Corruption in Ukraine Before and During the War

Hannah Arendt was an intellectual Jewish writer and thinker who fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and escaped from the fascist-dominated Europe during the Second World War to find a new life in the United States. She wrote a lot about politics becoming inhuman during the dark time she lived through. One of her best-known works is The Origins of Totalitarianism where she raised the question of what freedom is. Hannah Arendt favored the Athenian polis where people’s private life stayed private but where people directly participated in decision-making, debate and action while being treated as equals in public life. However, she was very sceptical of modern politics, as she believed that it had lost its promised freedoms of the Greek polis and thus became opposed to it. This was noted by Lyndsey Stonebridge who tried to think like Hannah Arendt: “Tell us who you are loving right now and how, show us the shape of your body and the goodness of your soul, consent to socially prescribed ways of living and dying, but don't think you are going to get a public account of the terms under which you are being governed (or the tax records of politicians) because that is not what you need to concern yourselves with”.¹¹

Hannah Arendt at the University of Chicago in the 1966 ¹¹

This arguably is the new way of politics in the 20th and 21st centuries, at least in a way it may describe Ukrainian politics, where the system was created and currently constitutes the rule under the corrupt practices. The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, tried to shield parliamentarians from scrutiny by anti-corruption agencies, so that they will not reveal the full wealth of Verkhovna Rada deputies to the public.³ Ukraine is described as a corrupt country, ranging from the inside circles of the government to the outside where public institutions like schools, hospitals and police departments are accepting bribes from Ukrainian citizens, who don't even realise that, by doing so, they too are involved in corruption schemes.

During the presidency of a pro-Russian and anti-EU president, Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine has been going down hill not only in terms of dissatisfaction of its leader, but also the corruption level was too high that stealing, tricking and bribing was a socially normalized exercise of Ukrainian culture. The Euromaidan uprising that started in 2013 due to the government's sudden rejection to sign a deal with the European Union developed into the 2014 Revolution of Dignity.

Source: United24 media

Tensions escalated as pro-government forces started to kill protesters in January 2014 on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv. Ukrainians aimed to overthrow the president and, fortunately for the nation’s interests, in February 2014 new Ukrainian authorities took office.⁷ The new president, Petro Poroshenko, on behalf of members of the government, had created an alliance between EU and Ukraine.¹ However the changes still did not facilitate a change in how Ukrainians perceived corruption on a daily basis in their lives. Additionally, the fundamentals of the old political system under Yanukovych did not evaporate and did not get completely out of the box but, rather, they partly remained, especially the roots of corrupt interest.³

As the full-scale invasion in Ukraine began in 2022, the situation regarding corruption in Ukraine unfortunately took a more dramatic and frustrating turn. However, this only further helped to develop new anti-corruption measures of transparency, especially through processes of digitalization, such as ProZorro, which is open to the public to oversee government spending data. Following the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022, the Verkhovna Rada enthusiastically implemented the new so-called Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2021-2025. Apparently, foreign partners noted that the effort was visible and the anti-corruption measures taken are making a progress.⁶ Nevertheless, defense and security areas became the most affected by corruption worldwide, and Transparency International’s Defense and Security Anti-Corruption Program prepared an anti-corruption preparedness index of military sector members, collecting data from 130 countries in total.⁶

NATO and NATO partners, country defense corruption vulnerability ¹²

The comparison, which dates back to 2015, shows that Ukraine had a high risk of corruption in the defense and security sectors, however, during the current wartime period, corruption has also become an extremely big issue regarding financial support of the military, with cases of both civilian and government actors misusing or embezzling funds. Consequently, public mistrust of government authorities, and even of specific personnel who fundraise financial support for any war-related purpose, plays an extremely negative role in the reduction of aid from civilians for the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other initiatives intended to help refugees, reconstruct destroyed cities, and so forth.⁶

The Ukrainian government, especially following the 2014 Revolution of Dignity which was followed by a regime change, was pressured by the European Union and the United States to establish agencies to fight against corruption. This led to the birth of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption (NACP), and the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA).³ These post-revolution anti-corruption institutional measures were mandatory for Ukraine to achieve EU visa liberalisation. Unlike in other countries, Ukraine had to create new bodies staffed with individuals who had not been touched by old system.⁵ According to a 2015 report by the European Commission (2015), the anti-corruption benchmark was reached due to the commitment Ukrainians showed, representing a signal that the country moved from merely drafting laws to actually creating infrastructures that combat corruption, leading to, among other things, official visa liberalisation in 2017. In the period from Ukraine gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 to the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, even though Ukraine signed international anti-corruption instrument like the UN Convention Against Corruption in 2006, had weak national laws as there were no clear explanation or mechanisms through which corruption could be effectively addressed.¹³ Everything existed on paper but not in action. Before the creation of SAPO, NABU, NACP, and ARMA, there were no independent anti-corruption bodies, meaning authority remained in the hands of governmental structures that were often corrupt themselves, such as, in most cases, the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Even after the 2014 rise of the anti-corruption movement, Ukrainians had a deep skepticism about whether the Ukrainian government itself wanted to fight this problem. Foreign institutions showed more enthusiasm for solving the problem, as they wanted change as quickly as possible, providing significant funds and experts capable of leading and solving such a deeply rooted issue. However, Ukraine did not rush to implement reforms or even allocate a sufficient budget. It was only after the influence from the West that, among other things, the budget increased and staff updated to more professional personnel. This behavior makes sense, as Ukrainian government and political structures, and even public institutions, were widely seen as deeply corrupt.

Therefore, it is difficult to expect politicians to genuinely act against corruption when some of them may have personally stolen a few million dollars. Even Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the current president of Ukraine, tried to pass a law in 2025 that would have put both NABU and SAPO under the direct control of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Ukrainians were very frustrated by this action, which immediately sparked large-scale anti-government protests. Many believed that it was intended to protect Zelenskyy’s friends and allies, such as Timur Mindich, among others, from corruption investigations.⁸

Protests after Zelenskyy introduced a bill that endangered Ukrainian anti-corruption safeguards ¹⁵

The money and property illegally obtained through corrupt practices is extremely hard to recover, as these stolen assets are backed up by strong structures of ownership and held across several legal jurisdiction.³ Each country obtains its own legal framework and some can act ineffective, slow, or simply differently from Ukrainian jurisdiction. When it comes to ownership, criminals try to distribute assets across multiple countries, register them under family member’s names, or hide them into inactive companies. Not only is it difficult to recover assets, but the war has caused an increase in the levels of corruption, as opportunities to steal money from people’s donations, the governmental budget for soldiers' equipment, food supplies, and damaged infrastructure have become more accessible and tempting. Furthermore, this applies not only to those who lead the country but also to civilians who open donation accounts in Ukrainian banks, like MonoBank, and spend the fundraised money on things other than war-related.

The external pressure Ukraine receives is a push toward change, yet it is not equivalent to a domestic commitment of the Ukrainians to address the issue. Ukraine’s struggle with corruption, intensified by full-scale invasion, can be solved only by Ukrainians themselves, not by foreign friends. Although their advice, funds, and collaboration may help Ukraine reach its goal, there must be a clear understanding from both sides that outside support cannot solve the problem on its own. ⁹

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