September 27, 2023

In April 2019, Ukraine was brimming with optimism as it elected Volodymyr Zelensky, a candidate who promised peace, an end to government corruption, and economic prosperity. Fast forward four years: a civil war within the Donbas region turned into a European war raging on Ukrainian territory, destroying the country’s infrastructure, killing hundreds of thousands of its citizens, and creating millions of refugees. Government corruption is an all-time high, and the country is in a state of material poverty.

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When Ukraine gained independence in 1991, its national debt was $0.4 billion; in 2018, before Zelensky was inaugurated, it was $76 billion, and by 2023, it had reached $120 billion and kept growing. The country survives on international assistance, and people who four years ago promised “вільна та незалежна Україна” (free and independent Ukraine) proved to be liars and hypocrites.

So, what went wrong in Ukraine? To understand the present, we have to look at Ukraine’s past. Ukraine is a child of Bolsheviks’ geopolitical engineering. Created on the land of the former Russian Empire in 1919 and governed by Moscow until its independence in 1991, it found itself without adult supervision. Its leaders’ understanding of geopolitics, management of risk, and the ability to formulate short and long-term national interests and make meaningful economic and political choices proved beyond their experience and analytical skills.

Ukraine inherited one of the world’s largest agricultural and industrial bases from the Soviet Union. Ukraine manufactured tractors, airplanes, ships, locomotives, turbines for hydropower plants, electrical motors and transformers, and a huge assortment of consumer goods. It also manufactured a variety of military hardware, including tanks, missiles, and jet fighters. Its steel mills produced millions of tons of steel, and its coal mines were a major supplier for the Soviet Union’s steel mills and power plants. Having a well-educated population, Ukraine could have become one of Europe’s economic powers. Regrettably, inept Ukrainian leaders have plundered most of the Soviet inheritance into disrepair while the ravages of war further erode what remains of this once-thriving legacy.

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Zelensky understood that corruption was the cancer eating at Ukraine’s core, and after his inauguration, he moved swiftly to replace corrupt bureaucrats and enact anti-corruption legislation. The changes did not affect the business relations established over six previous administrations nor the culture enamored with corruption.

What he did not understand was that Ukrainian corruption is systemic: it is not people; it is a system. Moreover, this system was built into all aspects of society, including the judiciary, defense, law enforcement, banking, health care, and, of course, the economy, and perpetuates itself.  

Therefore, it doesn’t matter how many officials are replaced and how many new anticorruption agencies are created. New appointees immediately begin filling their pockets, and new agencies add more layers of corruption.

As Zelensky grappled with the formidable challenge of rooting out corruption, he realized that it requires more than election oratory but governance skills, subtly, and political ruthlessness. Hence, he did not just accept the system; he did the unthinkable. He ushered Ukraine into a new corruption era by replacing its raison d’état – calculable principles of national interests — with calculable principles of personal interest. As they say in Ukraine, if you live with wolves, you should howl like a wolf.

Nowadays, every government decision, whether it is the economy, social programs, or foreign affairs (including the issues of war and peace), is guided by consideration of corruption.

Corruption played an important role in Ukraine’s ethnic conflicts in Eastern Ukraine. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ukraine got its borders within which it achieved independence, and millions of Russians, Poles, Hungarians, and Romanians were trapped in a newly created country exposing ethnic incompatibilities.