Corruption threatens war gains in Ukraine

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS…

It’s the time of year when maddeningly catchy seasonal hits live rent-free between my ears and, just when I rid myself of them, someone starts whistling a snatch of Mariah Carey and all progress is lost. So, since I can’t think of anything else anyway, and since this is the last newsletter of the year, I thought I’d tell you all I want for Christmas.

Obviously, there is just one thing Ukraine needs right now, and that is generosity, so it can continue to repair the damage caused by Russian attacks on its electricity system and keep both its soldiers and its civilians warm and equipped this winter. But, without conquering the corruption that has allowed oligarchs to undermine it from within for so long, military success alone would be a partial victory.

• “The fight of Ukrainians against corruption has always been and will be one of the obstacles to destruction of our state by Russia. These are not empty words. It is corruption, among other things, that draws us to the “Russian world” of tyranny,” as the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s Vitaly Shabunin put it last month.

Even when corrupt politicians and officials have lost their jobs, they remain rich and thus able to buy the support needed to regain influence. An example is the court case brought by the long-overthrown Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, who was seeking to have his title restored to him. Amazingly, a court in Kyiv was not only prepared to give him a hearing but assigned the case to a judge who previously served as a minister in one of Yanukovich’s governments.

Uprooting the networks of influence embedded within such institutions, and confiscating the wealth of corrupt politicians, requires detailed, committed and complex work, which is unglamorous but vitally important. It’s the political equivalent of being a sewage engineer: it’s never going to be fashionable but, without it, civilization collapses.