23 March, 09:13
While meetings of the Temporary Investigative Commission (TSC), chaired by MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak, are examining issues such as bloggers’ activities and tax compliance, a more immediate question arises—how the head of the TSC himself manages income derived from public events carried out under state authority.
Part 6 of Article 6 of the Law of Ukraine “On Temporary Investigative Commissions and Temporary Special Commissions of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine” is explicit and leaves no alternatives: commissions are required to publish protocols, transcripts, audio, and video recordings of open meetings on the official website of the Verkhovna Rada. Not at the discretion of the chair. Not wherever convenient. Exclusively on the parliament’s official resource.
The official page of Zhelezniak’s TSC on the Verkhovna Rada website is empty—no protocols, no transcripts, no announcements.
Instead, the meetings are actively streamed on the YouTube channel “Iron MP” (“Zaliznyi Nardep”)—Zhelezniak’s personal channel. The channel is monetized, and views are converted into income.
On December 24, 2025, Google Ireland Limited transferred 183,140 UAH to Zhelezniak. In his asset declaration submitted the next day, he classified this income as “earnings from creative activity.”
Creative activity. Meetings of a parliamentary oversight body. Consider that again.
In legal terms, creative activity produces an original copyrighted work. A TSC meeting is an official event of a constitutional body. The chair does not create authorial content—he performs a public function for which he already receives a parliamentary salary. A microphone, a table, and a protocol are not a creative studio. Classifying monetization of such broadcasts as “creative activity” at minimum requires explanation—and at most, a review by the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP).
But even if the declaration were flawless, a more fundamental question remains: how did the TSC chair, legally required to publish materials on the official parliamentary website, decide instead to place them on his own monetized channel? There is a term for this—conflict of interest.
The Law “On Prevention of Corruption” defines it as a contradiction between a person’s private interests and official powers that affects objectivity in decision-making. The chair’s private interest in maximizing views on his personal channel conflicts with his public duty to publish materials where the law requires.
Under Article 14 of the law on TSCs, the chair is personally responsible for organizing the commission’s work. Under Article 28 of the anti-corruption law, officials must report conflicts of interest and take steps to resolve them. There is no evidence that such a notification was made to parliament.
There is also a second key figure: Anastasia Radina, who is both deputy head of this TSC and chair of the parliamentary Anti-Corruption Committee. A person who, by position, should be the first to respond to such issues stands alongside the one who created the situation—and remains silent. This is either inaction or a deliberate choice. Neither reflects well on the role.
The situation raises questions for the NACP, the parliamentary Rules Committee, and potentially the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). But it also raises a simple question for Zhelezniak himself:
Why does an MP’s personal YouTube channel perform the function of an official Verkhovna Rada resource—and is it appropriate that Google pays an MP for it?
The article also notes that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officially informed Zhelezniak that the TSC under his leadership violates legal requirements, specifically due to the absence of an official webpage and required published materials on the parliament’s website.