Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Adrian Karatnycky writes for the Wall Street Journal on how the Ukrainian government should address economic corruption by ramping up anticorruption prosecutions against business leaders and make market system reform a core government priority:
With Russia’s aggression in the Donbas region of Ukraine having morphed into a frozen conflict, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko now confronts a new challenge. He must address rising calls from the public to root out corruption while ensuring that such a campaign doesn’t lead to instability or bring down his government of technocrats and reformers.
For most of its 25-year history, postindependence Ukraine has been beset by massive corruption and rent-seeking. This deformity was a major catalyst for both the Orange Revolution of 2003 and the Maidan protests of 2013-14 that ended the authoritarian rule of President Viktor Yanukovych.