Ukraine to be warned it’s ‘too corrupt’ for NATO

Ukraine to be warned it’s ‘too corrupt’ for NATO – Telegraph

3 July 24, https://www.sott.net/article/492800-Ukraine-to-be-warned-its-too-corrupt-for-NATO-Telegraph

Many of the bloc’s members want “additional steps” from Kiev as they consider the issue a “priority,” a source has told the paper

NATO wants Ukraine to make more effort to crack down on endemic corruption as a condition for any progress towards joining the bloc, the Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday, citing sources.

According to the British paper, concerns that Ukraine is “too corrupt” to become a full-fledged NATO member will be highlighted in the communique at the bloc’s Washington summit on July 9-11.

A senior US State Department official told The Telegraph that the West must “applaud everything that Ukraine has done in the name of reforms over the last two-plus years.” However, he added that “we want to talk about additional steps that need to be taken, particularly in the area of anti-corruption. It is a priority for many of us around the table.”

NATO members first agreed in 2008 that Ukraine would eventually join the bloc, without setting an exact timetable. After the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, Ukraine made its NATO aspirations a strategic goal and formally applied to join the bloc in 2022. The move came after four of its former regions voted overwhelmingly to join Russia.

However, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said Ukraine’s accession is out of the question while it is in conflict with Russia, insisting that membership can only be approved “when allies agree and conditions are met.” Moscow has said Ukraine’s plans to join NATO are among the key reasons for the conflict.

Ukraine has been plagued by corruption for years. The hostilities with Russia have made the problem even more apparent, and the Ukrainian military has been rocked by several high-profile procurement scandals in recent months.

Graft is high on the list of concerns for Ukraine’s Western backers in the EU and US. Last month, the EU set up a special watchdog to combat the possible embezzlement of billions of dollars allocated to Kiev.

In May, Robert Storch, the Pentagon’s inspector general, released a report stating that “endemic corruption persists” in Ukraine while calling its government “one of the least accountable” in Europe. An NBC report in June claimed that Kiev has been irritated by constant US demands to ramp up anti-corruption efforts. American and Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that it is one of the issues poisoning bilateral relations.

According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, Ukraine is in the ‘red’ zone, ranking 104th out of 180 countries.

1) It is inscribed in the Ukrainian Constitution, that NATO and EU membership is a priority for the government and its president. In spite of intentions and promises, the outlook is not bright in the short term.

The constitution of Ukraine would have to be changed to make room for peace without NATO and EU membership. See this blog post discussion Would Ukraine Breach its own Constitution if it Dropped its NATO Bid?

2) From the article:

According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, Ukraine is in the ‘red’ zone, ranking 104th out of 180 countries.

This rating system is not worth much, but here are more details about it.
The Wiki for Corruptions Perceptions Index has that between 2021 and 2022 Ukraine improved six places in the ranking, and 12 places between 2022 and 2023. The NGO, Transparency International, aims to rate countries “by their perceived levels of public sector^[1]corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.” Place 104 must be close to sufficient for NATO, if Albania, NATO member since 2009, at place number 98 is anything to go by.

The Transparency International website has a page, that shows many sponsors to be from Western countries, with many also being sponsors of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine.

The Wiki include the controversies behind the CPU ratings:

According to the newspaper Le Monde: “In its main surveys, Transparency International does not measure the weight of corruption in economic terms for each country. It develops a Corruption Perception Index (CPI) based on surveys conducted by private structures or other NGOs: the Economist Intelligence Unit, backed by the British liberal weekly newspaper The Economist, the American neoconservative organization Freedom House, the World Economic Forum, or large corporations. (…) The IPC ignores corruption cases that concern the business world. So, the collapse of Lehman Brothers (2008) or the manipulation of the money market reference rate (Libor) by major British banks revealed in 2011 did not affect the ratings of the United States or United Kingdom.”

The index may serve as a help for companies who wish to invest in a country as to what they might have to allocate to get what they want. On the state level it can be used as reference point for policies against some countries, and more generally as a front for information gathering and soft power influencing.

July 6, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international

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