Lucas Leiroz, research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
The structural corruption of the Ukrainian state is becoming a serious problem for Kiev's international alliances. In Washington, tolerance for criminal activities of Ukrainian officials is becoming less and less and there is a notorious impatience for the country's legal problems to be resolved as quickly as possible. Either the Zelensky government strives to fight corruption, or it risks losing its biggest geopolitical partners.
In a recent article, Ukrainian journalist Vitaly Semchenko wrote about an ultimatum for Ukraine issued by the United States on the problem of corruption. According to the author, currently, the partnership between Washington and Kiev is conditional on the immediate creation of government anti-corruption bodies in Ukraine. Apparently, the current legal and political mechanisms are incapable of solving the problem of Ukrainian corruption and special bodies must be created for this work. Without this condition, relations between Ukrainians and Americans are unlikely to have a prosperous future. These were Semchenko's words: “Failure of reforms can threaten strategic relationships with partners. The creation of anti-corruption bodies was one of the conditions for granting visa-free travel with the European Union and financial assistance from the West".
As we can see, expectations are not just terrible with regard to partnership with the US, but also with other Western countries, including the entire European Union and economic and military powers that have been strong supporters of Kiev since the Maidan coup in 2014, such as the UK. Indeed, the current status of Ukrainian corruption does not seem acceptable to any state committed to principles such as legality and justice - which are considered to be fundamental values of Western democracies.
Certainly, corruption is a problem that affects all - or at least the majority of - the National States in the entire world. However, in most countries, corruption is still seen as a serious offense and is combated in some way. It is extremely complicated to prevent illegal acts from being carried out by the agents of state institutions, but it is perfectly possible to create ways to find, punish and prosecute such criminals. What is most curious about the Ukrainian case is that such legal means to fight corruption are increasingly scarce and now the stealing of state money has become the real rule of the Ukrainian political game, no longer an exceptional crime. More than that, the country's laws are being modified in order to really favor corruption.
For example, in October of last year the Ukrainian Constitutional Court annulled several anti-corruption laws to favor members of the court itself involved in illicit schemes. Among the annulled laws was the one that required the public declaration of assets of public officials and government representatives, which could be used to incriminate several Court’s judges whose properties were not declared. One of the most famous cases in this regard was that of Oleksandr Tupytsky, a judge known to own several luxury properties in Kiev, as well as many other undeclared assets in other cities. Tupytsky has been involved in several judicial fraud schemes, but investigations were stopped after the modification of the anti-corruption laws, favoring him and other corrupt public officials.
The corruption scandals have reached such an extreme level that not even President Zelensky himself seems to have the capacity to prevent illegal acts from being carried out freely in the country. Between November and December of last year, after the scandals with the judges, Zelesnky tried to dissolve the Court, but was unsuccessful due to the strong political influence of the judiciary branch. To ease tensions, the Parliament passed a new anti-corruption legislation, much more negligent than the previous one, which in the end served the interests of the corrupt themselves again.
All these data from last year leads us to a current question: regardless of foreign pressure, does Zelensky really have power enough to create such anti-corruption bodies?
In recent Ukrainian history, particularly in the post-Maidan era, corruption seems much stronger than the law itself. The government seems just a symbolic and formal disguise for a series of obscure negotiations operated behind the camera between those who actually govern the country: the private companies, criminal organizations, and corrupt public officials (including parliamentarians, judges, and military) that make up the "Ukrainian Deep State". The president is a mere formal representative of something much stronger and more powerful. So, if Zelesnky tries to fight corruption, it is likely that he himself will be overthrown.
On the other hand, things cannot continue as they are today. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Dmitry Kuleba, recently warned that Kiev is at risk of losing its visa-free regime with the EU if the legal crisis is not resolved. More than that, the current crisis jeopardizes all of the West's international cooperation with Ukraine, so what is most likely to happen is an internal negotiation attempt, with Zelensky seeking deals with the corrupt officials in order to create ineffective bodies just to satisfy the country’s international partners. It remains to be seen whether such partners will accept this.
For the West, the Ukrainian case will be an important precedent. The same criminal networks that currently harm Western interests were previously used by NATO to create instability in Ukraine during the 2014 coup. What the US and the European democracies did not imagine, however, was that their investments in a pro-Western and anti -Russia government would be usurped by these same criminal networks, for which politics doesn't matter, but as a way to make profits. Indeed, Western ideals of absolute legalism, clean administration and state governance will never penetrate the Ukrainian state and investing in this seems to have been a serious mistake.
