Ukraine’s Has a Self-Inflicted Handicap in Its War for Survival

5 months ago 10

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It is never a good sign when governments accused of corruption raid the agencies and activists trying to hold them to account. This happens routinely in repressive dictatorships including, notoriously, Russia, but now also in Ukraine, which is neither. It’s something the country cannot afford, just as it asks taxpayers across Europe to pump tens of billions of additional euros into its defense.On Monday, security officers raided the offices of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, NABU, detaining at least 15 of its investigators. Two were held on suspicion of working with Russia, but according to the bureau, most were accused of infringements unrelated to their work, such as traffic violations. Separately, security services also inspected the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, known as SO.This is, tragically for Ukraine, part of an emerging pattern. On July 11, armed officers from the State Bureau of Investigations also raided the Kyiv home of activist Vitaliy Shabunin and the military post where serves in Kharkiv, seizing phones and tablets from him and his family. Shabunin was accused of defrauding the state by continuing to draw his military salary while on business trips for the Anti-Corruption Action Center, the non-profit that he heads.Shabunin, who said in a Telegram post that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was “taking the first but confident steps towards corrupt authoritarianism,” is a controversial figure with a sharp tongue. But that shouldn’t matter. His arrest was, despite government denials, politically driven. So were Monday’s raids, and they’re symbolic of a wider problem that could soon have direct, corrosive effects on the nation’s war effort.

This has all come since NABU accused Oleksiy Chernyshov, a deputy prime minister with close ties to Zelenskiy and his family, of taking a $345,000 bribe on a property deal, an allegation he denies. It’s hard to know whether to see this as proof that NABU is ready to tackle wrongdoing at the highest levels, or as evidence of rot at the heart of the system. It is essential that Zelenskiy ensures his international partners conclude the former. Prosecuting Shabunin, who was vocal in pressing for the inquiry, won’t help that cause.The latest backsliding also comes after the defense ministry in January chased out a respected reformer, Maryna Bezrukova, from the Defense Procurement Agency, which was created to speed and clean up government’s arms purchases. Bezrukova had gained praise from Western embassies for ejecting the middlemen milking the process. The agency was supposed to be independent.Then, last month, Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People Party proposed a draft law that would offer immunity from criminal prosecution to anyone involved in the manufacture or purchase of arms that contribute to Ukraine’s defense. There’s a legitimate intent for this legislation, which is to protect officials from prosecution for doing whatever it took to get arms into the hands of fighters in the first days of Russia’s invasion. But that time has passed. Adopted in its current form, the bill would amount to a charter for defense industry corruption.For anyone who, like me, has traveled in and out of Kyiv since it gained independence in 1991, let alone Ukrainians themselves, this is all deeply frustrating. The country has one of the strongest civil societies in the world. Time and again, Ukrainians have shown extraordinary courage to defend the rights they believe should be theirs, mounting two successful revolutions and defending against Russian invasion for more than a decade. Despite all this and enormous progress on reform since 2014, corruption remains this country’s kryptonite.

Ukraine does by now have some of the strongest anti-corruption institutions in the world. But as Valeriia Ivanova, a visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund think tank, put it to me, that’s thanks to the persistent efforts of reformers, backed by international partners. And just because the system now exists doesn’t mean it’s protected from political interference, especially in wartime when the government wields emergency powers.The US, which used to take the lead in pressing Kyiv to tackle systemic corruption, suddenly appears disinterested. But Zelenskiy should avoid the temptation to abuse that space. Europe is very much interested. Its taxpayers are now being asked to pay, not just for US weapons on top of their own aid for Ukraine, but also for as much as $19 billion a year to activate unused production capacity in Kyiv’s defense industry.Zelenskiy needs to make sure he does nothing to undermine confidence among his bill-paying Western partners that the money they give for Ukraine’s defense is well used. Otherwise he’ll quickly move from being an asset to his nation’s war effort to a liability.