A specter haunts every discussion of Ukraine’s future among its partners: the specter of corruption. they see it – whisperfor now – as an obstacle to the early granting of Kiev’s accession to the EU and supply serious amounts of funds for reconstruction without onerous bureaucracy.
Concerns do not arise out of nowhere. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index places Ukraine very low in the rankings. In 2022 he finished 116th. But the clue is in the name. TI measures perceptions that have not kept pace with Ukraine’s change since its “dignity revolution” ousted Vladimir Putin’s puppet president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014.
In Kiev last month, Oleksandr Novikov told me surveys shows that far more people think corruption is prevalent than report having experienced it, and that the willingness to break with a culture of corruption is improving. Novikov heads the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, one of several recently created bodies that includes a specialized prosecutor, a court and an investigation bureau.
The wider judiciary has yet to be cleaned up, but anti-corruption activist Daria Kaleniuk told me it’s heading in the right direction. “There is a lot of corruption in Ukraine, but we admit that this is a problem and we are working to fix it.” The very fact that we talk about it, even in wartime, is a sign of health. “Nobody talks about corruption in Belarus or Russia.”
Nor are Ukraine’s partners entirely spotless. As one political thinker in Kiev told me, corruption is a confusing concept ranging from state capture to “giving your doctor a box of chocolates.” (In NACP polls, one-sixth of respondents reported encountering bribery in the past year, but the definition encompasses both bribery and vaguely “using connections” to secure a public service). extraction or prevent competitors from entering into a profitable trade. And barriers to entry, rent mining and the private capture of state powers exist everywhere.
Just look at the abject reliance of US politicians on donations from US oligarchs, the funding scandals of one French president after another, Italy’s dysfunctional judicial system, Britain’s blatant Covid procurement practices and seats in the House of Lords for party donors, and Germany’s decades-long subordination to political geopolitical power to corporate profit opportunities in dictatorships.
I have been told of Ukrainian companies trying to enter the markets of large EU countries, only to receive an unofficial list of local companies to partner with or the name of a specific law firm to retain before bureaucratic hurdles business were eliminated.
These practices are no excuse, but they would hardly register as corrupt among those wringing their hands over Ukraine. Yet they are as damaging to a liberal market democracy as many of the challenges Ukrainians, to their credit, are trying to address.
Prior to the full-scale invasion, Ukraine introduced public asset declarations for senior civil servants and their families. They are also controlled by Novikov’s agency for unexplained wealth; he said he can look at individual incomes up to 1998. Government procurement and property sales have been opened up to public scrutiny through digital Prozorro platform.
These mechanisms were discontinued last year, ostensibly for security reasons. But after investigative reporters uncovered overpayments for military rations, Prozorro is back online for non-lethal procurement. Experts told me it demonstrated that the Defense Department pays far more than the Border Agency for many goods, building pressure against impropriety or incompetence.
The huge popular support for EU and NATO integration helps those who want to clean things up. “The stricter and harsher the conditions” for EU entry, Kaleniuk says, “the lower the risk” of letting Ukraine enter early. He wants outside pressure to restore as many pre-2022 transparency rules as possible. Novikov also wants control of his agency to regain — he says police chiefs tell him they want him now to root out recruits who would accept payments from Russia.
The worst the partners could do is let suspicions about Ukraine’s bad legacy – and the Kremlin’s narratives of a dysfunctional Ukrainian state – slow its transformation by delaying aid and accession. As Kaleniuk told me: “If Ukraine hadn’t changed since 2013, Russia would not have needed the full-scale invasion, but would have taken over from within like in Belarus.” The war is proof that Putin knows that the Ukrainian state cannot be bought as before. Friends of Ukraine should understand the same.
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