An Officer’s Salary and a $4.5 Million Spanish Mansion: How Zelenskyy Cleaned Up Military Recruitment

The startling corruption investigation into Ukraine’s military recruitment system announced Friday didn’t start in Kyiv, or in Lviv, or even in Odesa.

The story of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s clean sweep begins in the tony resort town of Marbella, on Spain’s Costa del Sol. 

There, in late 2022, as Zelenskyy’s forces battled to retake large swaths of Russian-held territory, losing thousands of men, the elderly mother of a former recruitment chief snatched up a stately $4.5 million dream mansion with five bedrooms and a swimming pool. She also purchased a $155,000 Mercedes-Benz EQV.

Prosecutors say the woman’s son, Col. Yevhen Borysov, accepted bribes to keep well-heeled Ukrainians out of the army while others were dying on the front lines following Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

Borysov’s alleged Spanish property portfolio was first exposed in April by a far-right former member of parliament, Ihor Mosiychuk. The media outlet Ukrainska Pravda then flew to Marbella for an up-close look at the mansion and his other properties.

Last month, as prosecutors announced charges against Borysov, Zelenskyy vowed to expose and punish “every such cardinal violation anywhere in the military hierarchy–any attempt to somehow get rich that humiliates our soldiers, our heroes.”

In addition to the mansion, officials at the State Bureau of Investigation say Borysov’s wife owned commercial real estate in Spain worth $800,000 and they owned additional cars including a Mercedes-Benz G 63 AMG and two Toyota Land Cruisers.

In an understatement, investigators said the value of Borysov’s Spanish property “exceeds his legal income.”

On Friday, the president announced the firing of all 32 regional recruitment commissars, and 112 criminal investigations into corruption and draft evasion for money. He said officers with combat experience would now run all the recruitment centers. 

Marbella appears to be a popular destination for Ukraine’s wartime elite. Earlier this year, Oleksiy Symonenko, the deputy prosecutor general, was fired over a New Year's vacation there — where his family had already settled.