The abortive rebellion by Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin against Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, has only reinforced the conclusion of our research into the conflict: One cannot truly understand this war without looking through the lens of corruption. From the start of the invasion to Prigozhin’s dramatic insurrection, the fight against corruption has greatly influenced the course of events. And Ukraine will need to defeat corruption if it has any hope of winning the conflict and securing a meaningful peace.
Prigozhin is a monster of Vladimir Putin’s creation. Putin enriched him originally through lucrative contracts to feed Russia’s military and then through preferential access to resources exploited by Prigozhin’s mercenaries in Africa and elsewhere. Until Prigozhin and Putin struck a deal to halt the Wagner Group’s march toward Moscow, Prigozhin’s advance through Russia with minimal bloodshed was reminiscent of the Taliban’s waltzing into Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2021 and Russian forces seizing Crimea almost without firing a shot in 2014. Even though these attackers were themselves odious figures, local defenders were disinclined to risk their lives for a corrupt government, so they laid down their weapons or stepped aside.
Putin should have been even more afraid of Ukrainians’ anti-corruption efforts.
Corruption gave us the uprising and the instability of the Putin regime — but that is only the beginning of how the corruption issue has shaped the war and will dominate its outcome. For starters, Ukraine’s rejection of its own home-grown Prigozhins — oligarchs who influenced the country and were susceptible to Putin — helped set off the conflict. As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted in a speech last week, “Russia invaded Ukraine not only to steal our land, resources and people, [but also because] Russia’s bosses are very afraid of our democracy, [which is] getting rid of corruption [by] dismantling the old oligarchic model.”
Our new research cites overlooked signals from the Kremlin to similarly find that “Putin’s war against Ukraine is a direct response to Ukraine’s moves against oligarchy and kleptocracy.” We argue that Ukraine is halfway through a generational process of uprooting oligarchy. The Kremlin, of course, claims that Ukraine is hopelessly corrupt, but Kyiv has had unprecedented success over the past decade building world-class institutions of transparency and accountability. Putin fears Ukraine’s anti-corruption success because it closes entry points for Moscow’s strategic corruption, strengthens Ukraine’s defensive capabilities, prepares the country for E.U. and NATO accession and risks inspiring Russians to depose their own despotic kleptocrat.
Putin should have been even more afraid of Ukrainians’ anti-corruption efforts. If he understood how they truly feel about their fight against corruption — that it lies at the heart of the civic nation they have been building since 2014 — he might have known how bravely they would fight for their country with far more conviction than in brittle kleptocracies like Ukraine in 2014, Afghanistan in 2021 and Russia in 2023.
Zelenskyy is the embodiment of this national resolve. Americans heard about his nerves of steel when he resisted a corrupt extortion attempt by Donald Trump in 2019. (Disclosure: One of us worked on the impeachment and the trial that ensued.) The whole world realized his defiant character, though, in the early days of the war, when Russian assassins entered Kyiv and, instead of fleeing, he posted videos from the streets.
But the second half of Ukraine’s struggle against oligarchy will be just as hard. Corruption remains entrenched in powerful quarters, including all three branches of the Ukrainian government. The president’s office wields extensive informal power, which some top appointees use to control judicial institutions instead of to cement reform. Though the specialized anti-corruption agencies have been productive during the war, reputable reformers like former infrastructure minister Andriy Pivovarsky are being prosecuted even though they have not engaged in corruption. While Ukraine has improved on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, it is still ranked as the second worst country in Europe, better only than Russia.
Supporting this fight against corruption isn’t just right for Ukraine — it’s right for the U.S.
As with all key Ukrainian anti-corruption reforms since 2014, continued progress will require conditioning foreign aid upon difficult achievements. Those conditions do not apply to security assistance, which was used as leverage only once by Trump for his own personal political reasons. But it does mean tying loans and budgetary assistance to a variety of reforms, including legislation giving the anti-corruption agencies all needed resources. Congress should codify the ongoing coordination of U.S. inspectors general and urge the creation of a Kyiv-based group of international inspectors general to report to the G-7.
Supporting this fight against corruption is not just right for Ukraine — it is right for the U.S. It would allow even more scrutiny of our and our allies’ tax dollars spent in Ukraine, and it could help get skeptics in Congress on board with another desperately needed tranche of security assistance.
Prigozhin’s rise as a favored oligarch of Putin who turned on the Russian military is a reminder of the dangers of oligarchy and corruption. Ukraine was right to tackle its own Prigozhins, even if doing so helped trigger the conflict. It must continue to push forward in the battle against corruption to win the war and secure the peace. All of us who care about Ukraine must have its back in this crackdown on corruption.
