Ukraine is a corrupt country – that’s a fact. The levels of corruption approximate those of Mexico and/or any other South American country.
Are these countries failed states?
Up until a couple of years ago Brazil was considered one of the most promising emerging markets in the world, and Mexico continues to be an integral part of NAFTA.
Do G-7 ambassadors write open letters to these countries’ presidents every time a high-level corruption scandal erupts?
Ukraine is corrupt today, but not even close to what it was two years ago – that is another fact.
At the height of Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency, every oblast had a deputy governor whose only job was to ensure regularity of cash payments to the “Family” in Kyiv. Suitcases of cash were delivered; Mezhyhiriya and Pshonka mansions grew like mushrooms after rain.
Estimates of amounts siphoned out of the economy at the time range from $50 to $100 million per month.
This is simply not happening today!
Do officials in government at all levels take bribes? Yes.
Does Ukraine still have “oligarchs” who try to use political power as a means of enrichment?
Of course.
But the graft is no longer systemic. The former hierarchy of feudal payments simply does not exist anymore!
Does that mean the situation is now satisfactory?
Of course not! But is Poroshenko becoming another Yanukovych? (as Brian Bonner of the Kyiv Post would have us believe)? Nonsense!
Ukraine is a country still in the midst of a revolutionary process – that is yet another fact.
It is simply naïve to believe that even two years after a change of government, all behavior of all political elites will change, and all oligarchs (or potential oligarchs) will suddenly cease their rent-seeking ways; that all state institutions will suddenly transform into “by the people, for the people” organizations whose employees are there to serve, and whose political elites consider themselves citizens’ representatives, rather than their governors.
Communication is a major problem in today’s Ukraine, and the Presidential Administration is particularly at fault.
Corruption is a major problem also, and the Cabinet of Ministers is no less to blame here than Poroshenko’s closest circle.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk simply covers his tracks better and enjoys greater control over sympathetic media outlets.
The much-touted reform of the police force has proven that Ukraine has the capacity to change.
But look at the levels of effort and money invested into that initiative!
If Western aid amounts into other sectors (health care, education, infrastructure, defense) had come even close to those provided for police reform, would we have better results? Obviously!
Is reform happening in other sectors? Yes!
Reform of higher education, state procurement, passports and visas, property registry, legal aid; introduction of budgetary decentralization, free trade…
All of these count among Ukraine’s major achievements during the past 18 months.
Should we do more? Of course!
The court system is a disaster, the prosecution service is worse, health care reform is lagging, and we need both a new Constitution and a new tax code. Work in progress!
And just in case you forgot one “minor” achievement since the EuroMaidan Revolution, we must NEVER forget (and take immense pride in the fact) that Ukraine stopped an invasion from the largest army in Europe in its tracks!
Whenever anyone starts complaining a la “why did we give up Crimea without a shot fired?” remember that Russian President Vladimir Putin had over 100,000 fully equipped troops on Ukraine’s eastern border in March 2014 just waiting for an excuse to invade.
And he would have stopped (maybe) at the Dnipro River.
When things got ugly in the Donbas later in 2014, Ukrainians volunteered, mobilized, and pushed the onslaught of tanks, rockets, trained special forces, and unlimited supplies of ordinance back to a line no more than 200 kilometers from the Russian border.
And we did it with minimal help from outside, and with a military hierarchy that had been corrupted and infiltrated by the enemy over many years.
Does that make it OK to move slowly on domestic reform? Absolutely not!
Does it give Ukraine moral authority to demand more from the West? Yes – more support, less criticism, more guidance, less “fatigue.”
And to the armchair quarterbacks and permanent critics of Ukraine throughout the world: How about using the energy spent on complaining, and the time wasted on political scandal, to actually do something yourselves? Do we need to quote John F. Kennedy again?
Maidan was not about complaining about things, nor were we about demanding that others change. It was about “do it yourself” or DIY.
If you’ve ever done anything DIY, you know advice is appreciated, criticism is not. Sometimes things fall apart, and the overall project rarely looks pretty halfway through the process.
Chin up Ukraine – it’ll all work out in the end, but we need to keep at it!
