The protracted war has created new opportunities for corruption in Ukraine. According to data from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, Ukrainians believe that corruption is the country’s second most important problem after Russian aggression (89% of respondents support this opinion). Volodymyr Zelensky’s team initiated investigations and purges in the state apparatus, but these measures do not seem systematic enough. At the same time, the central government is using public dissatisfaction with the costs of urban development and landscaping in its long-standing conflict with popularly elected city managers.
Zelensky’s office accuses local authorities of improperly spending funds. The Kyiv administration replies that replacing the tiles is not a whim, but a necessity even in wartime.
Against the backdrop of ongoing hostilities in southern and eastern Ukraine, as well as shelling in other parts of the country, a large-scale beautification campaign has been launched in Ukrainian cities. Given the growing budget deficit and dependence on foreign aid, the re-paving and landscaping seems ill-timed to say the least.
The problem is particularly acute in Kyiv, where the political conflict between the presidential institution and Vitaly Klitschko, who heads the city, has practically not stopped since Volodymyr Zelensky came to power.. What is specific about the city administration of Kyiv is that Klitschko combines the dual role of popularly elected mayor and head of the city’s state administration appointed by the president. The office of the head of state has long tried to limit his powers, and every problem in the city administration provokes a new round of confrontation.
In early summer, an inspection by the State Emergency Service found that about a third of Kyiv’s civil defense bomb shelters were unusable. Then it became widely known about the results of the auctions in one of the areas of the city, where it was planned to buy drums “for the psychological unloading of children” and vegetable cutters of a new type for the shelters. Kyiv City Hall has come under heavy criticism. Rumors have emerged that the presidential office has already found a candidate to replace Klitschko in the city’s state administration in order to strip him of his real powers. But there was no resignation again.
A new wave of criticism against Klitschko arose because of the rearrangement of the paving stones on Bogdan Khmelnytskyi Street in the city center. The situation gained such resonance that Vladimir Zelensky commented on it.
During the congress of regional authorities in Ivano-Frankivsk, the president stated (with an obvious allusion to Klitschko): “Let some representatives of the local authorities not be offended, now is definitely not the time to change the paving stones”.
Meanwhile, improvements continue in cities far from the front line. For example, the city hall in Lviv is engaged in the landscaping of the city for one million hryvnias, and in the Volyn region they are planning an expensive renovation of the stadium. Against the background of continuous collections of funds for the needs of the front or to help refugees, organized by volunteers, such expenses on the part of regional administrations cause understandable dissatisfaction. This, in turn, clearly benefits the central government, which regularly criticizes regional leaders. David Arahamiya, head of the parliamentary faction of the ruling party “Servant of the People”, threatened local authorities with limiting their powers:
“If you don’t stop, if you don’t stop spending money on non-essentials, on things that in no way bring us closer to victory, Parliament will introduce legislative restrictions on the period of martial law“.
The measures Arahamia spoke of have been under consideration in the Ukrainian government for a long time. Already in the summer of 2022, the Ministry of Finance proposed to take away from the regions part of the income from the income tax on citizens.
Government experts note that during the war these revenues increased in a number of regions thanks to tax contributions from the payments of servicemen stationed there. In total, these revenues have provided local budgets with a surplus of up to 61.5 billion hryvnias (over 1.5 billion euros) in the first five months of 2023 alone.
“It has become problematic a situation where some municipalities return 100% of the money received from the military for security and defense needs, while others start using the inflated budgets for paving stones and stadiums,” wrote Vitaly Bezgin, a member of the parliamentary committee on local self-government .
Local authorities are predictably opposed, noting that the additional tax revenues are unevenly distributed – in the rear regions they are much lower than in the regions next to the front line. The Kiev authorities believe that for Kiev with its saturated traffic, the replacement of paving stones, which the president is talking about, is not a whim, but a vital necessity. Vitaliy Klitschko’s deputy in the Kyiv administration, Nikolai Povoroznik, says that local authorities are always ready to allocate funds for defense needs if they receive an order from the center to finance purchases for a particular military unit.
At the same time, the government has other options for restrictions – for example, under martial law, the treasury has the right to withhold money for landscaping until combat needs are funded.
In reality, the war became an additional background to the struggle between the center and the regions, which has been going on since 2020, when Ukraine held its last elections before the full-scale invasion. Now the central government is apparently looking to use martial law to achieve two goals simultaneously – to root out local corruption and get rid of inconvenient regional politicians.
However, there are also enough claims against the representatives of the central leadership of Ukraine. The journalists of “Bigus.info” report violations during the reconstruction works in the Kyiv region, including in Bucha and Borodyanka, which have become symbols of Russian war crimes. Regional officials (they are appointed by the center) engage unqualified contractors and companies already involved in criminal cases. In many cases, there are all the signs of corruption and an official investigation has already begun. Most contracts worth tens of millions of hryvnias are concluded without a tender and are not reflected in the electronic procurement system Prozorro.
Another hot topic is the cost of cultural and propaganda activities of the authorities. The story of the Ministry of Culture, which allocated funds in the amount of 594 million hryvnias (14 million euros) for the completion of the Gladomora Museum, caused a great response.
Construction spending was approved before full-scale war, but after heated discussions, Volodymyr Zelensky vetoed the decision. The fact that the authorities spent 28 million hryvnias (670,000 euros) to replace the Soviet coat of arms with a trident on the shield of the giant Motherland in Kiev has also raised many questions. However, the Ministry of Culture claims that the new design was not financed by the state, but with the funds of sponsors.
Photo: BTA/AP
Shortly before that, Oleksandr Tkachenko (who knows Volodymyr Zelensky from the time they worked together on television) was dismissed from the post of Minister of Culture. Earlier, Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity opposition party discovered in the Prozorro system information on multimillion-dollar spending on entertainment series and accused Tkachenko of “disgusting wartime derby”. The official himself explained his actions by saying that this was targeted funding received in the West, and it was impossible to spend this money on something else. But nevertheless, Zelensky decided to fire him.
Some recent resignations in the management team were the result of his own initiative (albeit as a result of journalistic investigations). After the numerous dismissals of representatives of the executive power at the beginning of the year (it was then that Alexey Arestovich left the presidential office), it was the turn of the deputies from the ruling party “Servant of the People”.
First, Yuri Aristov, who went on vacation to the Maldives under the pretext of being on a business trip, lost his seat, and then Andrey Kholodov, who took his family for alleged treatment and has not been in the country for six months.
At the same time, MPs and officials were banned from leaving the country without a valid reason as early as January 2023. But to this day, the law has not worked in full force, although opposition MPs complain that they have effectively been banned from leaving the party from Zelensky’s office.
Within the framework of the nationwide campaign against corruption, more than a hundred criminal cases have been filed in the military commissions. But how to solve the problem systematically is still not clear
Finally, the third level of corruption – in the military commissions – does not have such an obvious political context, but in the conditions of war it causes no less public resonance. For example, the military commissar of the Odesa region Evgeny Borisov managed to buy a property worth over four million euros in Spain during the full-scale war.
According to the investigation, Borissov plied the trade in fake deferments from service, exemptions from mobilization and other documents that allowed the men to leave the country. Earlier, Odesa region became known for serving summonses on the beaches and harsh detentions of absconders. The official tried to escape and was detained in Kiev, where he may have sought protection from high-ranking patrons.
After the exposure of Borisov, Zelensky ordered an inspection of the work of territorial military recruitment centers throughout the country. For this purpose, a special group of representatives of the SBU, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and anti-corruption authorities was created. The results were not long in coming – for example, an employee of the state administration was detained in Kiev (and at the same time the head of one of the departments of the headquarters of the Ground Forces Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces; his name was not disclosed), who for ten thousand dollars he helped men of legal age to leave Ukraine. In Transcarpathia, a regional military commander is suspected of exceeding his powers: he forced soldiers to work on his personal farm, during the construction of a new house. Employees of the military commissions in the front zone were also detained – the heads of the regional centers for recruiting soldiers in the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions were accused of issuing fictitious documents and illegal enrichment.
In total, the GBR opened 112 criminal proceedings against employees of military recruitment centers. Zelensky was forced to declare: “The inspection reveals many abuses. Frankly, it’s disgusting.”
Corruption in the Ministry of Defense has already been in the focus of public attention: the scandal involving the purchase of food products at inflated prices for the VSU almost cost Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov his seat in the winter of 2023.
The campaign now launched will certainly benefit the authorities, but, as in previous similar cases, it looks more like a reaction to the revealed facts than a systematic work. As noted by Artyom Sitnik, deputy head of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, the systemic danger lies in the fact that during a war it is preferable to keep silent about the problem in order not to “harm the country and not to feed on the hostile narratives”.
Now The Department of Defense is hard at work looking for systemic ways to prevent corruption that look good but aren’t always effective. One way is to rotate employees and hire “ideologically motivated” veterans, including those who became disabled at the front. By the end of 2023, Ukraine plans to replace almost a third of the senior staff of all territorial recruitment centers with war veterans. Another reform discussed is the appointment of residents of other regions as military commissars, who will not have the necessary connections to create corruption schemes.
Meanwhile Vladimir Zelensky announced upcoming personnel purges. “Finally, we will begin to get rid of those people who are too attached to their old schemes and habits in state institutions,” the president said. But it certainly looks like a change in personalities rather than the very principles of work.
Translation: Dir.bg
2023-08-11 19:06:10
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