“We were thrown under the bus and crushed”: correspondence of “Servant of the People” MPs emerged online amid the NABU scandal

The outlet Bihus.info has published leaked correspondence between “Servant of the People” MPs in the midst of a scandal involving the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).

Notably, many of the MPs in the exchange are speaking Russian — even staunch advocates of Ukrainian-language policy, such as Mykyta Poturaiev.

According to Bihus.info, right after the vote to reduce NABU’s powers, MPs began asking whether any communication strategy was planned, because they had “never faced so much negativity before.” MP Oleksii Zhmerenetskyi called the person behind the idea a “genius from the FSB.”

Oleksandr Fedienko joked that the MPs could now expect a “golden shower.”

MP Olena Vintoniak claimed that the rally in support of NABU was “paid for.”

Poturaiev sarcastically countered that, by that logic, every rally in Ukraine is “paid for” unless it ends with people being beaten and the president fleeing. He predicted that the provision allowing searches “without court orders” would “come in very handy when they (all of us — no matter how we voted yesterday) finally start ‘coming after’ us — so no one has the chance to run or hide.”

Later, Poturaiev also wrote: “People expect that arrogant and corrupt MPs will be jailed — or better yet, hanged. And I draw your attention to the fact that they see all of us this way.”

Zhmerenetskyi added that even MPs from the Opposition Platform — For Life (OPZZh) were now mocking them, asking, “Well, did they at least promise you anything?” while Servant of the People MPs “stare blankly like hungry students before serious uncles.”

MP Anton Shvachko predicted that this was “only the beginning of a global collapse” and that the protests would be used to destabilize the country. He also claimed that there were “16–17-year-old kids at the rally who didn’t even understand why they were there.”

Poturaiev replied, urging him “not to bulls*** yourself,” because “two out of our five IT multimillionaires” were also present at the rally. Shvachko later wrote that if they announced plans to restore NABU’s powers, “it would be a complete failure and a victory for our beloved grant-eaters.”

Faction leader Davyd Arakhamia wrote in the evening, after President Volodymyr Zelensky had spoken, that “when all this is over, I’d like to apologize to all of you.”

MP Maksym Buzhansky joked in response: “That’s exactly how I imagined the end of the world.”

When it became clear that the decision would be rolled back, Maksym Pavliuk wrote: “Our colleagues threw us under the bus and smeared us. This hard, for the first time. Thanks to Mr. President and the OP leadership.” Others joked it was time to launch their “digital condom” project.

Fedienko even suggested that this scenario had been planned in advance and that the critics had known about it from the start.

Tax Committee head Danylo Hetmantsev proposed to “just dissolve our madhouse altogether” so that the Cabinet could make decisions on its own, “finally ending our role as a generator of contradictory decisions while simultaneously eating s***.” The post gathered many approving emojis.

Arakhamia replied that “the country is in a political crisis and there are no good options,” but promised not to “resolve it solely at the MPs’ expense by putting them under the blow,” adding, “We still have to end the war, and difficult decisions are ahead.” He stressed that “security guarantees for everyone” were needed.

However, Dmytro Natalukha argued that “this has already been done at the MPs’ expense” and that in the end they would be labeled “traitors.” Andrii Zhupanin concluded that “after this story, things will never be the same again.”