Tensions in Ukrainian society are mounting and infighting amongst the elite is bubbling to the surface as a domestic political crisis gathers momentum.

From the outside, the Western coverage paints a picture of unanimity and resilience. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was at it again yesterday, saying that despite the roasting the CDU got in the Saxony-Anhalt elections at the hands of the “pro-Russian” AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), his government remains “unwavering” in its support of Ukraine.

From the inside things are starting to fall apart. In general, the public are starting to fight back against the brutal “busification” conscription campaign that is press ganging men – legitimate targets of the conscription law, and those who are not – which is tearing society apart. There was a riot in Lviv last month and at least one TCK officer has been killed. I have seen reports of another man shooting at the pressgang officers and there are also reports of crowds attacking the officers with pepper spray. Tensions are rising and given how radicalised the Ukrainian population is after two revolutions, there is a real chance of a popular rebellion. Ex-Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tried to play this card in his clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy but couldn’t pull it off.

More specifically, there is a growing domestic political crisis that is not getting much attention. Zelenskiy is slowly losing control over his own Servant of the People (SOTP) party that is refusing to vote through reforms that the IMF are insisting on, which has already caused the fund to hold back several billion dollars that was supposed to be granted now, wrapping them into the third assessment slated for December. Given the budget is in free fall - Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said yesterday that the budget is reaching a “critical” stage – that is not good news as MinFin is about to run out of money to pay salaries.

Even more specifically, it appears that Ukraine’s various security and law enforcement organs are starting to go to war with each other. As IntelliNews reported, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) got into a public shootout earlier this month, then the next day someone flew a drone into the office of the acting head of the SBU in an assassination attempt. The knee jerk reaction was Russia, except Russia wasn’t firing any drones on Kyiv at that time and the drone was launched inside Kyiv, not far from Kyiv…

Now a fresh scandal has broken out. Ukraine’s General Prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko issued a “notice of suspicion” on the head of NABU Semen Kryvonos, and immediately quit and left the country. NABU and the Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko have gone to war, after several senior officers to the Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko officers were arrested for running a scheme to support Ukraine’s scam call centres – a business that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars a month. This follows on from the arrest of Iryna Mudra, the deputy head of the Presidential administration who was caught racketeering.

Zelenskiy was already at war with NABU since he tried to gut the agency by putting it under the direct control of the GenProc – a presidential appointee – last summer with Law 21414. But now you have the heads of the two agencies – GenProc and NABU – publicly trading blows with accusation and counter accusation.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen must be looking on horrified as she was struggling to rally EU support for Ukraine ahead of what quite clearly will be the worst winter of the war: the UNDP are already warning of a looming “humanitarian catastrophe” as everyone knows what is coming.

Oligarch sanctions list

Ursula’s efforts are not bearing fruit. Support for Ukraine is starting to get seriously wobbly. Amongst the most recent failures was European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen caving into Greece's demand to gut the 21^st sanctions package with an oil exemption for Greek tankers.

Yesterday was a fresh blow as the oligarch sanctions regime is about to collapse. Embarrassingly, the EU ministers were not able to agree on a deal to take Uzbek-born Russian tycoon Alier Usmanov off the oligarch sanctions list. The deadline for renewal expires today and if no unanimous agreement to renew the list of 2,600 names is reached today then those sanctions expire and everyone on the list is free to go. In a fudge, the ministers have agreed to prolong the sanctions for another week to give themselves a little more bargaining time.

It’s not entirely clear what is behind this row. We have followed the Usmanov story closely and as we reported, he has managed to get all the press reports linking him to Russian President Vladimir Putin deleted as they were all unsubstantiated and those reports were the basis for sanctioning him in the first place – starting with Anders Aslund's “Putin’s favourite oligarch tweet” which he could not substantiate (as he made that up) and has since deleted, but still comes up in this story as a “fact.”

Slovakia’s motivation is clear as it still buys substantial cheap Russian oil and gas. The French backing for the move is a lot more opaque and Paris refuses to comment. According to reports, France is trying to get some French nationals out of Azeri jails.

Usmanov made his money in Russia, but has since moved to Uzbekistan where he spends most of his time now, but having followed him and his company for several decades I know that he is well connected in the Caucasus, but just how that works remains unclear. However, it's probably connected to his Uzbek origins as Central Asia and the Caucasus are working together and Usmanov is extremely well connected in Tashkent – which has also lobbied for his removal from the oligarch list. Usmanov is buddies with the Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and has invested in a number of sectors there.

The two French prisoners who appear to be at the centre of this are Martin Ryan and Anass Derraz. A French National Assembly question published on September 1 specifically names both men and asks the government what it is doing to obtain their release or transfer to France.

Martin Ryan is the politically more sensitive case. He is a French businessman who had lived in Azerbaijan for about four years and ran Merkorama, a food-import/consulting company, until the Azerbaijan's State Security Service arrested him in December 2023, accusing him of spying for France's DGSE and sentenced to ten years in jail.

Anass Derraz is a French-Moroccan businessman and senior executive at the French water group SAUR. He was arrested during a business trip to Baku in July 2024 and accused of trying to extort money from Russian-Azerbaijani billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov in return for helping free Akhmedov's impounded yacht Luna and protecting him against sanctions. He is serving a 12 year sentence for that.

There was a third well-publicised French prisoner, Théo Clerc, an artist sentenced to three years after painting graffiti in the Baku metro, but he was pardoned in 2025.

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