In recent days, the Ukrainian government has generated headlines both on the battlefield and off. While counteroffensive operations continue to make steady progress in the south around Robotyne, breaching Russian defensive lines as part of an effort to take the strategically critical city of Melitopol, officials in Kyiv have taken steps that would seem to signal a positive turn in the battle against government corruption.
However, these moves have lacked one all-critical element: the empowerment of anti-corruption institutions independent of influence from the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Over the past month, the Ukraine government announced a number of anti-corruption measures, including the dismissal of all 33 regional military recruitment heads amid rumors that military-aged males were buying falsified medical documents in order to leave the country to escape military service, and the creation of an anonymous portal allowing whistleblowers to report instances of graft.
The anti-corruption efforts extended to personnel, as influential oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky was arrested amid an ongoing probe into allegations of fraud, and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov submitted his resignation months after a series of career-damaging investigations.
However well-intended, the new measures and personnel changes did nothing to advance the development of apolitical, independent institutions tasked with investigating and punishing corruption.
Ukraine does have a nominally independent anti-corruption body designed to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse. The National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), which was formed after the country's Revolution of Dignity in 2014, was intended to serve as a kind of Ukrainian FBI.
With a staff of 246 detectives and a track record of prioritizing investigations of figures from the government of Zelensky's predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, NABU continues to face criticism for its failure to take on more instances of present-day abuses. The Kolomoisky investigation was not led by NABU, but by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
Unless and until the Zelensky administration provides NABU with the resources and freedom it needs to uncover, investigate and prosecute more current instances of corruption, it is likely to continue impeding the achievement of Ukraine's ultimate goal: reclaiming Ukrainian land from its Russian occupiers.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
