The commanders of a troubled French-equipped and -trained combat brigade have been accused by a major news magazine of conspiring to steal state funds at scale, and an Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) top general on Tuesday ordered an immediate investigation and promised “harsh reprisals” for anyone “profiting from soldiers’ blood.”
At the center of the ballooning scandal over a possible scheme to skim soldier salaries for personal gain is the command staff of Ukraine’s 155th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, the first major Ukrainian combat unit to have been trained as a unit outside the country, and a unit put forward by Paris and Kyiv alike as a possible future template for modern, professional units and leadership in the AFU.
According to an article published by Ukrainska Pravda magazine, one of Ukraine’s oldest and highest-standard news agencies, the recently appointed commander of the 155th Brigade, Col. Taras Maksymov, in March 2025 meetings with the unit’s drone team suggested soldier drone builders use their personal money to produce more and better drones, because the military was not providing sufficient funding.
The article, headlined “Business From Combat Salaries and Mass Spare Parts. How a New Command Team Is ‘Building Up’ 155th Mechanized Brigade,” alleged that during those meetings Maksymov proposed a kickback scheme potentially worth tens of thousands of dollars monthly to redirect portions of soldier salaries into an illicit slush fund controlled by him and his command team.
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An earlier scandal about the brigade being sent into combat with insufficient drones, and its resultant public outcry, led the Joint Forces Khortitsiya, the unit’s higher command, to insist that Maksymov’s 155th Brigade leadership solve the problem immediately.
This created an opportunity for unit commanders to create a personal cash stream supposedly to buy more drones and drone parts. The Ukrainska Pravda article said this allowed the commanders to skim over half the money for themselves and their accomplices.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian news platforms reported that Joint Forces Khortitsiya had opened an investigation into the Ukrainska Pravda allegations.
The independent military research group DeepState quoted Maj. Gen. Myhailo Drapaty, a senior officer commanding both Khortitsiya group and all Ukrainian Ground Forces: “Anyone who robs their own brigade is mocking their comrades, profiting from their blood. The reprisal will be harsh.”
Per the Ukrainska Pravda report, drone builders serving with the 155th Brigade would have had their salaries more than tripled, from Hr.30,000 ($724)/month to Hr.100,000 ($2,414)/month.
However, most of the salary increase of Hr.60-70,000 ($1,448-1,790)/month for drone builders would not make it into their wallets. The report explained that unit commanders would siphon off about Hr.40,000 ($965) a person, to be handed over to the “headquarters,” of which Hr.20,000 ($483) would go toward drone part purchases and 20,000 ($483) “to the top,” i.e., to the unit commanders.
The report said the accounting was done by hand in a black ledger, and transfers from the drone builders to brigade leadership were only in cash. Nearly all Ukrainian combat brigades have an unmanned aircraft battalion, usually including a company-size subordinate unit of 50-100 soldiers and officers dedicated to drone manufacturing and maintenance.
The Ukrainska Pravda article reported a criminal conspiracy but did not mention any money changing hands.
Hypothetically, the amount of monthly kickbacks paid by a 50-member drone maintenance and production section to the 155 Brigade headquarters staff would have been equivalent to $24,270 (around Hr.1 million).
Officers or soldiers participating in such a scheme could, if found guilty, face penalties for theft of state funds for personal gain, conspiring to commit a crime, procuring material for the military outside of regulated means, and misdirection of Ukrainian soldiers’ salaries. Worst-case prison sentences on most counts would be between two to ten years’ imprisonment – per count.
The article cited the acting commander of the 155th Brigade Unmanned Aircraft Battalion, Lt. Col Sviatoslav Shumsky, as the main source of information about the scheme, and said its reporters had confirmed details with more than twenty other sources that it chose not to identify.
The Ukrainska Pravda report followed an Apr. 15 announcement by the DPR, Ukraine’s national police investigative agency, that it had opened a pre-trial investigation into signs of abuse of office and misdirection of state funds in the 155th Brigade.
Law enforcement officers detained Shumsky on May 2, according to news at the time, because of his possible complicity in corrupt activities in the unit.
Details made public in the May 19 Ukrainska Pravda article would, if proved accurate, possibly exonerate Shumsky by implicating officers above him led by the brigade commander Col. Maksymov.
Kyiv Post asked the 155th Brigade command staff for a possible comment on the Ukrainska Pravda allegations. A brigade staffer said the unit was not commenting currently. Kyiv Post was unable to contact Maksymov.
The 155th Brigade is the first AFU combat brigade to have been fully trained, as a unit, outside the country. When it was being formed and equipped, in Fall 2023, French President Emmanuel Macron was a visitor to the unit training sites in eastern France. At the time, both Paris and Kyiv touted the initiative as an innovative joint project that would deliver an expert unit armed with modern French equipment to the Ukrainian battlefield.
Scandal erupted in October 2024 with Ukrainian news reports of dangerous gaps in kit issued to the new brigade, particularly in strike drones and light vehicles.
A second manpower and public relations disaster flared up the next month when Ukrainian news article – subsequently confirmed by AFU prosecutors – reported that as many as 1,700 soldiers assigned to the paper-strength 4,500-man 155th brigade had deserted or switched to another unit. Especially embarrassing was the desertion of 48 Ukrainian service members from training facilities in France.
Following an investigation ordered by President Volodymyr Zelensky the commander of 155th Brigade at the time, Col. Ryumshin, was sacked in December 2024 because of the two scandals, and because AFU leadership claimed a lack of confidence in his ability to command effectively.
Some Ukrainian news reports have asserted Ryumshin was made a scapegoat for a training program that was poorly thought out and badly implemented. He remains in AFU investigator custody facing potential charges of failing to report desertions.
Ryumshin’s replacement, Col. Maksymov, was appointed on Dec. 7, 2024, by Maj. Gen. Myhailo Drapaty, the same officer who ordered an investigation into the Ukrainska Pravda article on Tuesday.
The 155th brigade’s baptism of fire in the Pokrovsk sector in late 2024 and early 2025 was rocky, with its main armor unit equipped with modern Leopard 2 tanks suffering losses in early battles.
By February 2025, the AFU Commander-in-Chief, Col. Gen. Olksandr Syrsky, stepped in and declared the brigade “under his personal supervision.” Ukrainian news reports and soldier accounts said that Syrsky parceled out smaller units as reinforcements to more reliable units to gain combat experience.
According to open source reports and unit information feeds, the 155th Brigade is currently deployed and in combat in the eastern Pokrovsk sector, the main target of the Russian Armed Forces’ ongoing offensive.
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