In November last year, Greene also introduced a resolution in US Congress calling for an audit of all aid sent to Ukraine.
Donald Trump Jr, former US President Donald Trump’s eldest son,
tweeted in December 2022: “Zelenskyy is basically an ungrateful
international welfare queen.”
It is clear Zelenskyy’s government has been closely following US politics.
“There is worry about the Trump wing of the Republican Party taking power and then pulling support from Ukraine,” Dubovyk said.
Jordan Gans-Morse, a professor of political science at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, agreed.
“The Ukrainians are very savvy about the politics and culture of
donor countries. They are definitely getting the message that there
could come a turn in American politics that could threaten the support
they are getting,” Gans-Morse said.
Meanwhile, across the pond, the EU has remained unwavering in its
commitment to support Ukraine, with the 27-member bloc having pledged
approximately 67 billion euros ($72bn) for Ukraine and its civilians
since the war began.
Witold Waszczykowski, Polish politician and chair of the EU-Ukraine
Parliamentary Association Committee at the European Parliament, told Al
Jazeera that, right now, “other issues have a secondary meaning and the
most important thing for Ukraine is to win the war with Russia”.
“Here in Europe, it is our duty and obligation to help Ukraine to win
the war. Equally important is to help Ukraine to survive the winter
without electricity, heat, or water,” he said.
However, fighting corruption is also a cornerstone for Ukraine to gain EU membership.
In June 2022, the EU granted Ukraine the status of “candidate
country” – an official move that would allow Kyiv to become a member of
the EU. But before membership, candidate countries are required to
undertake several political, economic and rule-of-law reforms to match
EU standards.
Lukas Andriukaitis, non-resident fellow at Atlantic Council’s Digital
Forensic Research Lab, told Al Jazeera that Kyiv’s current
anti-corruption crackdown was on top of the agenda when it comes to
discussing Ukraine’s future membership into the EU and was likely a
political statement before the EU-Ukraine Summit which took place in
Kyiv in early February.
“As the EU talks are gaining speed together with financial support
from the West, Ukraine needs to show that corruption will not be
tolerated, even if the individuals are high-ranking officials in
Ukraine,” he said.
After the EU-Ukraine Summit in Kyiv, EU Council chief Charles Michel
and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen issued a joint
statement acknowledging “the considerable efforts” Ukraine had
undertaken to meet the objectives for EU membership, but did not signal
that the accession process would be fast-tracked.
Broader anti-corruption push within Ukraine
Moreover, while Ukraine’s anti-corruption campaign has grabbed the
global limelight, for civilians in and from the country, the recent
firing of corrupt officials displayed the progress of an anti-corruption
movement that has been years in the making.
According to Transparency International’s latest corruption
perception index, in 2022 Ukraine ranked 116 out of 180 countries. The
report noted that Ukraine has made significant improvements in tackling
corruption during the last eight years.
In 2014, after the deaths of hundreds of anti-corruption protesters, Ukraine’s parliament deposed pro-Russian Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich in what came to be known as the Maidan Revolution or Revolution of Dignity.
In the wake of the revolution, in an effort to meet the demands of
civilians eager for Ukraine to become a member of the EU, the government
set up a National Anti-Corruption Bureau, a High Anti-Corruption Court
and other such agencies to prosecute corrupt officials, according to
Oksana Nesterenko, lawyer and executive director of the Anti-corruption
Research and Education Centre at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla
Academy.
“Ukraine has achieved significant progress in anti-corruption
reforms. But the civil society is considered as a key actor in this
process,” she told Al Jazeera.
“Then, the war started in 2022 and we made the decision to hold back on our push until the situation improved.”
“At this time, the government also realised how Russia was using
corruption in Ukraine to display it as a failed state to the West. So
the political will to fight corruption increased. The National
Anti-Corruption Strategy was launched in 2022 and as anti-corruption
experts, we got back to our pre-war task of fighting corruption,” she
added.
While tackling corruption was also one of Zelenskyy’s election
campaign strategies during his 2019 campaign for president, he had
minimal success at first, and his constituents noticed.
On the eve of the war, his approval rating stood at 27 percent according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
But since the war began, Zelenskyy’s popularity has increased and now stands close to 84 percent.
Today, the Ukrainian government looks like “a seriously responsible
government doing what you would hope any government would do,”
Gans-Morse said.
“He [Zelenskyy] has more power to tackle corruption now than ever before,” he added.
Sowing distrust
As Ukraine’s fight with corruption has intensified, its fight with Russia has continued to rage.
Andriukaitis highlighted how pro-Kremlin social media users, bots and
trolls have brought the war online after Ukraine’s recent
anti-corruption actions, by surfacing videos of the arrest of corrupt
Ukrainian officials to discredit Ukraine.
“The idea is to sow distrust in Western societies about the support
of Ukraine, to try and shake Western governments’ unwavering support
with a bottom-up approach,” Andriukaitis said.
Dubovyk believed Russian President Vladimir Putin is fearful of the
anti-corruption push in Ukraine and sees it as potentially undermining
his power at home.
“Russians will be asking, ‘if Ukraine can do, why can’t we?’” Dubovyk said.
“If Ukraine is successful in strengthening its democracy and moving away from Russia, it would be a major threat to Putin.”
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