Report from Ukraine by Dmitri Kovalevich, re-published here in The Multiplural World, July 29, 2026 (with related reports further below)
(Dmitri Kovalevich is the special correspondent in Ukraine for Al Mayadeen English, where this report was first published on July 25. He writes two reports each month for the publication. You can read all of his reports since April 2024 here.)
In mid-July, the head of the governing regime in Ukraine decided to reshuffle his government yet again, including dismissing Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, appointed one year ago. Volodymyr Zelensky conducts such shuffles regularly, using them to pin major governing failures on dismissed ministers. The practice maintains an appearance of non-involvement. It is also an attempt to create the illusion that ministerial shuffles can produce meaningful improvements for the population as a whole.
The paradox is that according to the Ukrainian constitution, a president has no power to make ministerial appointments; this is the prerogative of legislators. But the Ukrainian constitution is effectively not in force, just as elections are not being held. (The five-year electoral mandate of Zelensky and the regime he heads, such as it was, expired more than two years ago.)
For Ukrainians, these government and ministerial reshuffles change absolutely nothing. The people continue to be robbed by taxes and all manner of service fees, while continuing to die in a deadly and destructive war, just as before, regardless of the name of a prime minister or other leading government ministers.
‘Shuffling the beds in a brothel’
Zelensky has concentrated all executive power in Ukraine into his own hands, but behind him in the shadows loom the interests of his Western sponsors. Meanwhile, for certain members of the Ukrainian elite, a cabinet reshuffle is an opportunity to benefit from ongoing financial flows.
Political analyst Kost Bondarenko jokes that thanks to Zelensky’s change of prime minister, 75 per cent of Ukrainians were surprised to learn that the country even has a government, while 90 per cent learned that the prime minister’s name is Yulia Sviridenko. They also learned the names of an additional five or six obscure figures. Bondarenko emphasizes that according to the Constitution, Zelensky can neither unilaterally dismiss an existing prime minister nor appoint a new one.
The frequent and unlawful changes in government remind Bondarenko—and many other Ukrainians—of a longstanding, popular irony dating from a century ago, according to which when revenue drops in a brothel, beds are shuffled around, but this does nothing to increase revenues.
Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba describes cabinet shuffles in Ukraine as President Zelensky’s way of creating the appearance of change in the absence of elections. “A political tradition is emerging here. It is President Zelensky’s style to carry out some kind of cabinet shuffle once or twice a year. People need to see that something is changing, that the government is looking for new personnel solutions. Without a war, such issues are resolved through elections, but we won’t be having any elections in any near future,” he explains.
Outgoing Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko was considered a protégé of Andriy Yermak, the former head of the president’s office and a supreme power broker. He was taken into custody in May 2026 on money laundering and corruption charges and has lurked in the shadows of power since then. Sviridenko was appointed to the prestigious post of ambassador to the United States, replacing Yulia Stefanishina, who offered to resign. Stefanishina, too, has become a subject of several investigations by Ukraine’s Western-funded anti-corruption agencies.
According to the online publication Strana.ua, another motive being cited for the most recent cabinet reshuffle is Zelensky’s desire to remove Mikhail Fedorov from the post of defense minister. This suggests that the terrain is being prepared to pin the blame on Fedorov for the highly unpopular military conscription in Ukraine. This includes blame for all the systematic abductions and torture of military-age men which began in Ukraine in 2022 and continue unabated.
It so happens that a change of ministers in Ukraine automatically halts the progress of government bills introduced but has yet to be adopted in first reading by the Verkhovna Rada (national legislature). A new government must re-register (re-introduce) such bills if it wishes to press for their acceptance.
This can be used to delay promised ‘reforms’ of the work of military recruiters and also delay the adoption of genuine, anti-corruption laws, as being demanded by some Western creditors. Defense (war) minister Mikhail Fedorov (replaced in July 2026) first promised to present conscription reform in March of this year. The promise was then repeated in May, in June, and again in July. No doubt, newly appointed war minister Major-General Yevhenii Khmara will request yet more time to ‘familiarize’ himself with the issue and make promises for 2027.
Imprisoned legislator Aleksander Dubinsky writes on July 12 that pro-government lawmakers are now trying to divert public attention from the fact that Zelensky is actually behind the highly unpopular military conscription. That policy will continue, whether under Fedorov or any other defense minister, he writes. “What you’re seeing right now surrounding the issue of the military registration and enlistment offices is a game of passing the buck.”
Sergey Koretsky, a politician little known to ordinary Ukrainians, has become the new prime minister following the cabinet shuffle. According to sources cited by Strana.ua on July 12, Koretsky is a close associate and friend of Timur Mindich—a wealthy Ukrainian and key figure in a corruption scandal that erupted late last year. He has fled to “Israel”. “The president’s inner circle (the so-called ‘Family’) brought Koretsky into their ranks in late 2022,” notes Strana. It describes Timchuk as “Zelenskyy’s closest ally and friend.”
Simply put, key positions in Zelensky’s administration are being filled within the framework of a single ‘Family’, which is the mafia-like structure of Zelensky’s inner circle. According to political analyst Ruslan Bortnik, these ministerial appointments are intended to further strengthen the internal power hierarchy. He says that public conflicts—in particular, the mass clash in Lviv on July 8 involving military commissars—are pushing Zelensky to tighten control within the country.
The brutal pacification of Lviv
On July 8, a spontaneous protest and riot against military recruiters broke out in Lviv, western Ukraine. About 200 people took part. However, the authorities’ response—mobilizing all their forces to brutally suppress the protest—caused no less of a stir. Lviv-based social media groups refer to these actions as “pacification”, comparing them to the repressions and extrajudicial killings carried out by the Polish authorities in Lviv during the 1930s, when both nationalist and pro-Soviet sentiments were spreading and clashing.
Special units of the SBU were quickly deployed to Lviv earlier this month, where they carried out mass arrests. Pro-regime media in Ukraine reported approvingly that the arrests were carried out “harshly”.
Bloggers in Lviv claim that SBU officers in the area first detained young people, beat them, and only then acted to determine whether they had participated in the protest/riot. Several dozen teenagers and young adults caught during raids were pressed to publicly apologize for their actions and shout ‘Glory to the military recruiters!’ before cameras. The prosecutor’s office is threatening participants with eight years in prison.
The neo-Nazis who now dominate media in Ukraine are demanding show trials. Dmitry Korchinsky, the neo-Nazi leader of the ‘Brotherhood‘ party, has proposed sweeping the affected district in Lviv with reinforced teams of military recruiters to conscript into the army all men there of military age (25 to 60. In Korchinsky ‘s view, this is how “order must be restored.” In other words, he is proposing collective punishment for the tens of thousands of residents throughout the entire Lviv district in order to intimidate them from taking any similar action in the future.
Korchinsky is also calling for arming military recruiters and granting them permission to shoot civilians (although they periodically do so even without such authorization). “In that case, there’ll be no need to search for those attacking military recruiters; it will be enough just to collect bodies. Prison is immoral; but a cemetery? Now that is profitable,” the Nazi cynically commented on the events in Lviv.
Neo-Nazis in Ukraine are outraged that the protest-turned-riot happened specifically in Lviv city, as they consider all the city’s residents to be “heirs of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).” These were the principal organizations of Nazi collaborators before and during World War II. Today, observing the large scale of the uprising in the city, the rightists speculate that a significant portion of Lviv’s population would have come out to greet the Russian army with flowers, just as they greeted arriving Soviet armies in 1939 and again in 1944.
The ‘Right Sector’ paramilitary/fascist organization has written on its Telegram channel that the residents of Lviv are mankurts (unthinking slaves) and ‘separatists’. It compares them to the pro-autonomy residents of the Donbas region, whose Lugansk and Donetsk jurisdictions are now formal republics of the Russian Federation. “Footage of the chaos in Lviv is painfully reminiscent of the cities of Slavyansk and Mariupol (Donetsk jurisdiction) in 2014, where mankurts also tried to stop our army,” the Telegram page reads, in a bid to frighten Lviv residents with the notion that in 2026 they could face the same, violent punishment as has Donbas since 2014, namely, a civil war to be waged by the governing regime in Kiev with solid Western backing.
Oleksiy Arestovych, former advisor to the ‘Office of the President of Ukraine’ (office of the unelected Zelensky), believes that calls in media channels to punish Lviv residents are a manifestation of the sycophancy of pro-government Ukrainian commentators. He explains they are incapable of identifying the root cause of popular resistance. According to him, Zelensky’s “brown” (fascist) dictatorship can only end up provoking full-scale civil resistance.
Punitive raid near Kiev
The recent murders of residents of the small city of Kalinovka near Kiev (pre-war population app. 20,000) by Ukrainian military personnel, reported by Strana on Telegram on July 12, have sparked another, strong wave of outrage across Ukrainian society. That tragedy reveals the degree of degradation and sadism today prevalent within the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Hatred and malice are manifesting themselves in the torture and murder of civilians by paramilitaries and even by units of the regular army in Ukraine.
On Monday, July 13, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Luchanov, commander of the 155th Separate Mechanized Brigade, was detained in Kiev. He is a recipient of Ukraine’s highest military honors, many of which were personally awarded by Zelensky.
Until February 2026, Luchanov served as chief of staff of the notorious 425th Assault Regiment (‘Skala’), where the killings of its own soldiers have taken place [see my report from earlier this month]. Luchanov has led the 155th Brigade since February 2026. It was trained in France at the expense of French taxpayers. Beginning in 2025, some 1,700 of the brigade’s soldiers deserted, following which prison-like conditions were imposed on the remaining brigade members.
In July, Luchanov himself also deserted. He fled because he sensed trouble on the way. It had become clear that he was the one who had given the order to carry out the sweep of Kalinovka (Kiev region) earlier this month. Two residents of that village, brothers Maksym and Roman Moseychuk, were abducted at gunpoint and taken to the Poltava region. There, they were tortured, shot, and buried in a forest. Exhumation of the bodies revealed 15 bullets in the body of one and eight bullets in the other.
The reason for such brutality is shockingly trivial—the lieutenant colonel’s wife had complained to him about the noise from motorcycles, which was keeping her awake. The murdered Moseychuk brothers did not own a motorcycle, but Luchanov’s subordinates rounded up whoever they could catch, including those two innocents.
Initially, Luchanov wanted to sweep the entire city of Kalinovka. He sent a fully armed, punitive detachment of nine soldiers on a ‘mission,’ providing them with official vehicles and arming them with automatic weapons. He put the brigade’s commander—Senior Lieutenant Alexei Dolgolenko—in charge of the punitive unit. In other words, it was something resembling the punitive raids by Nazi SS detachments many decades ago.
The punitive force was given a list of all “undesirables” in the city, which even included underage residents. Luchanov’s subordinates flew a drone over the city to survey the area and then tried to find out from local residents who was living where. The residents refused to speak with them and refused to give them any addresses. After that, the punitive forces stormed the home of the Moseychuk brothers, who happened to be there. It is noteworthy that the father of the kidnapped and murdered brothers himself died in 2023 near Kharkiv after stepping on a landmine. The brothers had been caring for their elderly mother.
The murder of the two brothers sparked outrage in Kalinovka. Residents scrawled the words ‘butchers’ and ‘murderers’ on the fence of the Luchanov house, but the brigade commander’s wife had already left the area. The villagers fear that authorities will try to cover up the case and that Luchanov himself will be kept in pretrial detention only until such time as the scandal dies down.
In addition to Luchanov, the nine soldiers from his punitive detachment have been detained. All of them claim that they were acting on direct orders from superiors.
Investigative authorities are also reporting that in addition to the kidnapping and murder of the Moseychuk brothers, they are investigating the mysterious disappearances and ‘missing in action’ cases involving soldiers from Luchanov’s ‘Skala’ regiment. Law enforcement officials suspect that soldiers deemed ‘undesirable’ may have been killed on the commander’s orders, with their deaths subsequently attributed to ‘combat losses.’
In May, a video circulated on social media showing a soldier from the same 155th Brigade beating a bound fellow soldier in front of the formation. At the time, Luchanov denied any personal involvement. However, no one was ever punished.
Ukrainian lawyer and former military prosecutor Oleg Leontyev says that military units have become unregulated, sparking “chaos, disarray, and complete lawlessness.” “Commanders are kings and gods; they do whatever they want, as evidenced by the ‘Skala’ scandal. That case is truly out of the ordinary,” he explains.
Attorney Roman Likhachov says the problems in Luchanov’s brigade are longstanding and that many soldiers have turned to lawyers for help. According to the lawyer, the change of the brigade commander being punished for the murder of the brothers is extremely slim. He emphasized, “As for punishments—in my experience, it’s often those who commit many violations who end up becoming commanders and getting promoted. I’ve seen this happen more than once.”
Igor Mosiychuk, a former legislature member and former figure with the neo-Nazi ‘Azov’ unit (no relation to the murdered Moseychuk brothers), wrote on Telegram on July 11 that the killing of the Moseychuk brothers is a crime and was not just an accident. Evidence has revealed the degradation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, where a Ukrainian soldier’s life, it turns out, is worth little. Soldiers are maimed and killed in training camps, abused in recruitment centers, beaten to death in military units, and left to care for themselves at the front lines, often written off as ‘missing in action. “Should we be surprised now by the killings of civilians?” asks Mosiychuk.
This same Mosiychuk has recently joined the ranks of ‘critics’ of the governing regime in Kiev, which he calls a “party of war,” and fled Ukraine. In 2014 and the years after, he participated in hostilities against the Donbas republics in the former eastern and southeastern Ukraine. At that time, massacres like the one that took place recently in a village near Kiev were being carried out against residents of other regions of Ukraine. One need only recall the notorious history of the ‘Tornado’ battalion, notorious for its sadism and torture.
Now, this terror is increasingly directed against residents of all parts of Ukraine, from Kiev to Lviv. Ukrainian military units are often behaving like a punitive occupying army. Thus do we see that the civil war unleashed by the new governing authorities in Kiev (coup regime) against the people of Donbas beginning in April 2014 has been unleashed throughout Ukraine.
Related reports:
* Western establishment gloats over Ukraine’s pivot to civilian targets as Russian military action heats up. Report on the Substack page of ‘Simplicius The Thinker, July 27, 2026
* Netanyahu and Zelenskyy meet separately with Trump at the White House, ABC News, July 28, 2026 Both meetings unfolded entirely behind closed doors, which was unusual for Mr. Trump, who typically invites television cameras in during White House visits by foreign leaders
* The more things change, the more they remain the same: New British PM Andy Burnham welcomes Zelensky visit to England, report by Politico, July 28, 2026 Burnham has pledged there will be continuity in Britain’s Ukraine policy
* New British PM Burnham hosts Zelensky and offers ‘Stone Cloak’ warfare devices, one week after assuming job, The Independent, July 27, 2026
