127 -- Overcoming Corruption Helps Ukraine Fight the War
Ukraine was until very recently regarded as wildly corrupt. The internal electoral reverses of 2004 and 2014 followed widespread civil disgust at obscene levels of national and regional peculation, contract padding, and influence peddling --- all of which severely sapped governmental legitimacy. As recently as 2021, Transparency International’s influential Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranked Ukraine 122nd of 180 nations, tied with tiny Eswatini and just ahead of Gabon, Mexico, and Niger. Far less corrupt, according to the Index, were the seemingly challenged European entities of Albania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, and Serbia. Only Russia (136th) and Azerbaijan (128th), among neighbors and nearby rivals, were rated more contaminated than Ukraine.
But the CPI doubtless lags in its calculations. One of the key reasons for Ukraine’s success against Russia and in marshaling support from the West is that President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team have greatly reined in corruption and marginalized oligarchical influence. That Ukraine has demonstrated an impressive ability to wage an effective anti-corruption offensive has enhanced its legitimacy at home and abroad and contributed immeasurably to advances against Putin’s Russia – which still wallows in kleptocratic excesses. Ukraine’s progress in its anti-corruption endeavors has helped significantly to elevate morale at home and on the eastern and southern fronts. Without such an uplifted sense of national rightness, in part due to the growing victory over corruption, Ukrainians would be harder pressed to endure the Russian bombardment, darkness, and cold.
Contributing to victories over long-entrenched abuses of the public trust, outright theft from official coffers, and the trading of permits for cash, are a series of reforms that Zelensky and his administration began to introduce even before the Russian invasion. They became imperative after Putin’s onslaught. Just as Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore and President Sir Seretse Khama in Botswana long ago knew that they could not govern well or long and could not deliver high quality performance to their citizens if their regimes permitted corruption, so Zelensky understood that integrity was and is critical to the battle against Russia and to gaining global support for his now more united nation. Ukraine and Zelensky’s moral stature are elevated the more kleptocratic tendencies have been repressed.
Against the Oligarchs
In 2014 and after pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs such as Dmytro Firtash and Viktor Medvedchuk bankrolled political parties and purchased Ukrainian television news channels. In 2021, however, Zelensky sanctioned Medvedchuk and his close associates, forced their pro-Russian news channels off the air, and confiscated properties owned by Medvedchuk and his family. Among those assets is Medvedchuk’s 93 meter super yacht, the Royal Romance, which now sits at a wharf in Croatia. Worth $200 million, Ukraine will now auction it, gaining funding for Ukraine’s war. (Other yacht confiscations by the U. S. and the U.K. may also eventually yield cash for Ukraine. But the United Arab Emirates, where many Russian vessels are docked, is not yet cooperating, and – among others -- the unflagged 400-foot-long Madame Gu awaits possible seizure. It is worth $324 million.)
Reforms
Over the last eight years, Ukraine has also instituted a program of anti-corruption reforms stronger than any other contemporary country. Public transparency and specialized anti-corruption accountability systems are exemplary and are “world-leading models of muscular reform,” according to a Brookings’ Institution study.
Although several of Ukraine’s new anti-corruption initiatives still lack confirmed leadership and Ukraine’s presidency tightly controls anti-corruption approaches, there are now five specialized anti-corruption institutions charged with preventing, investigating, and prosecuting perpetrators. Those institutions are also meant to recover the proceeds of grand corruption.
The National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) administers asset declarations for state officials. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) investigates cases of corruption. The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) brings complex corruption cases before the courts. The High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) tries cases involving corruption, money laundering, and related offenses investigated by NABU and prosecuted by SAPO. Finally, the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) tracks and repatriates stolen state assets.
Ukraine wants citizens to be well informed about the spending of public funds. They can raise questions about suspicious activities. Ukraine also has an electronic tendering system for supplying state bodies. It has saved Ukraine billions of dollars by dramatically reducing opportunities for graft and illicit enrichment.
Broader reforms, such as the digitization of government contracts, have enhanced transparency and accountability, reducing corruption risks in service delivery. Citizens can now access administrative and permitting services over the web, a major shift that contributes, as in India’s Delhi State, to transparency and citizen oversight. Bribing at the counter is no longer expected or easy.
Ukraine benefits from highly motivated civil society activists empowered by Zelensky. Its members have played a major role in developing, promoting, and improving grassroots efforts to develop transparent and responsible institutions and to hold corrupt officials accountable. The country’s network of anti-corruption organizations and activists extends well beyond the capital. Many regions and municipalities in Ukraine have anti-corruption nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working to promote integrity and counter malfeasance at the local level. Civic oversight is real, as is the attention – even during war time – of investigative journalists.
Ukraine has not eliminated greed and the possibility of continued corruption, especially in the construction sector. But the state’s political culture of anti-corruption is very much powerful than it once was. Leadership, a key factor, has managed to turn the embattled country toward honest dealings and away from its pre-war sleaze.
The transformation of Ukraine from the Soviet-style kleptocracy it once was to a modern, Nordic-like, non-corrupt political system is still hardly complete. But in great contrast to what Ukraine was and what Putin’s Russia still is, Zelensky’s Ukraine is a comparative paragon of virtue. It celebrates Ukraine’s legitimacy and trumpets its standing in the face of a Russia that is run by and for a criminalized collection of oligarchs, overseen by Putin.