Kyiv’s clamp down on corruption, intended to facilitate its EU and NATO membership bids, may have claimed another victim with the ousting of Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov. The Ukrainian minister was dismissed from his post Sunday evening amid accusations that he misappropriated Western military aid.
The Ukrainian Parliament is expected to sign off on a decision by President Zelensky to remove Minister Reznikov from a job he has held since 2021, as Zelensky announced “new approaches” internally within the defence ministry, owing to graft allegations.
A former member of the Soviet Air Force and lawyer who rose up the ranks of local government following the 2014 Euromaidan revolution, Reznikov had been a key intermediary in the provision of military aid to the Ukrainian war effort. Reznikov will be replaced by the Crimean-born privatisation minister, Rustem Umerov.
Reznikov, on his departure, will assume the role of Kyiv’s London ambassador, amid some media speculation that the Zelensky government is using diplomatic positions in London to offload corrupt officials.
There had been public murmurings before that Reznikov would be removed from the defence portfolio due to his alleged role in the issuing of rigged state contracts for energy generators and food procurement, despite his repeated denials of involvement in any rackets.
Endemic corruption by nepotistic political elites and oligarchs is expected to be a major sticking point for Kyiv’s EU membership application. To this end, senior officials’ homes and businesses were raided earlier this year during an anti-embezzlement clampdown.
Ukraine has a long way to go to meet Brussels’s relatively stringent anti-corruption requirements as negotiations are expected to kick off this December to facilitate the nation’s EU aspirations.
For EU membership, candidate countries must meet requirements around transparency, an independent judiciary, protection for whistleblowers, and regular reporting. European leaders hope to ensure Ukraine remains compliant with EU diktats to avoid a repeat of ongoing clashes between the Commission with Hungary and Poland.
Western transparency agencies normally rank Ukraine as second only to Russia in being one of the most corrupt nations in Europe, with long-standing issues around judicial bribery and tycoons occupying key positions in civic administration.
