Ukraine's Efforts to Combat Corruption: Is It Enough to Satisfy Critics?

Pavlo Kyrylenko was appointed as the head of Ukraine's 'Antimonopoly Committee' in 2023. Prior to that, he was the governor of Donetsk, during which time his wife's family had engaged in real estate, acquiring 21 properties, including several office and commercial spaces as well as land and apartments in Kyiv and the city of Uzhhorod in western Ukraine. Mr. Kyrylenko's wife drove a luxury BMW, and the ownership documents for those properties were issued in the name of her relatives. Mr. Kyrylenko's tax declarations omitted significant details, and his wife had no credible documentation to explain his $1.8 million income. Following revelations initially made by the investigative unit of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Pavlo Kyrylenko was accused of 'illicit enrichment' and 'providing false information.' The case against Pavlo Kyrylenko was a small victory for those fighting corruption in Ukraine; however, it also served as a reminder that Ukraine has been grappling with widespread endemic corruption in both the public and private sectors for a decade or more. Daria Kaleniuk, a prominent anti-corruption activist and director of the 'Action Against Corruption' center, which has been based in Kyiv since 2012, told Radio Free Europe: 'It is clear that we still have a lot of work to do and corruption still exists in Ukraine; however, I can compare today with what it was 13 years ago... I think the results are unbelievable.' Ukraine reported the discovery of a $40 million embezzlement in arms deals. Three years have passed since the full-scale Russian invasion. The people of Ukraine continue to live in wartime conditions, supporting their armed forces in the fight against an 'existential and external threat' and standing behind the leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky, the wartime president. However, corruption remains a 'persistent internal threat,' and in recent years, a series of scandals have emerged involving the Ministry of Defense, prosecutors, and wealthy business owners. The former Minister of Defense of Ukraine was dismissed due to a scandal involving rising food prices. Ms. Daria Kaleniuk told Radio Free Europe: 'It is good that alongside the full-scale Russian invasion, there is still the possibility of freely exposing corruption and there are tools for doing so. This is a sign that we have an open society; we still have a system of checks and balances, and we are a free country.' Andriy Borovyk, the executive director of 'Transparency International Ukraine,' which is a corruption monitoring center, told Radio Free Europe that the fight to cleanse Ukraine's image of corruption has sometimes been chaotic, but not every chaos is necessarily a sign of corruption. He added: 'Even during wartime, it is necessary to talk about corruption, but there is a tendency in Ukrainian society to immediately label any inefficiency or foolishness as corruption; issues are perceived this way here.' Mr. Borovyk emphasized: 'Corruption should be exposed, but not every inefficiency should be immediately equated with corruption.' It is often said that one of the main reasons for the 2014 protests in Ukraine, which lasted for months and became known as the 'Maidan' protests, was frustration over embezzlement. Following these protests, Viktor Yanukovych, the then-president, fled the country in February 2014, and since then, Russia has covertly and overtly conducted military operations in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian army has made efforts to defend effectively but has suffered from a lack of weapons; weapons for which contracts had been signed but were never delivered, a situation largely attributed to embezzlement. For many Ukrainians, the low point was when revelations about Yanukovych's mansion, built like the French Palace of Versailles and including guest houses, lakes, a collection of luxury cars, and a dock with an antique ship, came to light. Volodymyr Zelensky's decisive victory in the 2019 elections was widely seen as another effort to rid society of both petty and grand corruption and move towards transparency and accountability. However, the war with Russia has made this more difficult. During the Russian invasion, several scandals emerged involving officials in Ukraine's Ministry of Defense in procurement contracts, indicating that alongside the enthusiastic support of the Ukrainian people for their armed forces, there are issues in the hidden layers as well. After the Russian invasion, military contracts in Ukraine were initially classified, but this changed in January 2023 after investigative journalists uncovered a contractor with the Ministry of Defense selling eggs to the government at nearly two and a half times the retail price. Subsequent investigations led to the discovery of more contracts related to selling food items at prices higher than the market to the armed forces. Public pressure eventually led Volodymyr Zelensky to dismiss Oleksii Reznikov, the then-Minister of Defense, in September 2023, and Rustem Umerov replaced him. Following this, Zelensky's government, under pressure from the United States and Western countries allied with Kyiv, established a specialized agency for contract, procurement, and supply issues called the 'Defense Procurement Agency.' However, recently, Rustem Umerov, the Minister of Defense, refused to extend the cooperation contract with Marina Bezrukova, the head of the Defense Procurement Agency; the 'National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine' announced on January 28, 2025, that it had begun a criminal investigation against Rustem Umerov in connection with this matter. Rustem Umerov has accused this agency of 'inefficiency and poor management'; the head of this agency, Marina Bezrukova, was appointed to this position in early 2024 and, according to her supporters, helped to clean up this agency. Serhiy Mytkalik, the director of an NGO called 'Anti-Corruption Headquarters,' says: 'Unfortunately, oversight of defense expenditures is a very opaque process, and people only become aware of the irregularities in isolated cases. According to 'Transparency International,' an organization that closely monitors corruption indicators worldwide, Ukraine has made significant improvements in recent years due to 'reforms aimed at integration into Europe and fulfilling international commitments.' 'Transparency International' also adds that Ukraine experienced a decline last year due to 'performing reforms only nominally' or 'deliberately halting the implementation of reforms.' In the 2024 ranking list of this organization, Ukraine ranked 105th in terms of the corruption index among 180 countries; a situation better than Russia and Belarus, but worse than Moldova, Hungary, and Romania. The United States ranked 28th in this list. Last year, following a report by the investigative unit of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, it was revealed that a senior official in the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office named Dmytro Verbytsky lived in a rented house in an upscale neighborhood that his nephew had purchased at a much lower price than the market. The investigative unit also uncovered evidence showing that this nephew was effectively a straw buyer and had actually purchased the property on behalf of a businessman from Odesa. Experts say this process could be considered tax evasion; however, the deputy prosecutor denied any wrongdoing. The investigative unit of Radio Liberty later discovered further details showing that Dmytro Verbytsky's girlfriend acquired a new Porsche and a three-story cottage near her boyfriend's upscale neighborhood in 2024, while her official income was much lower than these assets. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau later initiated criminal investigations into Verbytsky's assets, which led to his resignation weeks later. Daria Kaleniuk, an anti-corruption activist, says that the exposure of such scandals and investigations to the public is not a sign of relentless corruption, but rather a sign of health and reflects that Ukrainian civil society is responding to the problem. Ms. Kaleniuk added: 'It's like saying there is no corruption in Belarus because absolutely no one talks about corruption in Belarus. But this does not indicate a lack of corruption in Belarus; it means that if you talk about corruption in Belarus, you will be imprisoned, tortured, extorted, intimidated, or killed.' Returning to the initial case of this report: Pavlo Kyrylenko was accused of 'illicit enrichment,' and prosecutors requested his arrest; however, the court ruled that he should be under house arrest with an electronic bracelet until the trial. The investigative unit of Radio Liberty later found that his bail of 30 million hryvnias (equivalent to $730,000) was provided by a businessman who owns a company that the Antimonopoly Committee is currently investigating.