Many
#Americans view
#Ukraine as hopelessly corrupt, a perception fueled in part by reports about the
#Biden family's involvement with the now-defunct
#Ukrainian energy firm Burisma and repeated corruption scandals within Ukraine's Defense Ministry.
However, leaders of Ukraine's anti-corruption movement in parliament, known as the Rada, and in civil society say strong popular pushback against corruption has started to bite.
Transparency International, an NGO that monitors corruption, reported that progress is being made. In 2019, it gave Ukraine a score of 30 out of a possible 100 on its Corruption Perceptions Index. A score of zero indicates a country is perceived as highly corrupt, while 100 indicates it is perceived as clean.
Today, Ukraine's score stands at 36 amid a growing civil society anti-corruption movement. In 2013, before the
#Euromaidan Revolution and Russia's subsequent annexation of
#Crimea and support for an insurgency in the
#Donbas, Transparency International gave Ukraine a score of 25.
By contrast,
#Russia stood at 28 in 2013, compared with 22 today. While Ukraine has worked to fight corruption, Russia has become more corrupt, according to Transparency International, which cited "fully centralised, opaque governance that suppresses media, civil society and political opposition."
"Its authoritarian approach stifles independent voices, restricts civic engagement and spreads corrupt practices across the region, undermining neighbouring democratic institutions," the organization said.
Transparency International gave strong marks to Ukraine's anti-corruption movement and said it is responsible for the country's 11-point increase since 2013. Before the revolution, Ukraine stood alongside Iran, Cameroon and Nigeria among countries with some of the world's worst corruption scores.
"Despite these challenges, some countries demonstrate that change is achievable when civic space and independent institutions are defended," Transparency International said in its most recent report. "In Ukraine (36), sustained pressure from NGOs, the public and journalists has helped drive governance reforms. In 2025, civil society mobilisation protected key anti-corruption institutions, allowing them to operate independently.
"Ukraine's specialised anti-corruption system has increased investigations and secured convictions, including in politically sensitive procurement and defence cases. However, further reforms are needed to protect defence and reconstruction funds from misuse."
Anti-corruption advocates acknowledge that much remains to be done, but they note that it took decades after the U.S. Civil War for anti-corruption efforts to take hold in America.
The Gilded Age after the Civil War was marked by a "cynical spirit and crudeness of the new age and the graft, corruption, and material values," according to the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library.
Ukrainian anti-corruption Member of Parliament Yaroslav Yurchyshyn told Newsmax he takes inspiration from Mark Twain, whose 1873 novel, "The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today," satirized the rampant corruption of his era.
It took nearly 40 years before President Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement tackled that corruption. By comparison, Ukraine has been independent for 35 years, roughly the same amount of time it took the U.S. to begin seriously confronting corruption after the Civil War.
It has also been more than a decade since pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, whom opponents accused of being aligned with Moscow, was overthrown.
"We have a problem with corruption, a very deep problem as a post-Soviet state, but we are on the path of reforms," Yurchyshyn said. "When we hear about Russia or Belarus, we don't hear about corruption investigations or who commits these crimes because they are mostly totalitarian countries where only one kind of corruption can exist. That's the kind of corruption that can exist with the connection to the head of the country."
He continued: "So when you look at Russia you only have corruption that has connection with Putin. Without it, it can't exist."
While independent corruption investigations face severe constraints in Russia, Yurchyshyn said American intervention and assistance have helped Ukraine build institutions capable of investigating and prosecuting corruption.
"With help from America, we have created anti-corruption institutions, national anti-corruption bureaus, special anti-corruption prosecution," he told Newsmax.
The process of cleaning up corruption at an institutional level is underway. Although Ukraine has not reached the level of some of its neighbors, the war has made fixing the system a bigger challenge.
"We have some corruption cases, but we don't have any untouchable person in our country," Yurchyshyn said. "First of all, we have to become clean, and when we do we have a lot of wreckage. Day by day we … become better."
Before the 2013 revolution, Ukraine had what Yurchyshyn called a "semi-totalitarian" regime that hid corruption, but Ukraine's robust civil society now brings official corruption to public attention. That includes independent media outlets such as the Kyiv Independent and NGOs such as Holka, meaning "The Needle" in Ukrainian, that highlight alleged corruption.
Iryna Fedoriv, leader of Holka, quoted slain Ukrainian journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, who founded the independent newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, as saying corruption exists in every country. Gongadze was kidnapped and murdered in 2000 after criticizing then-Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.
By contrast, today's more open society allows Ukrainian activists to highlight corruption and publicly protest it. Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, for example, has loudly protested what he sees as corruption in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's inner circle.
Critics of Russia point to the deaths of prominent figures who challenged the country's government and exposed alleged corruption. Former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov was shot dead on a Moscow bridge in 2015 after highlighting official corruption.
Yuri Shchekochikhin, a Russian lawmaker and investigative journalist, died after a mysterious illness in 2003 while investigating corruption involving powerful officials, including allegations involving the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB.
Where Ukraine's media once operated under greater political constraints, social media and independent outlets now help galvanize Ukrainians who view corruption as one of the country's most pressing concerns after the war with Russia.
"The key question is not if we have corruption but rather if we have tolerance toward it or do not have tolerance toward it," Fedoriv said. "In Ukraine among the Ukrainian NGOs we have reached the level where we have a zero level of tolerance to corruption, and NGOs are very strong. And they are trying to highlight these cases of corruption."
Ukraine's prosecution and exposure of corruption would not have been possible without the support and activism of these NGOs, she said. While Ukraine has a long way to go before becoming corruption-free, anti-corruption advocates say it has made significant progress since the 2013 revolution.
John Rossomando ✉
John Rossomando is an experienced national security and counterterrorism analyst and researcher who writes for Newsmax and has been featured in numerous publications and has been consulted by numerous U.S. government agencies.
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