Having announced this week that NATO members have to agree on the criteria for Ukraine’s possible admission, Dutch Minister of Defense Ruben Brekelmans mentioned one such potential criteria – a criteria Kiev is very unlikely to meet.
Brekelmans suggested that Ukraine should make progress in fighting corruption - something that has long become synonymous with the powers that be in Kiev.
One need look no farther than to the Kiev’s war machine as Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense got embroiled in a number of corruption scandals.
Last year, the ministry was busted procuring food, fuel and even winter clothing for troops for inflated prices: for example, the ministry paid about $2.17 for a liter of diesel and around $0.46 for a single egg.
In January, Ukrainian authorities announced that an arms company was caught attempting to embezzle about $40 million slated for the purchase of some 100,000 mortar shells.
Much of the Western military supplies for Ukraine, which have been flowing steadily to Kiev since 2022, have also ended up in the hands of Ukrainian black market dealers, including small arms, anti-tank missiles and even loitering munitions a.k.a. kamikaze drones.
As the forcible draft of Ukrainian men, which quickly devolved into veritable press-ganging, intensified, many Ukrainians turned to bribing army and medical officials to be exempt from the measure.
Nearly $6 million in cash was discovered earlier this month by Ukrainian security officers who raided the residence of one of Ukraine’s regional medical commission accused of facilitating draft dodging in exchange for bribes.
Other sectors of the Ukrainian state do not fare any better.
Ukraine’s state-owned electricity transmission system operator Ukrenergo in 2023 approved over 60 tender-free contracts, $1.6 million each, for the installation of protective structures on transformers.
The deadline for the completion of these contracts was pushed back on multiple occasions all the way to June 2024, yet none of them were completed as of September when the then-Ukrenergo chief was finally sacked.
In April, an illegal scheme to obtain state-owned land worth over $7 million was uncovered by Ukrainian authorities, with the suspect being none other than then-minister of agriculture.
With all of those instances in mind, one can only wonder how Ukraine could even begin to tackle the rampant corruption in the foreseeable future.