Sanctions against Ukrainians: Zheleznyak revealed a secret condition ahead of the budget vote
Yaroslav Zheleznyak wrote about this on Telegram.
MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak spoke of a private incident which, according to him, took place during preparations for the vote on the 2026 state budget.
According to the MP, in early December 2025, when the Verkhovna Rada was urgently gathering votes for the draft budget for the following year, a number of factions and parliamentary groups put forward a condition regarding sanctions against Ukrainian citizens.
Zheleznyak claims that the issue was either the complete removal of the possibility of imposing sanctions against Ukrainians, or restrictions on this mechanism.
As one option, he said, the need to confirm such decisions by a vote in the Verkhovna Rada was discussed at the time.
The MP stated that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was allegedly opposed to such a restriction.
According to Zheleznyak, the situation became tense when there were not enough votes for the budget without this condition. He claims that Yulia Svyrydenko or Davyd Arakhamia were then forced to organise a call between the president and the MPs.
According to Zheleznyak, the president was abroad on official business at the time.
The MP stated that following this conversation, it was decided not to put the amendment to a vote. At the same time, according to eyewitnesses to the conversation, this happened on the promise not to use the sanctions mechanism against their own citizens for political purposes.
“And you say there are bad MPs in the Rada – just look how naive people really are,” wrote Zheleznyak.
No official confirmation of this version has yet been provided by the President’s Office, the government or the leadership of the Verkhovna Rada.
Context of the budget vote
The Verkhovna Rada adopted Ukraine’s state budget for 2026 on 3 December 2025. A total of 257 MPs voted in favour of Bill No. 14000 in the second reading and as a whole. Yaroslav Zheleznyak himself reported this at the time.
According to his information, among those who supported the budget were 193 MPs from “Servant of the People”, 16 from “Platform for Life and Peace”, 11 from the “Restoration” group, 11 from “For the Future”, 16 from “Trust” and one MP from “Voice”. “European Solidarity” and “Batkivshchyna”, he said, did not cast any votes.
The issue of sanctions against Ukrainian citizens has repeatedly been the subject of political controversy. In particular, in 2025, the National Security and Defence Council imposed sanctions against a number of Ukrainian citizens, after which some politicians and lawyers publicly criticised the use of the sanctions mechanism without a court ruling.
As reported by ThePublic, Zheleznyak stated that the owners of anonymous Telegram channels were being investigated by the SBU
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