What does the investigation say?
On November 24, 2025, the head of SAPO Oleksandr Klymenko addressed the Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko. He reported that there was an organized group operating in the parliament that was bribing deputies to vote for the necessary bills. The group consisted of both MPs and ordinary people. Yulia Tymoshenko was also on the list of potential criminals. Since it was about MPs, it was the Prosecutor General who had to approve the start of the investigation.
And on November 27, Tymoshenkoʼs birthday, SAPO registered two criminal proceedings. According to the SAPO prosecutor Vitaliy Hrechyshkin, who filed a motion for a preventive measure for Tymoshenko in court, one concerned the acceptance of an offer or promise of a bribe, and the second — the offer and promise of a bribe. The first involved a criminal organized group, while there is currently no such information on the second. Later, both proceedings were merged into one.
After that, on January 9, 2026, the MP turned to the anti-corruption authorities. In the case, he goes by the code name “Mazur”. According to Tymoshenko, his real name is Ihor Kopytin. In 2024, journalist Mykhailo Tkach reported that Kopytin has a GUR ID card. According to Babel’s sources, Kopytin still works at GUR.
The MP told detectives that in December 2025, Tymoshenko invited him to a meeting and offered to vote for the bills she needed in return. NABU offered Kopytin "to help expose the criminal activities of a group that includes Yulia Tymoshenko".
Ihor Kopytin is an MP from the “Servant of the People” party and an employee of GUR. Tymoshenko says that he was the one who recorded their conversation.
On January 12, Kopytin went to meet with Tymoshenko, already with a recording device. The prosecutors had received permission to secretly monitor the MP a few days earlier, on January 7 (that is, even before Kopytin approached them). The meeting did not take place in Tymoshenkoʼs office, but in the neighbouring office of her deputy, also an MP Serhiy Vlasenko. They also later conducted a search there.
According to Kopytin, for $10 000 a month, Tymoshenko offered him to vote according to her instructions and find more deputies who agreed to act according to this scheme. She was to send a list of the necessary bills to “Signal” messenger.
At the time of the preventive measure, the prosecutor quoted how Tymoshenko advised Kopytin to look for other willing people. They had to be reliable people "who would not betray". She advised not to recruit them in public places — restaurants or administrative buildings, but better somewhere at home.
Tymoshenko planned to transfer the first money to Kopytin and two other deputies who were ready to work according to this scheme, on January 13. The investigation has not yet revealed the names of these MPs.
If you believe the records, Tymoshenkoʼs goal was to "crush the majority" and "kill the draft laws". For the latter, sophisticated methods were used. For example, MPs voted to put the bill on the agenda, and then failed it during the vote. All communication was to take place directly between Kopytin and Tymoshenko. It was forbidden to give her phone number to third parties, as was telling the MPs involved in the scheme that the money came from her.
The searches at Tymoshenkoʼs house lasted from the evening of the 13th to the morning of the 14th. By that time, Kopytin had not received the money. In the office, investigators seized lists of MPs, including "Servants", with various marks opposite the names.
Based on these papers, the investigation formed a list of people with whom the court eventually forbade Tymoshenko to communicate.
Yulia Tymoshenko during a search of her office. On the table is $40 000, which was seized by the investigation.
During the searches, six mobile phones were seized from Tymoshenko. One of them was an iPhone 13 with the only installed “Signal” messenger and one contact signed “2022”. Tymoshenko called this subscriber in December 2025 and January 2026. According to the prosecutor, the conversations concerned “the involvement of trade unions in political life, the purchase of political parties for this, the need to involve the broad masses of the population in these processes”.
On another seized phone, investigators found correspondence about personnel decisions that the parliament voted on January 13. Then the MPs dismissed the head of the Ministry of Digital Affairs Mykhailo Fedorov, the Minister of Defense Denys Shmyhal, the head of SBU Vasyl Malyuk, and thwarted the appointment of Fedorov and Shmyhal as ministers of defense and energy.
According to Tymoshenko, this is correspondence with her assistant, who regularly provides her with analytics about voting in the Verkhovna Rada. It was from this phone, judging by the words of the prosecutor, that Kopytin received a list of bills for which he was supposed to vote.
A message with instructions on how to vote. According to the investigation, Kopytin received it from Tymoshenko.
Tymoshenko refused to provide the password for the third phone — Samsung Galaxy A07. It is unknown whether investigators hacked it.
According to the prosecutor, during the searches in the “Motherland” office, a monoblock computer was also seized. In one of the accounts called "Cashier" there was a file "Report" with Excel tables for 2022-2026. The tables contain expenses, dates and amounts, as well as sources of funds, including Yulia Tymoshenko.
She herself says that the computer was seized from her reception area, and the amounts are several thousand hryvnias, which she gave for tea, coffee and sweets in the reception area. What was actually in those tables was not explained in court.
Another piece of evidence for the prosecution is the report of the examination of Kopytinʼs phone, where, according to the investigation, Tymoshenko wrote. On the morning of January 13, before the votes in the Verkhovna Rada, Kopytin wrote a message:
"Yulia Volodymyrivna, good morning. After yesterdayʼs faction and this morning there is a nuance in personnel. I will come to you and tell you everything. So far without us in this matter. I apologize very much."
Immediately after that, Tymoshenko called him, the conversation lasted two minutes, what was discussed is unknown.
What Tymoshenko and her defense say
Yulia Tymoshenko devoted most of her speech in court to the fact that she is the only one in parliament fighting against external control of Ukraine and attempts to limit sovereignty through the participation of internationalists in the selection of judges of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC), heads of anti-corruption bodies, etc.
Tymoshenko insists that there was no crime and that the recordings were falsified (probably by Kopytin).
She does not deny that she spoke with the MP, but the part of the conversation where money is mentioned is falsified.
“I categorically deny that this was said during the conversation, the IT companies [which she asked to analyze the recordings] said that this was a pure compilation,” Tymoshenko noted in court.
Tymoshenko believes that this is a provocation by NABU.
She claims that detectives could have forced Kopytin to take part in this through blackmail. Referring to some reference, Tymoshenko notes that the deputy appeared in the materials of the proceedings, which concerned ties with companies in Russia.
What kind of proceedings this was and who investigated it is unclear. But according to Tymoshenko, for participating in the operation NABU promised to close it. If this is true, such actions can be interpreted as provocation of a crime by law enforcement officers, this is a crime.
After Tymoshenko named Kopytin, he wrote the following post on his Telegram channel.
Tymoshenko says that Kopytin should not have received any money, the funds seized from her are confirmed by a declaration and were not intended for bribing deputies.
She insists that NABU had no right to “rush in with an urgent search when there was no transfer of money”. In fact, for the qualification of the article with which Tymoshenko is incriminated, transferring money is not necessary. The crime is considered completed from the moment a person makes such a proposal.
Tymoshenkoʼs defense draws attention to inconsistencies in the case and other procedural shortcomings.
The lawyers note that the criminal proceedings, which were opened in November 2025, involve an organized group, but neither the plot nor Tymoshenkoʼs suspicion mentions an organized group. There is no suspicion of other MPs or members of the group yet. Tymoshenko herself claims that she is not familiar with two-thirds of the deputies from the list that was removed from her.
In addition, the investigation received a decision to conduct informal investigative actions against Tymoshenko, in particular the right to listen to her conversations, on January 7, even before Kopytin appealed to NABU.
And the investigators did not register the episode with Kopytinʼs participation as a separate proceeding. This procedural moment may significantly affect the consideration of the case in court on the merits, believes former SAPO prosecutor Stanislav Bronevytsky.
Tymoshenko says in court that it is her job to monitor the votes of s. And the file with payments is for tea and coffee expenses.
What did the court decide?
The court granted the prosecutorʼs request and set Tymoshenko a bail of UAH 33 million. This bail is not an alternative to detention — the prosecutors did not request that Tymoshenko be sent to a pre-trial detention center. Only if Tymoshenko fails to post bail within five days of the announcement of the courtʼs decision, that is, by Wednesday, January 21, will the court determine another type of preventive measure.
Tymoshenko was banned from moving outside the Kyiv region without the permission of the investigation. The MP was also banned from communicating with a number of “Servant” MPs, including Ihor Kopytin.
The list included the entire group of former parliament speaker Dmytro Razumkov, who had diverged in positions with the authorities. Also on the list is one MP from “Motherland” Andriy Nikolayenko.
Questions that remained unanswered are the following:
- Why did Kopytin report to NABU only two or three weeks after the conversation with Tymoshenko?
- Why did Kopytin refuse to continue participating in the operation and record Tymoshenko handing him money?
- Why didnʼt the investigation register a separate criminal case involving Kopytin?
- Did the detectives plan any secret investigative actions before January 7, 2026, when the investigation received the relevant decision? Or was this decision used only for the wiretapping that was hung on Kopytin?