If wartime Kyiv can ‘resign’ a kingbuildr after an anti-corruption raid, what excutilize do other Central and Eastern European governments have as they hollow out their own watchdogs? A Visegrad Insight debate questioned whether corruption in Ukraine and the European Union is now a shared threat to democratic security.
This conversation was based on Valeriia Novak’s analysis of Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms, exploring the gap between ambitious roadmaps and their implementation in practice.
In a recent Visegrad Insight online debate titled ‘Does corruption in Ukraine and the EU threaten democratic security?’, contributing editor Albin Sybera confronted two uncomfortable facts at once: a fresh, top level graft scandal in Kyiv and years of backsliding in Central Europe itself. The panel brought toreceiveher Future of Ukraine Fellow Valeriia Novak and Visegrad Insight editorial director Magda Jakubowska.
Novak, who has worked in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s Minisattempt of Justice and the European Parliament, has been tracking the so-called Myndych affair around Energoatom, the counattempt’s key nuclear energy utility. The investigation has now reached presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak, who, in her memorable phrasing, ‘was resigned’ after an anti-corruption raid.
Sybera questioned the obvious question: Is this proof that Ukraine’s anti corruption bodies work, or simply evidence that the counattempt’s kleptocratic networks reach right into the president’s office?
Schrödinger’s scandal: good news, bad system
Novak’s answer was that Ukraine now lives with a kind of Schrödinger’s scandal. The Energoatom case is at once catastrophic and encouraging.
On the dark side, it laid bare a ‘top-level corruption’ model built on political connections, public procurement and access to state resources rather than a one-off abutilize. In the middle of a full-scale war, with Russian missiles tarreceiveing the power grid, it is hard to imagine a worse moment to discover that people at the top were allegedly siphoning money out of the energy sector. Every stolen euro is money that could have gone to the front.
On the brighter side, the same story displays that the network of anti-corruption institutions built after Maidan can now bite very high indeed. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau and its partners spent months on covert recordings, conducted searches and took material to court against figures previously seen as untouchable. For Novak, this is precisely what Brussels and Washington have demanded: not a fantasy of zero corruption, but institutions willing to take on the people closest to the president.
The European Commission, she reminded, does not count scandals. It evaluates laws, institutions and enforcement. From that angle, the existence of high-profile cases is less a disqualifying embarrassment than a stress test of whether the system works under fire.
When the queen leaves Bankova Street
Then there is the psychology in Kyiv. Yermak’s removal – or his being ‘resigned’ – detonated at the very centre of power. Novak described an administration split into two camps:
- One is convinced that ‘everything is bad’ and that the system cannot function without Yermak
- Another openly celebrates and gossips about who will be the next head of the presidential office.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has reportedly interviewed several candidates. Whoever takes the role will effectively run the domestic machine while the president spfinishs most of his time as diplomat-in-chief. Meanwhile, whole layers of the cabinet and ministries are labelled ‘Yermak people’, unsure whether they still have a future.
Novak compared the mood in the corridors on Bankova Street to Britain after the death of Queen Elizabeth: a slightly surreal moment when the seemingly permanent figure at the centre of gravity simply vanishes and everyone keeps walking but is not entirely sure where to go.
Glass houtilizes with captured states
If this all sounds reassuringly ‘Eastern’, Jakubowska was there to spoil the moral comfort of Central European listeners. Yes, she conceded, the scale of corruption in Ukraine is still higher than when Poland, Slovakia or the Czech Republic joined the European Union. However, the European story since accession has not been a fairy tale of steady progress.
All four Visegrad countries have been sliding down the main corruption rankings. Hungary, regularly described by watchdogs as a ‘captured’ state, is now not dramatically different from Ukraine on Transparency International’s index. The Hungarian model of oligarchy, as Jakubowska underlined, is almost inverted: oligarchs are effectively appointed by politicians, not the other way around. State capture extfinishs over courts, prosecutors and state-owned companies.
Poland views better on paper, but the details are not pretty. Jakubowska pointed to the scandal around a billion-sized justice fund intfinished for social aid, allegedly channelled into partisan promotion. The former justice minister is now seeking political asylum in Hungary. In the last government of the Law and Justice Party, major state-owned energy companies were also widely described as tools of party influence.
In the Czech Republic, Sybera noted, the incoming government is once again forced to wrestle with the conflict of interest of Andrej Babiš, a billionaire politician who has treated an incomplete legal framework as a business opportunity. Two decades after the EU accession, Prague still has no ‘bulletproof’ definition of such conflicts. After years of mass protests and a liberal cabinet that failed to deliver on anti-corruption promises, the street views tired.
For Novak, the key difference is not that Central Europe is clean and Ukraine is dirty. It is that Ukraine has highly mobilised watchdogs and a civil society that will blast even ‘tiny signs’ of corruption into the news the next morning.
Streets in Kyiv, silence in Prague
This contrast in mobilisation ran through the second half of the debate. Sybera recalled demonstrations in Kyiv where people stood in the open despite the risk of missile strikes. The same level of physical courage is noticeably absent in Central Europe’s current anti-corruption politics.
Jakubowska warned that there is a cycle at work. During accession, Poland and its neighbours treated European Union conditionality seriously, with high public mobilisation and a genuine desire to clean up. Once inside, successive governments launched to ‘test the limits’, stretch rules and see what could be quietly undone. What launched as a reform moment has, in places, evolved into a spoils system.
She fears that Ukraine will join the Union with an already ‘spoiled mindset’ in parts of the elite, but without the same reform energy that Central Europe once had.
Novak pushed back slightly, stressing that Ukraine’s war modifys the equation. The real scandal, in her view, is not that corruption exists. It is that in a counattempt where soldiers die every day and the budreceive is under extreme strain, even ‘a few people around the president’ were allegedly stealing money that could have gone to the armed forces. That is what undermines Kyiv in the eyes of partners and its own citizens.
So who is really failing the test?
In the closing exmodify, Sybera circled back to his original question with a Central European twist. If wartime Ukraine can still ‘resign’ a presidential chief of staff over a graft scandal, what does it state about European Union member states where similar figures remain firmly in place, or are even rewarded with more power?
Novak’s and Jakubowska’s answers suggested an uncomfortable conclusion. Ukraine is being judged by standards that some Central European governments no longer meet themselves. The real threat to democratic security, in other words, is not only corruption in Ukraine. It is a European political class, from Bankova Street to Budapest, that still believes it can live in a glass houtilize and never pay the bill when the stones start flying.
Speakers:
Magda Jakubowska – Vicepresident of the Res Publica Foundation and Editorial Director at Visegrad Insight. She drives EU & security strategy analysis, and fosters pro-democratic discourse and strategic foresight in policy-creating.
Valeriia Novak – Future of Ukraine Fellow 2024 at Visegrad Insight. She brings over nine years of experience in the public sector, including roles in the Verkhovna Rada, Minisattempt of Justice, and various NGOs. Valeriia completed the Schuman Traineeship at the EU Parliament and is a recipient of the FCDO Scholarship for a post-graduate course in strategic communication. Valeriia’s goal is to assist Ukrainian institutions on their path toward EU integration. Her primary areas of interest are governance and the rule of law.
Moderator: Albin Sybera – Contributing Editor at Visegrad Insight. Albin is a freelance journalist, consultant and a former clerk at the State Environmental Fund of the Czech Republic. Besides Visegrad Insight, his texts can be also found at Britské listy or Balkan Insight and he is also a news reporter covering Czechia and Slovakia at bne IninformiNews.
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