If Kyiv’s international donors don’t lay out how they plan to ensure transparency in the reconstruction process, it won’t be funded on a scale worthy of the country’s sacrifices.
As Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces gets underway, the country’s allies must now help plot a separate counteroffensive — one that will be needed to beat another longtime nemesis of the Ukrainian people: oligarchs and grand corruption.
A small group of businessmen — many of whom became fabulously wealthy by manipulating the process of privatizing enormous companies previously owned by the Soviet state — often consolidated control over weak governments through political maneuvers like buying media conglomerates, bankrolling political parties, bribing judges, blackmailing prosecutors and underwriting vast networks of patronage, which extend from lawmakers and ministers in Kyiv to governors and bureaucrats throughout the country.