the outbreak over the next six months.

US Ebola facility in Kenya fuels anger in a country with no cases

With no recorded cases of Ebola, many Kenyans are struggling to understand why their government is allowing the United States to build an Ebola facility in their country to treat US citizens. Despite protests and criticism, the Kenyan government has vowed to press on.


Issued on: 06/06/2026 - RFI

Demonstrators participate during a protest against a US-backed Ebola quarantine plan on the establishment of a facility to host Americans exposed to Ebola, in Nanyuki town, in Laikipia County, Kenya, on 1 June, 2026. REUTERS - John Muchucha

The centre at Nanyuki, near the Laikipia military base 190km north of Nairobi, is set to quarantine Americans arriving from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, which is battling a major Ebola outbreak.

The facility will have 50 isolation beds and be managed by US staff. A US diplomatic source said it was nearing completion and currently had no patients.

Hundreds of Kenyans have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest against the plan, arguing that the country should not be asked to host people exposed to a disease it has never recorded.

Public anger

"Kenya is not an American colony!" protesters chanted on Tuesday as they carried an Ebola coffin to the health ministry.

"If Ebola is too dangerous for Americans, it's also too dangerous for us," protesters from Nanyuki told RFI.

Two people were killed in central Kenya after police opened fire on Tuesday, Patrick Wahome, one of the organisers of the march, said. A security source also said two people had died but did not specify the cause of death.

There is also anger over what critics see as the neo-colonial nature of the project, with Washington refusing to allow Ebola patients into its own territory while sending them to Kenya.

A demonstrator in a protest against the US-backed Ebola quarantine plan to establish a 50-bed facility at a Kenyan air force base, in Nanyuki town, in Laikipia County, Kenya, on 1 June, 2026. REUTERS - John Muchucha

Laikipia is already home to a long-standing British army base that has brought prosperity to the area but has also been linked to incidents of rape and murder involving local women.

"The proposed establishment of the Ebola quarantine hospital in Laikipia is against the Madaraka [self-governance] principle... That is neo-colonialism," Laikipia Governor Mutula Kilonzo Junior said in a speech.

Kahura Mundia, deputy chairperson of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union, told Citizen TV that allowing Ebola patients to travel beyond the borders of the DRC and Uganda could contribute to spreading the disease further if countries were not properly prepared.

Opposition MP Willis Evans Otieno questioned Kenya's decision to host suspected Ebola cases, saying that "the powers pushing for this arrangement will be the first to restrict our movements" if a case were detected.
Court challenge

A Kenyan court temporarily suspended the plan on 28 May following a complaint by civil society organisation Katiba Institute – a legal advocacy group.

On Tuesday, Kenya's High Court blocked the proposed facility for another three weeks, and ordered the government to disclose its agreement with Washington.

Judge Patricia Nyaundi barred the government from taking any steps to build or begin operating the facility before the case is resolved.

The judge also ordered the government to disclose all agreements and operating protocols related to the facility within seven days and scheduled the next hearing for 23 June.

The protest turned violent in Nanyuki town, in Laikipia County, Kenya, on 1 June, 2026. REUTERS - John Muchucha

Conflicting accounts

The US government says it is continuing to build the facility despite the protests and court rulings.

US military aircraft have continued flying in staff and equipment in recent days, US officials and diplomatic sources said. Data from flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed at least nine aircraft had arrived since 24 May.

The facility is intended for Americans who have been exposed to the virus but do not have symptoms. US officials said patients who develop symptoms would be transferred to other countries for treatment.

Health Minister Aden Duale told parliament on Wednesday that the centre would go ahead and would serve both Kenyans and Americans, rejecting claims that it would be exclusive.

"Quarantine is not only for Americans. Even Kenyans will be isolated at the facility," Duale said. "Laikipia air base is one of the 23 quarantine isolation centres we are building. And we will not stop it."
Disputed purpose

However, a US official speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters the facility would only treat US citizens.

During a state visit to South Africa on Thursday, President William Ruto defended the decision to allow the US to build the centre.

"It would be most unfortunate if on one request by the Americans to set up a facility at their cost, we would refuse, we would look very inhuman," he told a press conference.

The US intends to provide $13.5 million for Kenya's Ebola preparedness efforts.

The outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola is centred in eastern Congo and several cases have spread into neighbouring Uganda.

There have been at least 344 confirmed Ebola cases in Congo, including 48 deaths, and 116 suspected cases, according to the World Health Organization. Uganda has recorded at least 15 confirmed cases.

(with newswires)

How disinformation in Congo is worsening Ebola epidemic

Philipp Sandner

DW

06/05/2026

The deadly Ebola outbreak isn't the only thing causing concern for health workers in Congo. Rumors and disinformation are hindering efforts to contain the virus. The patterns are well-known — and could be confronted.

Even though people are dying from Ebola, many in Mongbwalu still don't believe in the disease

Image: Gradel Muyisa Mumbere/REUTERS


Three weeks since the start of the latest Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo, there have been 397 confirmed cases, including 63 confirmed deaths, according to the latest figures reported by the African Union's Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

And yet: "The community does not believe in this disease. Despite the deaths, people don't believe in it," said John Tumujimbe, head of a team for dignified and safe burials in the small town of Mongbwalu, one of the epicenters of the Ebola epidemic in the Congo's northeastern Ituri province.

"We initially thought of malaria, typhoid or diarrheal diseases," Tumujimbe said. "But, after so many deaths, we sent samples to the INRB."

The INRB — Congo's National Institute for Biomedical Research in the capital, Kinshasa — confirmed that these were indeed cases of Ebola. This led health officials to announce the 17th Ebola epidemic to be recorded in Congo since the virus was first discovered in 1976.

Ebola rumors lead to arson attacks

But health officials say many residents in Mongbwalu rejected this scientific answer.

"When there were the first deaths, there was talk that the coffins were a problem, that it spread from there," said one Mongbwalu resident, who did not want to be named.

Tumujimbe also heard this rumor. "That's how it started: people talked about a coffin that kills people. And then more people died."

Another rumor: Aid workers and paramedics were spreading the virus via the antennas of their vehicles.

At the end of May, an angry crowd gathered at Mongbwalu's general hospital. They demanded that authorities return the bodies of their deceased, eventually setting fire to a tent belonging to the aid organization Doctors Without Borders. The organization had to withdraw its staff.

"There was a panic," hospital director Richard Lokudi told DW. "This allowed several suspected cases to escape. Eighteen patients who were under observation have disappeared."

The health workers worry suspected Ebola patients could have passed the disease on to the people who were sheltering them. There is still no vaccine for the Bundibugyo variant of the Ebola virus now circulating.

Familiar rumors blunt Ebola response

Christopher Nehring specializes in researching disinformation, and co-authored a report on the current Ebola epidemic for the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. He said similar rumors pop up in every health emergency.

"They say the disease comes from the lab as a bioweapon; that the vaccination is more harmful than the virus; that there is a simple cure that is being concealed; that the disease is not real. Big Pharma is mentioned either as the profiteer of the crisis or as the ones who originated it," Nehring told DW.

"It's all been known for decades. And it varies, there are 100 different variations of these narratives."

For the report, Nehring sought information from Congolese fact checkers. One of them is Ange Kasongo, founder of Balobaki Check, based in Kinshasa. Talking with DW, she recalled conversations she had with miners — gold mining is important for the economy in the province of Ituri.

"They said that the rumors and myths about death were circulating, but that the people there didn't believe them," Kasongo said.

The explanation she was given went: "If a trader wants to earn or mine a lot of gold, he may also resort to mystical acts to eliminate his competitors."

This suggests that economic pressure is also preventing the epidemic from being dealt with openly.

Kasongo highlights another rumor: Private messages circulating on WhatsApp have claimed a conspiracy between Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and renowned virologist Jean-Jacques Muyembe — who discovered the virus 50 years ago — to wipe out the population in eastern Congo

The Balobaki Check team was unable to find any supporting evidence of this claim.

Without reliable media, disinformation spreads easily

The global community is making significantly less money available for emergency aid measures, which makes fighting Ebola harder.

US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization in 2025, and ordered massive cuts to USAID and the crisis management program at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

European governments have also cut funding, partly due to the cost of militarization efforts in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

For Nehring, this situation has also encouraged the spread of fake news. "If the money for health aid has already been cut, then you can't talk about bigger budgets for health communication either," said Nehring.

Nevertheless, Ange Kasongo pointed out the authorities were making every effort to communicate clearly. But she also told DW this had its limits. "How can we ensure that information is passed on orally — not just in French, not just in the four national languages?"

According to Kasongo, it;s important to get community leaders on board and give them access to reliable information.


Rachidi Kudra contributed reporting.

This article was originally written in German.

Philipp Sandner Editor

Inside DR Congo’s Ebola Fight: Faith, Fear, And Trust



Health teams in personal protective equipment (PPE) respond to the Ebola outbreak in eastern DR Congo. Photo Credit: WHO/Joël Lumbala

June 6, 2026 
 UN News
By Vibhu Mishra and Cristina Silveiro

In a village in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), health workers arrived a few days ago to help bury a person who had died from Ebola. Instead, they were threatened, told armed rebels would be called if they stayed, and forced to leave.

The family carried out the burial themselves – potentially exposing dozens more people to the virus.

The incident offers a stark illustration of one of the biggest obstacles facing efforts to contain the latest deadly epidemic, which has infected 381 people and claimed 64 lives in DRC as of 3 June.


For Marie Roseline Belizaire, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Emergency Preparedness and Response Director for Africa, the most challenging part is not always the virus itself – it can be sitting with families who believe the disease is caused by witchcraft, persuading traditional healers to work alongside health teams or health teams returning to communities that threatened them – only days earlier.

“We are not trying to overcome their culture,” she said. “We’re trying to involve the science in their own belief.”

Progress, but not yet control

The outbreak, caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola virus – for which there is no vaccine or treatment – continues to spread in eastern DRC while cases have also been reported across the border in Uganda.

Speaking to UN News from Bunia, in Ituri province, Dr. Belizaire said the response has made significant gains in recent weeks, particularly in testing capacity.

At the start of the outbreak, laboratories could process about 40 tests a day. That capacity has now expanded to 800 daily tests, allowing suspected cases to be confirmed or ruled out much more quickly.

“All the tests that we are receiving, we are rolling them out at the same day, almost,” she said. “The time to expect your result has been reduced. Twenty-four, maximum 48 hours you have the result.”

Community alerts are first investigated in the field, with those meeting the outbreak’s case definition tested and either confirmed or ruled out – allowing suspected cases to be cleared from the system more quickly than at the start of the outbreak.

Firmer trace

Contact tracing rates have improved from around 25 per cent to 45 per cent, but that remains far below the 90 to 95 per cent coverage needed to effectively contain transmission.

“We still have a lot of challenges,” she said, adding that the outbreak’s regional dimensions remain a concern.

Uganda has recorded 15 confirmed cases and one probable case linked to the outbreak. One Congolese national also travelled through the United Arab Emirates before arriving in Uganda, highlighting how quickly infectious diseases can move across borders.

“When there is an outbreak and you have mobility, it is always a concern,” Dr. Belizaire said, stressing however that mechanisms such as WHO’s International Health Regulations help countries share information rapidly and coordinate responses.
Trust in public health

For WHO teams on the ground, one of the most complex tasks is building trust. Many communities in affected areas have experienced years of conflict and insecurity. Cultural beliefs and misinformation can also shape how people interpret illness and death.

“The disease symptoms are very malaria-like in the community,” Dr. Belizaire explained.


Some families attribute deaths to witchcraft or poisoning rather than infection.

Health workers therefore focus on coexistence rather than confrontation.

“We don’t stop them to believe in witchcraft, to believe any other things in their culture,” she said. “We just ask them to simultaneously believe in the disease existence also.”
Ancient and modern

Traditional healers are also being engaged as partners rather than excluded.

“We don’t stop them going to traditional healers,” she said. “We ask [the healers], if you see someone with those symptoms, refer it also to us.”

The approach reflects lessons learned from previous Ebola outbreaks, where mistrust often proved as dangerous as the virus itself.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who recently visited the outbreak’s epicentre, warned that “misinformation is almost as dangerous as the virus itself, and spreads just as fast.”
Reasons for hope

Despite the difficulties, there have been encouraging signs. Seven people have recovered from Ebola, including six healthcare workers.

Most sought treatment early and received intensive supportive care, including rehydration and treatment for symptoms while their immune systems fought the infection.

“They recovered because they went early to the hospital,” Dr. Belizaire said.
Candidate vaccines under development

There is currently no licensed vaccine or approved treatment for the Bundibugyo strain, although candidate vaccines are under development.

But Dr. Belizaire stressed that even a vaccine would not replace the need for early detection and treatment.

“The key is, as soon as you have symptoms, you go to the healthcare centre,” she said.
A survivor’s determination

Among the encounters that have stayed with Dr. Belizaire most is that of a healthcare worker who contracted Ebola while caring for a patient. The female medic later recovered.

Rather than leaving the profession, she said she intends to continue serving others.

“She said she will not stop,” Dr. Belizaire recalled. “She said she was born to give care to others, and it is what she will continue doing.”


That story reflects the resilience of health workers and communities confronting the outbreak every day.

U.S. warns Ebola outbreak on scale of largest ‘is possible’

AFP

June 5, 2026 

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) personnel prepare for Ebola treatment in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo – Copyright AFP GLODY MURHABAZI

The U.S. CDC on Friday urged strong public health interventions against the current Ebola outbreak, citing their models that show it could otherwise rival the scale of the 2014 West Africa outbreak.

That eruption of the virus resulted in more than 28,000 cases and more than 11,000 deaths.

“That scale is possible,” said Jason Asher, director of CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, during a press briefing.

The US projections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were part of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report documents published Friday.

The worst outcomes could be avoided if “a larger proportion of patients were identified, isolated, and treated,” the agency said in its reports.

But “the public health response to control this outbreak will likely need to be of similar magnitude to the response for the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola outbreak.”

Asher emphasized the models were “not a forecast” but “a planning tool.”

“They’re designed to support action, not to generate alarm.”

They are based on four possible intervention scenarios ranging from poor (20 percent) to extremely high (95 percent) levels of isolation and treatment.

If isolation levels are what the CDC would consider poor, with no other interventions there is a 65 percent chance cases will top 20,000 within three months, according to the agency.

Satish Pillai, the CDC manager for the Ebola response, said “the total individuals that are infected and requiring isolation remains unclear.”

But he said the situation on the ground would indicate levels of isolation are currently on the lower end.

Also on Friday the World Health Organization and the African Union’s public health agency said $518 million was needed across the next six months to combat the deadly Ebola outbreak in the DR Congo and its neighbors.

The outbreak was declared on May 15 in northeastern DR Congo, but the rare Bundibugyo species of the Ebola virus is believed to have spread for some time beforehand.

According to the WHO’s latest figures, there are 381 confirmed cases in the DRC, including 64 deaths.

The outbreak has hit three provinces, with the epicenter in Ituri, which the Africa CDC says accounts for 90 percent of confirmed cases and 76 percent of confirmed deaths.

Across the northeastern border in Uganda, there have been 16 confirmed cases, including one death.

Seven Ebola patients in the DRC and two in Uganda have recovered.

As Ebola Virus Spreads, We See the Terrifying Effects of Trump Dismantling USAID


Trump slashed more than 30 CDC experts and 140 USAID staff who managed the 2018 Ebola outbreak on the ground in the DRC.

By Sasha Abramsky , 

Truthout

June 4, 2026

Health care workers put on personal protective equipment before going to examine patients at the Ebola Treatment Center in Munigi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, on June 2, 2026.Jospin Mwisha / AFP via Getty Images

In 2018, when the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) experienced a severe Ebola outbreak, more than 30 experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), close to 20 disaster-response specialists from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and 120 additional USAID staff were on the ground attempting to manage the outbreak, according to estimates from Friends of USAID, an advocacy organization mainly made up of ex-USAID staffers. With that level of staffing in 2018, by and large, they succeeded in limiting the extent to which the disease spread.

This year, as a particularly virulent strain of the Ebola virus — the Bundibugyo strain, against which there is no approved vaccine and for which there are no medicinal cures — runs rampant in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Friends of USAID estimate there is only one CDC staffer on the ground there, along with five additional State Department personnel. There are of course no USAID workers present, since the Trump administration dismantled USAID during the purges led by the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) in 2025, summarily firing local health care contractors around the world, including in countries with extreme poverty rates such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In addition, since Donald Trump signed an executive order pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization in early 2025 — a pullout that was completed in January of this year — CDC experts are no longer allowed to communicate with World Health Organization personnel. And despite a waiver having been granted for Ebola-related correspondence, in practice there has been a significant breakdown in communication between the two agencies over the past year — a breakdown promoted by the Trump administration, which recently sent out an email reminder to CDC staff not to correspond with the World Health Organization.

The consequences have already been devastating. In past Ebola outbreaks, even before mass testing of disease victims got underway, the CDC and USAID were able to tell when an epidemic was picking up steam based on on-the-ground medical observations and data about excess mortality figures. And, in response, they were able to position medical resources effectively.

In the current outbreak, the decimated remnants of the CDC were caught unawares, only finding out about the outbreak once hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people had already been infected — thus making it far more likely that this outbreak will prove particularly difficult to corral.


Trump Admin Cuts to USAID, WHO, Likely Stalled Response to Ebola, Experts Warn
“Facilities in affected areas are operating without basic protective supplies” due to cuts to USAID, one expert said. By Chris Walker , Truthout May 26, 2026

Because so many experts have been fired over the past 16 months, and because political overseers have been limiting what the remaining scientists can say and write, “the CDC is not really functional anymore,” Angela Rasmussen, professor of virology at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, told Truthout. Rasmussen, who also serves as science chair for the Save America Movement, a nonpartisan organization that works to stop ongoing assaults on public health, added that the administration was no longer bothering to consult remaining CDC experts when making policy to respond to the outbreak. “It used to be an evidence-driven process and now it’s a political-driven process,” Rasmussen said.


“I equate it to having the mayor’s office taking on a fire without having a fire department or a fire hose.”

“I equate it to having the mayor’s office taking on a fire without having a fire department or a fire hose,” Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told Truthout. Daskalakis, who resigned last August because he was so concerned about the direction that the Department of Health and Human Services was taking under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership, says that when faced with grave public health challenges, the administration is simply resorting to “a lot of posturing, with, I think, bad consequences.”

Faced with the twin public health emergencies of the Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, alongside the hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship from which people disembarked to the four corners of the Earth, the Trump administration’s response has been, at best, ad hoc. Instead of implementing expert-driven protocols, it has leaned on its nativist instincts to simply attempt to lock the virus out. That attempt proved a colossal failure during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, according to Rasmussen and Daskalakis, the signs are not auspicious for it being a successful strategy against the global health crises of 2026.

For U.S. residents exposed to hantavirus, the Trump administration has ordered mandatory 42-day quarantines in a secure facility in Omaha, Nebraska — despite the fact that experts say the virus doesn’t spread easily and that home quarantine would be just as effective. For U.S. residents exposed to the Ebola virus in Africa, the response has been to refuse them entry back into the United States and to instead have them isolated and, if need be, treated in Kenya — a situation that Rasmussen and other experts say makes little sense given the huge investments made over the past decade in secure biocontainment units in the U.S. “They’re throwing evidence-based risk assessment out the window, and are trampling people’s 14th Amendment rights,” Rasmussen told Truthout. “If we’re going to take Americans’ freedom away, there should be a real basis for that — and there’s not.”

Telling people in the U.S. that if they get exposed to the Ebola virus, they won’t be allowed back into their home country for months is, experts believe, a surefire way to discourage U.S. doctors and public health professionals from heading to Africa to try to contain the outbreak. In other words, it is a strategy all but guaranteed to make a bad situation worse.

“It took so long for the CDC to say anything about hantavirus or to hear from the DRC about Ebola. Relationships that took decades to build have simply disappeared.”

At the same time, African victims of the disease, who could certainly benefit from access to the treatment center being established in Kenya, are being deliberately excluded from it. “There’s an equity issue,” Daskalakis says of this policy. This, too, will end up hurting public health, as the Ebola patients denied access to the Kenyan facility will, in all likelihood, end up spreading the disease further in their communities or in poorly resourced medical facilities to which some eventually may turn.

Aryn Backus, a CDC employee who has been on administrative leave for more than a year since her job was targeted by DOGE, and who is now deputy executive director of the National Public Health Coalition, told Truthout that the ham-handed U.S. response to the outbreak overseas makes it more likely that the disease will ultimately find its way to the United States. “Diseases don’t understand borders,” she said. And, without detailed international coordination, the likelihood of their spreading far and wide grows.

“We are seemingly not at the table anymore,” Daskalakis added, as he detailed the myriad ways that the U.S.’s role as global public health leader has been corroded. “It took so long for the CDC to say anything about hantavirus or to hear from the DRC about Ebola. Relationships that took decades to build have simply disappeared.”

 

RAGOZIN: From reform to relapse, Ukraine’s corruption problems resurface

Most of Zelenskiy's inner circle have now been implicated in a series of large corruption schemes, but corruption has been hard baked into political systems across the FSU since the collapse of the USSR. / bne IntelliNews

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By Leonid Ragozin in Riga May 16, 2026

Charges brought against president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s former chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, focus on four mansion houses in the luxury estate co-op called Dynasty. These are identified as R1, R2, R3 and R4 by the SAPO (anti-corruption prosecutor’s office) investigation which claims that the suspects laundered UAH460mn (close to €9mn) through this housing project.

The owners of the last three houses are easily identifiable from the released investigation materials - these are members of Zelenskiy’s immediate entourage, including Yermak. As for R1’s owner, the secret recordings leaked from investigators to their press suggested the person’s name is Vova, which is short for Volodymyr.

Anti-corruption prosecutors were careful to point out that the president Zelenskiy is not a subject of the ongoing investigation. But that’s only because presidents are immune from pre-trial investigations according to Ukrainian law. The impeachment procedure requires a two third majority in the parliament which Zelenskiy’s party currently controls.

For anyone focused on Ukraine, the Dynasty co-op immediately reminds of Mezhihyria, the infamous luxury estate of president Victor Yanukovych deposed by the revolutionaries in 2014. The second association is the Ozero (Lake) dacha co-op whose members, led by Vladimir Putin, turned Russia into their private corporation ruled by authoritarian means.

In a recent poll published by KIIS institute in Kyiv, Ukrainians placed corruption above the ongoing Russian aggression as the greatest threat to their country. This may sound irrational if you don’t understand to what extent corruption - Russian, Ukrainian and Western - was the main driving force behind the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Sybiha recently said that a day of war costs Ukraine $450mn. Multiplying this figure by the number of days the war has lasted for, one gets the figure of almost $700bn burned in this furnace over four years. A lion’s share of that money was paid by Western taxpayers.

For the last three decades, the struggle against corruption was a slogan of Western liberal world order crusaders trying to impose their values on the post-Soviet space. So how come the idolised poster boy of anti-Russian resistance, Zelenskiy, appears to be mired in the same kind of corruption that keeps driving Putin’s regime in Russia to ever greater escalation? This question warrants a closer look at the history of anti-corruption struggle in the former Soviet Union.

Wild Capitalism’s Helpmate

For Western audiences, corruption in former Soviet countries is mostly perceived as a thing of the past, perhaps even Soviet legacy. But while there was plenty of petty corruption in the USSR - little bribes and gifts people were routinely handing to traffic policemen, doctors or university professors - top-level corruption was not really a Soviet story, with the exception of specific republics, like Uzbekistan. The way ageing Politburo members lived feels, by modern-day standards, ascetic.

When in the late 1980s, Boris Yeltsin attacked them for enjoying better lifestyles, he was focusing on “privileges”, such as chauffeured cars, not on luxury mansion houses or million-dollar kickbacks. He famously boarded a trolleybus to advertise new “non-corrupt” ways he was promoting. It feels ironic now that we know the extent of corruption during the years of Yeltsin’s own rule, unimaginable in Soviet times.

Corruption as we know it today was being conceived in the late 1980s at the level of district committees Komsomol (Youth Communist League), their comically crookish ways brilliantly described in Yury Polyakov’s book District-Level Emergency, popular at the time. This is the environment which produced such personalities as the future oligarch and Putin’s nemesis, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

But it took the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991 for rampant, large-scale corruption to enter the scene - not just as a helpmate of wild capitalism, but even as a new ideology. The first pro-democracy mayor of Moscow, economist Gavriil Popov, promoted corruption as a necessary lubricant for a poorly regulated capitalist economy and called for legalising kickbacks.

The new business elite in Russia was formed out of businessmen closely connected to the government as well as organised crime. While capturing industries built by generations of Soviet people through fraudulent schemes like “loans for shares”, they were also capturing the Russian state. Despite outward adherence to democracy and universal values, their inherent instincts were predatory and authoritarian.

A good example is Pyotr Aven, minister of foreign trade in the shock therapy government of Yegor Gaidar, later one of Russia’s main oligarchs. Inspired by Reagan and Thatcher adoration club in the West, he promoted the idea of a “Russian Pinochet” - enlightened dictatorship that would resolve Russia’s economic hardships with an iron fist. After a few experiments, notably with Gen. Aleksandr Lebed, Russian reformers eventually produced what then was a suitable figure - Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, state capture was conducted by the new “red director” elite composed of former Soviet industrial managers and embodied by the country’s longest-serving president Leonid Kuchma.

Corruption vs Geopolitics

Anti-corruption activism in former Soviet countries came into being as soon as corruption itself. But it was only partly organic and locally rooted. Anti-corruption activism would soon become firmly intertwined with geopolitics.

The organic component is best represented by people like Aleksey Navalny or the presently forgotten 1990s anti-corruption crusader Yuri Boldyrev. The latter’s political trajectory is illustrative of the rift inside the anti-corruption movement.

Boldyrev emerged as a pro-democracy MP in 1990 and then a state auditor in the early days of Yeltsin’s rule. In one episode of his activities at the time, he insisted that the vice-mayor of St Petersburg, Vladimir Putin, should be suspended on suspicion of corruption pertaining to foreign trade. The request was rejected by none other than Aven.

Boldyrev went on to found the liberal Yabloko party but fell out with it in 1995 due to disagreements over the capture of Soviet industries and Russia’s vast mineral resources by oligarchs and foreign corporations. He was specifically opposed to the production sharing agreements between the Russian government and Western oil/gas giants which many thought provided outright robbery of Russian hydrocarbon resources. These disagreements sent Boldyrev on the course towards embracing Russian nationalism and eventually Putinism, despite his earlier attacks on Putin.

Western corporations benefited hugely from Russia’s rampant corruption and the flight of capital in the 1990s. But as their interests began clashing with those of the emerging Russian oligarchy, Western governments began championing anti-corruption causes in Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the former USSR.

The world’s best-known anti-corruption platform funded by Western governments and charities, Transparency International, arrived in Russia in 1999. If you look at Russia headlines around that time in Western media, business news was dominated by squabbles between the Russian governments and its Western corporate partners over the product-sharing agreements as well as the privatisation of Svyazinvest, Russia’s largest telecom holding.

In both cases, Putin’s new government sought to limit Western appetites or kick Western actors out of the scramble for Russian resources altogether. In the early 2000s, the emerging confrontation gradually switched to rival Russian- and Western-backed projects for supplying gas and oil into Europe. This is how the conflict turned geopolitical. Russia wanted to supply its gas to the newly-expanded EU, bypassing transit countries, especially Ukraine. Western corporations were pushing pipeline projects like Nabucco that were aimed at bypassing the Russian pipeline system and delivering directly from countries like Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.

This is the point when anti-corruption activism and geopolitics grew inseparable, with the former being increasingly weaponised by Western actors against Russia. The anti-corruption agenda dominated the Georgian Revolution of Roses in 2003 and Ukraine’s first Maidan revolution in 2004. But while in Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili’s new government did achieve a breakthrough in eliminating corruption – he sacked the entire traffic cop force and replaced it with student-hires - the Ukrainian revolution changed exactly nothing in that respect.

With geopolitics dictating the agenda and anti-corruption groups becoming overwhelmingly dependent on Western funding, the struggle against corruption became increasingly selective. Anti-corruption initiatives blasted Russian and perceived “pro-Russian” actors in former Soviet republics while turning a blind eye on shady oligarchs and outright mafiosi who were chummy with the West.

The anti-corruption struggle was so badly mired in geopolitics that by the time Navalny launched his FSK anti-corruption movement, he tried his best to avoid being seen as a Western pawn. He flirted with Russian nationalism and initially even avoided contacts with Western media. The movement he built was genuinely grassroots and organic. But the cause was already so strongly aligned with Western geopolitical interests that it was easy for the Kremlin to brand its flag-bearers as agents of the West.

The escalating conflict with the West gave Putin carte blanche to destroy Navalny’s movement and eventually kill its leader. It allowed him to consolidate the regime and outsource his domestic conflict to the neighbouring country, making him an all-round beneficiary of the continuing war.

Meanwhile, the simplistic dichotomy of corrupt Russia vs non-corrupt West, promoted by Western media, just didn’t square with people’s lived experience. Petty post-Soviet corruption which people encountered in their daily lives was largely eliminated during Putin’s years though digitalised and otherwise improved government services.

Corruption which Navalny opposed had long drifted to the highest echelons of power. It seemed grotesque by Western standards, but was it fundamentally different from the West's own corruption and what role did the West play in it becoming such a dominant phenomenon? While Western media kept drawing a primitive black and white picture, the reality felt like many shades of grey.

Corruption Export

The conflict over Ukraine exposed both the danger of unrestrained corruption on the one hand and the counter-productivity of anti-corruption activism with visible geopolitical strings attached on the other. The anti-corruption agenda was dominant at the beginning of the Euromaidan revolution, but it was soon overtaken by the geopolitical agenda of mafia state actors that were at least as corrupt as the previous regime, only more aggressive and backed by far-right thugs linked to security agencies.

Ukrainian political scientist Mikhail Minakov calls Euromaidan “a revolutionary attempt” which has never evolved into a genuine revolution, as in achieving a fundamental change of the system. The only thing that did change is the country’s geopolitical orientation.

Not only did the Western governments turn a blind eye on the aggressive redistribution of assets in the aftermath of the revolution, but they also embarked on exporting Western political corruption into Ukraine. US president’s son Hunter Biden offered his name and service to launder the reputation of Mykola Zlochevsky, a rich businessman who served as a minister in the government of the deposed president Yanukovych. President Joe Biden later forced through the resignation of Ukraine’s prosecutor-general to cover up this affair.

Biden’s arch-rival, Donald Trump, weaponised this scandal in the presidential elections of 2020, liaising with shady Ukrainian business figures and attempting to coerce the newly elected president Zelenskiy into joining the smear campaign.

That pressure may have played a significant role in Zelenskiy's abrupt U-turn on peace negotiations with Russia at the start of 2021 which coincided with Biden moving into the White House. Having reached a de-facto ceasefire by the time, Zelenskiy suddenly embarked on the Biden administration’s agenda of crossing all of Putin’s red lines - an ill-fated policy that precipitated Russia’s devastating all-out invasion of Ukraine.

That pattern of Western corruption export persists today, four years into the hot phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Just look at the other episode in the ongoing investigation of the Zelenskiy entourage. It focuses on the Ukrainian missile producer Fire Point which, as Ukrainian media allege, is linked to Zelenskiy’s key business associate Tymur Mindich. Guess who sits on its board? Former US State Secretary and CIA chief Mike Pompeo. Fire Point also enjoys a special relationship with the Danish government and runs a joint venture in Denmark.

Some commentators are trying to frame the current anti-corruption investigation almost as a triumph of anti-corruption forces in Ukraine. The investigation is being conducted by agencies created on the insistence of Western governments and with their direct involvement. But it’s hard not to notice the highly politicised nature of this affair, with charges and evidence in the form of taped conversations being presented in a strategic manner, with over-the-top dramatic effects aimed at discrediting top level suspects (like emphasising Yermak’s penchant for witchcraft) and leaked through opposition media and MPs.

Will it result in reducing corruption in Ukraine? The country’s post-Maidan history suggests it won’t. Does it serve as a means for achieving specific geopolitical outcomes? You bet.

RAGOZIN: From reform to relapse, Ukraine’s corruption problems resurface

Most of Zelenskiy's inner circle have now been implicated in a series of large corruption schemes, but corruption has been hard baked into political systems across the FSU since the collapse of the USSR. / bne IntelliNews

\

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By Leonid Ragozin in Riga May 16, 2026

Charges brought against president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s former chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, focus on four mansion houses in the luxury estate co-op called Dynasty. These are identified as R1, R2, R3 and R4 by the SAPO (anti-corruption prosecutor’s office) investigation which claims that the suspects laundered UAH460mn (close to €9mn) through this housing project.

The owners of the last three houses are easily identifiable from the released investigation materials - these are members of Zelenskiy’s immediate entourage, including Yermak. As for R1’s owner, the secret recordings leaked from investigators to their press suggested the person’s name is Vova, which is short for Volodymyr.

Anti-corruption prosecutors were careful to point out that the president Zelenskiy is not a subject of the ongoing investigation. But that’s only because presidents are immune from pre-trial investigations according to Ukrainian law. The impeachment procedure requires a two third majority in the parliament which Zelenskiy’s party currently controls.

For anyone focused on Ukraine, the Dynasty co-op immediately reminds of Mezhihyria, the infamous luxury estate of president Victor Yanukovych deposed by the revolutionaries in 2014. The second association is the Ozero (Lake) dacha co-op whose members, led by Vladimir Putin, turned Russia into their private corporation ruled by authoritarian means.

In a recent poll published by KIIS institute in Kyiv, Ukrainians placed corruption above the ongoing Russian aggression as the greatest threat to their country. This may sound irrational if you don’t understand to what extent corruption - Russian, Ukrainian and Western - was the main driving force behind the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Sybiha recently said that a day of war costs Ukraine $450mn. Multiplying this figure by the number of days the war has lasted for, one gets the figure of almost $700bn burned in this furnace over four years. A lion’s share of that money was paid by Western taxpayers.

For the last three decades, the struggle against corruption was a slogan of Western liberal world order crusaders trying to impose their values on the post-Soviet space. So how come the idolised poster boy of anti-Russian resistance, Zelenskiy, appears to be mired in the same kind of corruption that keeps driving Putin’s regime in Russia to ever greater escalation? This question warrants a closer look at the history of anti-corruption struggle in the former Soviet Union.

Wild Capitalism’s Helpmate

For Western audiences, corruption in former Soviet countries is mostly perceived as a thing of the past, perhaps even Soviet legacy. But while there was plenty of petty corruption in the USSR - little bribes and gifts people were routinely handing to traffic policemen, doctors or university professors - top-level corruption was not really a Soviet story, with the exception of specific republics, like Uzbekistan. The way ageing Politburo members lived feels, by modern-day standards, ascetic.

When in the late 1980s, Boris Yeltsin attacked them for enjoying better lifestyles, he was focusing on “privileges”, such as chauffeured cars, not on luxury mansion houses or million-dollar kickbacks. He famously boarded a trolleybus to advertise new “non-corrupt” ways he was promoting. It feels ironic now that we know the extent of corruption during the years of Yeltsin’s own rule, unimaginable in Soviet times.

Corruption as we know it today was being conceived in the late 1980s at the level of district committees Komsomol (Youth Communist League), their comically crookish ways brilliantly described in Yury Polyakov’s book District-Level Emergency, popular at the time. This is the environment which produced such personalities as the future oligarch and Putin’s nemesis, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

But it took the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991 for rampant, large-scale corruption to enter the scene - not just as a helpmate of wild capitalism, but even as a new ideology. The first pro-democracy mayor of Moscow, economist Gavriil Popov, promoted corruption as a necessary lubricant for a poorly regulated capitalist economy and called for legalising kickbacks.

The new business elite in Russia was formed out of businessmen closely connected to the government as well as organised crime. While capturing industries built by generations of Soviet people through fraudulent schemes like “loans for shares”, they were also capturing the Russian state. Despite outward adherence to democracy and universal values, their inherent instincts were predatory and authoritarian.

A good example is Pyotr Aven, minister of foreign trade in the shock therapy government of Yegor Gaidar, later one of Russia’s main oligarchs. Inspired by Reagan and Thatcher adoration club in the West, he promoted the idea of a “Russian Pinochet” - enlightened dictatorship that would resolve Russia’s economic hardships with an iron fist. After a few experiments, notably with Gen. Aleksandr Lebed, Russian reformers eventually produced what then was a suitable figure - Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, state capture was conducted by the new “red director” elite composed of former Soviet industrial managers and embodied by the country’s longest-serving president Leonid Kuchma.

Corruption vs Geopolitics

Anti-corruption activism in former Soviet countries came into being as soon as corruption itself. But it was only partly organic and locally rooted. Anti-corruption activism would soon become firmly intertwined with geopolitics.

The organic component is best represented by people like Aleksey Navalny or the presently forgotten 1990s anti-corruption crusader Yuri Boldyrev. The latter’s political trajectory is illustrative of the rift inside the anti-corruption movement.

Boldyrev emerged as a pro-democracy MP in 1990 and then a state auditor in the early days of Yeltsin’s rule. In one episode of his activities at the time, he insisted that the vice-mayor of St Petersburg, Vladimir Putin, should be suspended on suspicion of corruption pertaining to foreign trade. The request was rejected by none other than Aven.

Boldyrev went on to found the liberal Yabloko party but fell out with it in 1995 due to disagreements over the capture of Soviet industries and Russia’s vast mineral resources by oligarchs and foreign corporations. He was specifically opposed to the production sharing agreements between the Russian government and Western oil/gas giants which many thought provided outright robbery of Russian hydrocarbon resources. These disagreements sent Boldyrev on the course towards embracing Russian nationalism and eventually Putinism, despite his earlier attacks on Putin.

Western corporations benefited hugely from Russia’s rampant corruption and the flight of capital in the 1990s. But as their interests began clashing with those of the emerging Russian oligarchy, Western governments began championing anti-corruption causes in Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the former USSR.

The world’s best-known anti-corruption platform funded by Western governments and charities, Transparency International, arrived in Russia in 1999. If you look at Russia headlines around that time in Western media, business news was dominated by squabbles between the Russian governments and its Western corporate partners over the product-sharing agreements as well as the privatisation of Svyazinvest, Russia’s largest telecom holding.

In both cases, Putin’s new government sought to limit Western appetites or kick Western actors out of the scramble for Russian resources altogether. In the early 2000s, the emerging confrontation gradually switched to rival Russian- and Western-backed projects for supplying gas and oil into Europe. This is how the conflict turned geopolitical. Russia wanted to supply its gas to the newly-expanded EU, bypassing transit countries, especially Ukraine. Western corporations were pushing pipeline projects like Nabucco that were aimed at bypassing the Russian pipeline system and delivering directly from countries like Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.

This is the point when anti-corruption activism and geopolitics grew inseparable, with the former being increasingly weaponised by Western actors against Russia. The anti-corruption agenda dominated the Georgian Revolution of Roses in 2003 and Ukraine’s first Maidan revolution in 2004. But while in Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili’s new government did achieve a breakthrough in eliminating corruption – he sacked the entire traffic cop force and replaced it with student-hires - the Ukrainian revolution changed exactly nothing in that respect.

With geopolitics dictating the agenda and anti-corruption groups becoming overwhelmingly dependent on Western funding, the struggle against corruption became increasingly selective. Anti-corruption initiatives blasted Russian and perceived “pro-Russian” actors in former Soviet republics while turning a blind eye on shady oligarchs and outright mafiosi who were chummy with the West.

The anti-corruption struggle was so badly mired in geopolitics that by the time Navalny launched his FSK anti-corruption movement, he tried his best to avoid being seen as a Western pawn. He flirted with Russian nationalism and initially even avoided contacts with Western media. The movement he built was genuinely grassroots and organic. But the cause was already so strongly aligned with Western geopolitical interests that it was easy for the Kremlin to brand its flag-bearers as agents of the West.

The escalating conflict with the West gave Putin carte blanche to destroy Navalny’s movement and eventually kill its leader. It allowed him to consolidate the regime and outsource his domestic conflict to the neighbouring country, making him an all-round beneficiary of the continuing war.

Meanwhile, the simplistic dichotomy of corrupt Russia vs non-corrupt West, promoted by Western media, just didn’t square with people’s lived experience. Petty post-Soviet corruption which people encountered in their daily lives was largely eliminated during Putin’s years though digitalised and otherwise improved government services.

Corruption which Navalny opposed had long drifted to the highest echelons of power. It seemed grotesque by Western standards, but was it fundamentally different from the West's own corruption and what role did the West play in it becoming such a dominant phenomenon? While Western media kept drawing a primitive black and white picture, the reality felt like many shades of grey.

Corruption Export

The conflict over Ukraine exposed both the danger of unrestrained corruption on the one hand and the counter-productivity of anti-corruption activism with visible geopolitical strings attached on the other. The anti-corruption agenda was dominant at the beginning of the Euromaidan revolution, but it was soon overtaken by the geopolitical agenda of mafia state actors that were at least as corrupt as the previous regime, only more aggressive and backed by far-right thugs linked to security agencies.

Ukrainian political scientist Mikhail Minakov calls Euromaidan “a revolutionary attempt” which has never evolved into a genuine revolution, as in achieving a fundamental change of the system. The only thing that did change is the country’s geopolitical orientation.

Not only did the Western governments turn a blind eye on the aggressive redistribution of assets in the aftermath of the revolution, but they also embarked on exporting Western political corruption into Ukraine. US president’s son Hunter Biden offered his name and service to launder the reputation of Mykola Zlochevsky, a rich businessman who served as a minister in the government of the deposed president Yanukovych. President Joe Biden later forced through the resignation of Ukraine’s prosecutor-general to cover up this affair.

Biden’s arch-rival, Donald Trump, weaponised this scandal in the presidential elections of 2020, liaising with shady Ukrainian business figures and attempting to coerce the newly elected president Zelenskiy into joining the smear campaign.

That pressure may have played a significant role in Zelenskiy's abrupt U-turn on peace negotiations with Russia at the start of 2021 which coincided with Biden moving into the White House. Having reached a de-facto ceasefire by the time, Zelenskiy suddenly embarked on the Biden administration’s agenda of crossing all of Putin’s red lines - an ill-fated policy that precipitated Russia’s devastating all-out invasion of Ukraine.

That pattern of Western corruption export persists today, four years into the hot phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Just look at the other episode in the ongoing investigation of the Zelenskiy entourage. It focuses on the Ukrainian missile producer Fire Point which, as Ukrainian media allege, is linked to Zelenskiy’s key business associate Tymur Mindich. Guess who sits on its board? Former US State Secretary and CIA chief Mike Pompeo. Fire Point also enjoys a special relationship with the Danish government and runs a joint venture in Denmark.

Some commentators are trying to frame the current anti-corruption investigation almost as a triumph of anti-corruption forces in Ukraine. The investigation is being conducted by agencies created on the insistence of Western governments and with their direct involvement. But it’s hard not to notice the highly politicised nature of this affair, with charges and evidence in the form of taped conversations being presented in a strategic manner, with over-the-top dramatic effects aimed at discrediting top level suspects (like emphasising Yermak’s penchant for witchcraft) and leaked through opposition media and MPs.

Will it result in reducing corruption in Ukraine? The country’s post-Maidan history suggests it won’t. Does it serve as a means for achieving specific geopolitical outcomes? You bet.

INTERVIEW

A test for Ukraine, a dilemma for Zelensky: What's at stake in the Andriy Yermak corruption probe

The arrest of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s former right-hand man Andriy Yermak Thursday in connection to a corruption scandal comes as a major test for both the Ukrainian government and the country's independent anti-corruption agencies. Yermak is accused of laundering 460 million hryvnia (more than $10 million) in dirty money through an elite real estate project outside of Kyiv – and of having used a secret phone to consult an astrologer on key government appointments.


Issued on: 15/05/2026 -  FRANCE24

By: Paul MILLAR

Former presidential office head Andriy Yermak appears at a hearing in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 12, 2026. © Alina Smutko, Reuters

You’d think the fortune teller would have tipped him off. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s former chief of staff Andriy Yermak, who for years made key government appointments, drafted potential peace plans and held back-channel talks with both Washington and Moscow, was taken into pre-trial detention Thursday on money-laundering charges after a three-day hearing in Kyiv.

The 54-year-old lawyer and former film producer stands accused of being involved in laundering more than $10 million in embezzled funds through the construction of lavish private mansions in the village of Kozyn on the capital’s southern outskirts.

The court has set Yermak’s bail at $3.2 million, which he says he doesn’t have. He told reporters outside the court that his lawyer would work with his friends to scrape the funds together.

During the hearing, prosecutors also alleged that Yermak had kept a secret phone that he used to regularly contact a Kyiv-based astrologer known as “Veronika Feng Shui” – identified as 51-year-old Veronika Anikiyevich – to advise him on government appointments. Yermak allegedly shared candidates’ birth dates with the astrologer, who would in turn tell Ukraine’s second-most powerful man whose appointment the stars most favoured.

Former Head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak appears at court for a hearing in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 12, 2026. © Alina Smutko, Reuters


Yermak resigned last November after his offices were raided as part of a months-long investigation into a $100 million corruption scandal in the country’s energy sector.

The anti-corruption operation – dubbed “Midas” – accused Zelensky’s former business partner Tymur Mindich of leading a scheme to siphon off tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks from the country’s state-owned nuclear energy giant Energoatom.

The scandal, coming as Russia continued to hammer Ukraine’s energy infrastructure to starve the nation of heat and light, was met with public fury. An attempt by Zelensky last July to put Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies under the control of a presidential appointee was abandoned following rare wartime protests.

Mindich, who like Yermak maintains his innocence, reportedly fled to Israel last year ahead of a raid on his house. Former deputy prime minister Oleksiy Chernyshov and former energy minister German Galushchenko have both been detained in connection to the probe.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPU) have said that Zelensky himself is not under suspicion.

But the mention of a “Vova” – a common diminutive of Volodymyr – in a leaked wiretap transcript of a conversation between Mindich and an unidentified woman about the Kozyn construction project has raised questions about just how deep into the president’s circle the corruption has spread. Sitting presidents are immune from prosecution by Ukrainian law enforcement – though they can be impeached if evidence of wrongdoing is found.

To better understand the significance of this sweeping investigation, FRANCE 24 spoke with Andrii Biletskyi, the administrative director of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’s Anti-Corruption Research and Education Centre.

FRANCE 24: Just how significant is this latest development in the corruption investigation?

This is the continuation of the “Midas” operation that started last year, and which was one of the reasons why Yermak was fired from the presidential office. And we have different camps, to be honest, because some people were saying that Yermak was on these Midas recordings, and some people were saying to be careful, that he wasn’t there, it was impossible.

There are different views on this Midas operation, because some people are more sceptical about it – they are saying that this is just a political battle during the war. And some people see it as a positive thing, because it means nobody is untouchable and the anti-corruption authorities are doing their work.

Ukraine: Volodymyr Zelensy's former top aide arrested as corruption probe widens

© France 24
01:13

I think it's a test not only for anti-corruption authorities in Ukraine, but also for the government and the country in general. Because the Ukrainian law enforcement system has never seen an official or ex-official of such a high level being prosecuted or being brought to criminal responsibility.

So, it's really a test for anti-corruption authorities to finish this task, or at least to bring this case to court. And for the Ukrainian government, it's a test whether to help Yermak to escape the responsibility – whether or not to interfere or to let the case go and be whatever it's going to be.

But it's really a dilemma for them, because the government needs to understand whether they want to lose their ex-friend, or current friend, Andriy Yermak, and just forget about him. It's really a struggle for them.

But for Ukraine in general, this is a huge case, and we've never seen anything like it.

FRANCE 24: With several close allies of Zelensky under suspicion, what impact is this investigation likely to have on the president’s own support?

Politically speaking, if we're talking about his personal ratings, he is going to be losing support. Not a lot, because he didn't interfere, he didn't comment on the situation, he didn't protect his close ally, or ex-ally. So it’s a manageable situation.

On the other hand, people still rate him because he's a war-time leader, and he is protecting us, he's the higher commander-in-chief, right? So it’s bit into his ratings, but not as much as it could have, for example, in normal times. Because if not for the war, if we had seen such a scandal, it would have been political suicide for him, and we would just be waiting for the opposition to come to power.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and then chief of staff Andriy Yermak pose for the press as they meet with Spain's King Felipe (not pictured), at the Zarzuela Palace, Madrid, Spain, November 18, 2025. © Violeta Santos Moura, Reuters

FRANCE 24: As someone who’s worked for years in the fight against corruption, how do you see the importance of Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities being able to undertake an investigation of this magnitude?

For me personally, it's a positive sign. We as Ukrainians, and my colleagues from the anti-corruption centre, we have to talk a lot about how Ukraine is not really corrupt – we have a lot of corruption cases not because we have a lot of corruption, but rather because we have this system in place which can expose this corruption, and which can bring people to responsibility. Because of the fact that we have an independent system, which is not interfered with by political actors, they can do their job properly in a normal way, and they can expose a lot of corruption.

Of course it is [easier] not seeing corruption and not caring about it. When we don't have a lot of corruption scandals in the media, we don't know about them, and we simply don't care. We think of ourselves as good guys, and we think, okay, corruption is at a low level – if it's not being exposed, we have no problem with that.

So it’s really positive. Probably you remember that last year in July, we had huge protests in Ukraine during wartime because the government tried to neglect the procedural independence of the anti-corruption authorities. And a lot of people, a lot of young people, actually came to protest against this decision – and they won, because the government rolled it back.

And it was important for people to see that they did the right thing, so that they could see that they fought for the independence of something valuable. And by this investigation, NABU and SAPO are showing those people that it was the right call.

FRANCE 24: One of the more unexpected details of this three-day hearing has been the allegation that Yermak ran potential government appointments past an astrologer. What kind of reaction has that sparked?

Of course it was quite a surprise to hear that the chief of staff, the head of the presidential office, was consulting an astrologer for governmental appointments. It was really a surprise – I mean, it was ridiculous to hear that he was sending the birthdates of potential candidates.

It not only affects the reputation of Andriy Yermak himself, because he was already seen as this “shadow cardinal” in the office of the president, but it also brings a shadow on the presidential office in general, and the governmental system in general.

Because people have to know whether all the appointments have been going this way or not. It’s also that a bad thing for the public service in general. It was really ridiculous to hear.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.