Ukraine is widely assumed to be preparing a spring offensive to take back lost territory from Russian invaders. In the meantime, President Volodymyr Zelensky has already launched another offensive of great importance to the country’s future. He is battling what Andrii Borovyk, executive director of Transparency International Ukraine, described to me, in a telephone interview from Kyiv, as “our internal enemy number one: corruption.”
The enemy might be internal, but the issue has serious implications for Ukraine’s international relations. In the United States, for example, Republican critics of Ukraine often cite corruption as a reason not to give Kyiv a “blank check.” Ukrainian leaders realize they are almost totally dependent on foreign aid and are keenly aware of the damage that any scandal could do to their country’s future.
In recent weeks, the Zelensky government has taken action against a number of senior officials who were accused of wrongdoing. Deputy Defense Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov was fired and arrested after a Ukrainian news site reported that the armed forces were paying double and triple the market prices for foods such as eggs and potatoes. Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov’s job was also in jeopardy from the scandal — he was accused of lax management, rather than corruption — although he seems to have survived for now.
A deputy infrastructure minister, Vasyl Lozynsky, was fired and put under house arrest after prosecutors claimed he had taken a $400,000 bribe in connection with the purchase of electrical generators that Ukraine desperately needs to recover from Russian attacks on its electrical infrastructure.
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Even more significant — because it hit closer to home — was the forced resignation of Zelensky’s own deputy chief of staff, Kyrylo Tymoshenko. He was reported to have commandeered an SUV that had been donated by General Motors for humanitarian purposes for his personal use, and he had been spotted driving a new Porsche, costing about $100,000, which belonged to a prominent businessman. Several regional governors close to Tymoshenko, who oversaw regional policy, were also sacked.
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End of carouselOpinions on the war in Ukraine after one year
One year ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. Post Opinions is marking the anniversary with columns looking at all that has transpired and what may lie ahead.
Post Opinions partnered with the Brookings Institution to visualize the war’s effects on Ukraine’s economy, immigration trends and more. Together, these indicators suggest the fighting is unlikely to end anytime soon, write Michael O’Hanlon, Constanze Stelzenmüller and David Wessel of Brookings.
The Editorial Board looked for solutions, calling on the United States and its European allies to intensify their military, economic and diplomatic support for Kyiv. Vladimir Putin hopes for a stalemate, the Editorial Board writes, and the West needs to fuel a game-changing shift in momentum.
In an op-ed adapted from her Feb. 9 speech at the “Rebuilding Ukraine, Rebuilding the World” conference at Harvard, Oleksandra Matviichuk writes that it is not only wrong but also immoral not to provide weapons for Ukraine.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling describes the Ukraine war as a slugfest, not a stalemate. He outlines five phases of the war and predicts that Ukraine’s forces will ultimately prevail.
Columnist Jason Willick looks at the war through the lens of U.S. politics. President Biden, he says, is positioned to take advantage of divided government by using as his foil Republicans who oppose continued support for Ukraine.
Antony Beevor, a former tank commander with the British Army, says the Ukraine war has revived the role of the main battle tank.
Columnist David Ignatius examines three main characters of the war: Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky and Joe Biden. A year into the war, Ignatius writes, Putin’s staying power begins to seem questionable, while Zelensky and Biden have never looked stronger.
Columnist George F. Will discusses the importance of continued support for Ukraine, writing that Putin can win only if Ukraine’s allies neglect to maximize their moral and material advantages.
Graham Allison, a professor of government at Harvard, reconsiders what it would mean to win in Ukraine. A new Cold War, he writes, might not be the worst outcome.
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Perhaps the most significant move of all was the raid that Ukrainian security forces conducted on Feb. 1 at the home of billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, one of Zelensky’s most influential backers and the owner of the television network that made Zelensky a star by airing his comedy series, “Servant of the People.” A former regional governor, Kolomoisky had been placed under U.S. sanctions in 2021 because of his alleged involvement in “significant corruption,” but he had been considered untouchable in Ukraine — until now. It remains unclear, however, whether he will be charged with any crimes.
Corruption remains a serious problem in Ukraine, but Transparency International reports that real progress has been made in recent years. Ukraine is still assessed as more corrupt than neighbors such as Poland and Romania, but it is considerably less corrupt than Russia — whose badly led and badly equipped army is paying the price for so much high-level peculation. Surveys show that the number of Ukrainians who reported paying a bribe in the previous year fell from 27 percent in 2013 to 19 percent in 2021.
Borovyk told me that progress has continued since the start of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022; Ukraine is one of the few countries in the world to improve its corruption score in the past year. He marveled that even in the first few months of the war — when Kyiv was in danger of falling — the anti-corruption courts continued to function in the capital. “Even for me, it sounds weird,” Borovyk acknowledged. “I was in Kyiv all the time, and I remembered what it was like, but they continued working.”
Ironically, Ukrainian attempts to root out corruption only serve to elevate the issue in the West and provide further fodder for Republican critics of U.S. aid to Ukraine. In fact, U.S. and European officials say they have found no evidence of any foreign aid being siphoned off in Ukraine, but the United States does have painful experience in the recent past with how U.S. aid for an embattled ally can be misused.
In Afghanistan, as Sarah Chayes detailed in her book “Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security,” pervasive corruption fueled by U.S. spending helped to undermine popular support for the Kabul regime. History cannot be allowed to repeat itself in Ukraine, and so far it isn’t.
In Afghanistan, corruption was a product of tribalism. In Ukraine, it is a legacy of the old Soviet system. In most of the former Soviet republics, the end of communism created a new class of oligarchs who became fabulously wealthy by appropriating state assets and utilizing the power of the state against their rivals. Russian President Vladimir Putin has fueled corruption by spreading around vast numbers of rubles to buy influence in Kyiv, among many other places.
The fight against graft in Ukraine began in earnest in 2014 after the Revolution of Dignity toppled a pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. The Ukrainian parliament established corruption-fighting institutions — the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the High Anti-Corruption Court — with help from Western governments. By one count, Ukraine has passed 127 laws against corruption since 2015.
“Ukraine has the most intrusive asset-declaration policy in the world,” William B. Taylor Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told me. “Government officials must list assets — cars, apartments, watches, cash — owned by them or members of their families. And the declarations are available online for aggressive journalists to compare to the officials’ salaries.”
Of course, it’s one thing to have institutions in place to fight corruption; it’s another thing to utilize them. John Herbst, another former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told me that “there were serious steps taken against corruption” in the first year of Petro Poroshenko’s presidency (2014-2015) and the first year of Zelensky’s presidency (2019-2020). Then, in both cases, the anti-corruption fight lagged behind other priorities, and there was a return to business as usual.
Now, Zelensky seems to be making the battle against graft a priority once again. He is aided by a free press and civil society organizations that uncover official wrongdoing in ways that would never be permitted in Russia. There is less tolerance now for officials lining their own pockets when Ukraine is fighting for its very survival and tens of thousands of Ukrainians have given their lives for the country.
Ultimately, Herbst told me, the “big blow against corruption” will be struck only if Ukraine wins the war and makes real progress toward European Union membership. The lure of joining the E.U. made it possible to overcome entrenched interests and clean up corruption in other Eastern European states that were once under Moscow’s thumb, and it will be no different in Ukraine. But in the meantime, Zelensky is showing that he is serious about preventing corruption from undermining the Ukrainian war effort.