There is a general understanding amongst the Ukrainian public at large and within the West that there is a lot of corruption in Ukraine but I want to engage in a somewhat more forensic examination of corruption. This is not going to be a numerical or statistical analysis: there would be no point in that because the percentage of corrupt transactions involving the Ukrainian Armed Forces is 100%. The whole system is inherently corrupt and anyone donating, contributing or participating in support for the Ukrainian Armed Forces is donating into a system in which slices and cuts and percentages will be taken here and there, and sometimes there will be outright theft. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t support the Ukrainian Armed Forces; we must. The Russians are all at it too; it’s a Soviet mentality thing and that is what we all need to understand in structuring our interactions with the Ukrainian government and in making sure our contributions, whether through governments, NGO’s or some other fashion, are spent as effectively as possible. There is always going to be some waste until the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Ukrainian government more generally is the subject of root-and-branch reform.
Let me give you a couple of examples, in different contexts, of how it all works, before developing a general theory and seeing how we manage the problem. A well-intentioned NGO, probably a single individual (most NGO’s operating in Ukraine are run by single individuals, in essence cranks such as this writer who are willing to operate in unsavoury conditions in war zones and with strong personalities), creates a relationship with a Brigade Commander or some other senior military official. We need cars, the NGO is told: which is true, because the Ukrainian Armed Forces, amazingly, are travelling to and around the front line in civilian vehicles, often their own, because the military is not adequately stocked with personnel carriers. The NGO then goes on a fundraiser to buy a second hand four-wheel drive rugged civilian vehicle in the United Kingdom, using social media and the like and through a crowdfunding website so popular these days they raise a few thousand Euros or Pounds to buy a second-hand Landrover Defender (these are very rugged old-fashioned British four wheel drive vehicles perfect for driving in difficult terrain). Then money is raised to pay for the gasoline to drive the vehicle to Lviv in Ukraine where the NGO is likely to be based. (Most but not all small NGO’s doing this kind of thing are based in Lviv in western Ukraine where conditions are relatively comfortable.) Everything may be perfectly good natured at this point, without any malicious intent (although of course the NGO community in Ukraine is effectively unregulated so there are some bad apples out there and virtually nothing you can do about it.) Then what happens is that the NGO raises money for gasoline and travel expenses to drive the vehicle across Ukraine (that can be as arduous a journey as driving the vehicle all the way across Europe) to the meeting point with the officer and some troops, typically about 50 to 60 kilometres away from the front line: the distance where there are stabilisation points and basic facilities for troops taking a brief respite.
The vehicle may be loaded up with various kinds of aid as well, all intended for the troops: medical supplies and food, for example, or warm clothing for the winter. The officer who has the communication with the NGO signs off as the Brigade having received the donation from the NGO and some photographs are taken with smiling soldiers with their faces blanked out, in front of the the new aid that has arrived. Then the NGO administrator who ran the aid run is gratefully driven back to the nearest main railway station and returns to Lviv. The contents of the aid are distributed between the specific soldiers in the photographs who sell it to other soldiers on the front line are grossly inflated prices. As we previously mentioned in another article, the price for a pair of socks on the front line is US$12. This is a supply-and-demand economy and the aid provided immediately goes into Ukraine’s informal economy. The vehicle itself the commanding officer probably takes home and either keeps it there as an additional vehicle (if it is in decent condition) or he sells it on the open market, either to another soldier who needs a vehicle (remember that soldiers often need their own vehicles to drive to and from work, particularly officers who are not undertaking regular infantry work) or even on the open market. There are Ukrainian websites where you can buy literally thousands of donated vehicles from elsewhere in Europe, privately, at low prices. People have sent them with good intentions and now they are on the market and so are all those donated supplies (food / medical supplies). Remember that everything has a price in Ukraine: every packet of food put together by volunteers, every camouflage net that protects people, everything ends up being bought and sold through informal networks or just open sales on the front line.
Now I will give a second example. An officer or soldier near the front line signs out 3,000 rounds of ammunition and says he is going to use them at the range for target and shooting practice. Then he sells them. Who to? There is an underground market for bullets amongst civilian criminals but there is also the buying and selling of ammunition between soldiers on the front line, because there is such a shortage of elementary ammunition both for rifles / sidearms and also for artillery pieces. So soldiers buy and sell ammunition between them. They also do the same for guns; if you do not like the standard Kalashnikov automatic assault rifle you are typically given as an infantry soldier, you can buy a different one - from the army. They Ukrainian Armed Forces have limited supplies of other weapons and they sell them to soldiers willing to pay for them. You have to buy your own kit, wherever it comes from. Do not think that if you donate an IFAK then the ultimate soldier using it will receive it for free. He or she will pay for it, perhaps at a discount from buying one in a military shop (if they can find one - they are hard to source at the front line, easier in the few decent military equipment stores in Lviv and Kyiv) but for a substantial price. An IFAK goes for between US$80 and US$100 and soldiers have to buy them just as civilians do who are working on front line positions. This is not a reason not to donate IFAKs, if you have them; there is a desperate shortage of them on the front line and most soldiers do not have one. The point is that when you donate your object will go into an informal market economy system and will end up being bought or sold. You simply have to accept that.
Is this corruption? By conventional western standards, yes it is; but Ukraine is far from yet reaching Euro-Atlantic standards in the operation of its institutions, in particular procurement and justice. Procurement involves vast quantities of corruption in the Ukrainian Armed Forces which is why western military donors tend to provide support “in kind”: that is to say, they provide weapons and ammunition rather than the money to purchase weapons and ammunition, because they know that the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ procurement systems aren’t up to scratch. Nevertheless this is the system we are working with in Ukraine and we must understand, whether we are government officers or working with the NGO community, the perils and pitfalls of this relentless corruption and the operation of market forces in the operation of an army which is not something where we would ordinarily imagine items to be bought and sold, particularly when they have originally been donated. But they are.
In the Soviet system, there was an attempt to stamp out free markets and replace them with quotas for what people were obliged to produce. This induced massive corruption because free markets are the result of the natural instinct to accumulate wealth for oneself and if you try to stamp it out then people try to quietly break the rules. What happened was that paperwork became massively fraudulent and it remains true that in Ukraine any piece of paper can be purchased for the right sum of money, if you know the right person. Therefore very little value is placed on paperwork in Ukraine in genuine commercial transactions; people rely on one another’s word only. Everyone was skimming something off for themselves in the Soviet Union, as a way of making a little extra money in an oppressive system where salaries were standardised and there was nothing in the shops. Therefore people became used to buying and selling everything informally, even if it would normally be in the province of governments (such as arms and armaments). The Russian Armed Forces was basically a giant business, which is why it has proved so ineffective at fighting the Ukrainian Armed Forces which one would ordinarily imagine would be overrun immediately by so large an army as that of Russia. The Ukrainian Armed Forces developed as a paramilitary, militia-like organisation since 2014 as they resisted Russian-backed occupation but in the way they worked they proved hugely more effective than the Russian Armed Forces that really had no purpose other than to sell high-tech equipment to foreign countries and, through its Wagner Group arm, serve as mercenaries in different parts of the world willing to pay. Hence they were totally ill-equipped for the invasion of Ukraine.
What do we do about all the things I have alluded to in this article? Do we stop donating? No, we don’t; we just keep our eyes open about the culture in Ukraine and we try to donate and structure our donations through people who really understand the country and its ways of doing business well. We accept and acknowledge that our donations will end up being bought and sold, which is probably not how we would have imagined or liked it to be; but it will be of ultimate net valuable contribution to the war effort. The same goes for government military supplies to Ukraine: some of it will end up being bought or sold in informal networks but unless we are going to put deployable civilian experts in place to oversee the internal procurement processes of the Ukrainian government during the war in forensic detail (something we will probably have to do after the war ends to press Ukraine to European standards), this is something we are unlikely to be able to stop. We will just have to acknowledge and understand that there are inefficiencies in a system in which corruption is rampant due to the social and political history of Ukraine. There is a massive cultural, legal and social change of mindset required in Ukraine if she is to assimilate into the West and Ukraine is only just beginning to understand what is required of her. The Ukrainian people I count as friends acknowledge all of this and they are doing their best to push for changes of their mindset. For now we just have to accept that bullets, camouflage nets, food, socks and other essential military items will be bought and sold even on the Zero Line and that is the system we are working with.
The really hard work will begin, of course, once the war is over and then all this will have to change.