Ukraine on 1 December 2025: resignation and a verdict
A look back at two developments that framed the days around 1 December 2025: a corruption probe reaching the presidential office and a Russian court ruling.
What was the mood in Ukraine on 1 December 2025, after a final weekend of November that brought a high-level resignation and a court ruling across the front line? Two reports from the preceding days framed the moment.
A resignation after a raid
On 28 November 2025, Andriy Yermak resigned as Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine. The decision came after agents from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office raided his apartment. The searches were linked to Operation Midas.
That investigation had been launched in 2024 and was still ongoing as of November 2025. It concerns large-scale bribery in Ukraine's energy sector, allegedly committed during the Russo-Ukrainian war. According to the later description of the case, the data-collection phase lasted 15 months. Investigators carried out more than 70 searches, seized 4 million US dollars and obtained about 1,000 hours of audio recordings of the suspects' conversations.
A verdict in a Russian court
On 27 November 2025, a Russian court sentenced eight people to life imprisonment for terrorism over the truck bomb attack on the Crimean Bridge. Five people were killed in the attack in October 2022.
The explosion happened on 8 October 2022 at 6:07 a.m. on the road bridge, on the westbound lanes running from Russia towards Kerch in Russian-occupied Crimea. A bomb had been loaded onto a truck. Two two-lane vehicular spans collapsed into the water, while two adjacent eastbound lanes on a separate structure survived. A railway tanker car caught fire, damaging the adjoining railway bridge. The Investigative Committee of Russia launched an investigation after the incident.
Two stories, one backdrop
The two events were unrelated in substance, but both belonged to a country in its fourth year of full-scale war. Crimea, occupied by Russia since 2014, had served as a base for the occupation of parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts when major hostilities began on 24 February 2022. Since then, the peninsula has been the scene of maritime and overland assaults and counter-assaults.
By 1 December 2025, the anti-corruption agencies had pursued a case that reached the presidential office, and a Russian court had handed down its sentences over the bridge attack.
