A national crisis can have a wide range of effects on a country’s commitment to fighting corruption. Sometimes, the sense of crisis leads countries (for better or worse) to de-prioritize corruption, out of a sense that other matters are higher priority, or even out of a sense that tolerance for a certain degree of corruption is a price worth paying to achieve other more pressing objectives. But in other situations, a sense of national crisis can strengthen a government’s resolve to crack down aggressively on corruption. There seem to be at least two closely related reasons why this may sometimes occur. First, corruption might be seen as directly and significantly impeding the country’s ability to tackle the emergency at hand. Second, a time of crisis can strengthen the position of the nation’s chief executive (the president or prime minister)—both in the formal legal sense (in that during times of crisis the chief executive may be able to wield extraordinary emergency powers) and in the softer more political sense (in that the chief executive may enjoy a surge in popularity if the country is under threat, and the public perceives the chief executive as providing strong leadership in the crisis). If that chief executive is genuinely committed to fighting corruption (a big if), then he or she may be able to leverage this unusual power to move aggressively against corruption, in a manner that would be politically difficult or impossible in “normal” times.

My impression, based on news stories and informal conversations with actual experts (which I am not!), is that the latter characterization is more apt for what is happening in Ukraine right now. It was not obvious that things would go this way initially—particularly given that, shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian parliament suspended the asset declaration requirement for public officials, which though justified at the time as a way to keep potentially sensitive information from the Russians, was viewed with understandable concern. But a series of developments since then has demonstrated what looks to an outsider (at least to this outsider) like a consistent and quite aggressive effort to crack down on corruption, even at the risk of some (temporary) disruption to aspects of the war effort.

At least for me, one of the most notable and encouraging signs was the arrest, earlier this month, of Ihor Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine’s most powerful oligarchs, on fraud charges.

The reason this development strikes me as so significant is that Kolomoisky was one of President Zelensky’s strongest supporters, and many of Zelensky’s closest advisors were part of Kolomoisky’s inner circle. And though Kolomoisky has long been suspected of significant corruption, as well as fraud and other unlawful activity, he seemed to have de facto impunity in the early years of Zelensky’s administration. For that reason, many observers (both inside and outside Ukraine) cast doubt on whether Zelensky’s alleged commitment to anticorruption and anti-oligarchy was all that serious, at least when it came to his own political allies. Consider just a smattering of examples from just a few years ago:

• In July 2021, David Clark (a former UK diplomat) published a piece for the Atlantic Council that highlighted concerns about the Zelensky-Kolomoisky relationship, and observed that “Zelensky’s actions as president suggest that his approach to countering the influence of Ukraine’s oligarchs may be selective at best,” with the main focus of this campaign “on Zelensky’s political enemies.” Kolomoisky’s influence over Zelensky, Clark wrote, “poses questions about the durability of … the fight against corruption[.]”
• In October 2021, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) published an exposé that drew on the Pandora Papers to show how President Zelensky and his inner circle made use of a network of offshore companies. The OCCRP report noted that Zelensky’s 2019 presidential campaign “was dogged by doubts over his anti-graft bona fides,” given that his campaign was supported by Kolomoisky and his media empire. After becoming president, those doubts persisted, and were fueled by Zelensky’s ouster of Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka shortly after taking office—a move that, Ryaboshapka told OCCRP, was “due to pressure from … Kolomoisky.”
• In February 2022, just days before the Russian invasion, a piece in Forbes suggested that President Zelensky had “failed Ukraine” by (among other things) not following through on his anticorruption promises, and that his top supporters, including Kolomoisky, get special treatment

These are just a handful of examples that illustrate the tenor of the coverage at the time. And while some of the assessments may have been overly harsh, they were not wrong to point out (a) that Zelensky was close with Kolomoisky, and probably would never have won the presidency without his support, (b) that Kolomoisky and people close to him continued to be close to Zelensky even after Zelensky became president, and (c) despite facing serious accusations of massive fraud and other wrongdoing that led to, among other things, a U.S. travel ban, Kolomoisky did not seem to face serious legal consequences in Ukraine for the first few years of Zelensky’s presidency.

That’s why Kolomoisky’s arrest strikes me as so potentially significant. Now, I realize that some skeptics have raised concerns about the fact that Kolomoisky was arrested on fraud charges by the Ukrainian security services, which are subject to closer supervision and control by the executive branch. Kolomoisky was also being investigated by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which is more independent, and was preparing to bring more serious charges against Kolomoisky. So it is possible that what looks like aggressive action against Zelensky’s former patron may actually be an attempt to protect him, by ensuring that the criminal case against him is handled by a prosecutors who are more susceptible to presidential influence. This seems closely related to the recent controversy over President Zelensky’s proposal for legislation that would make corruption offenses considered “treason” during the full-scale war with Russia. Though some welcomed that proposal  as a “paradigm shift” that would “establish a stronger deterrent,” critics have raised concerns that classifying corruption as treason would serve as a justification to “take top corruption cases away from [Ukraine’s independent anticorruption agencies] and pass them to the [security service], which falls under the president’s command,” and which “could, potentially, have the power to bury cases involving top officials.”

I do not know nearly enough to evaluate these arguments, and I therefore must acknowledge the possibility that Kolomoisky’s arrest is not actually a sign that Zelensky has broken with his former patron, but rather an attempt to protect him while getting some good PR in the bargain. But, while again acknowledging my lack of expertise, that does not seem all that plausible to me, especially given everything else we’ve seen over the past year. My interpretation—which I offer as a tentative hypothesis—is that Zelensky himself was always sincere about his desire to take a strong stand against corruption and oligarchy, but like any politician, he had to operate within certain political constraints. Without Kolomoisky’s support, Zelensky would probably never have won the presidency in the first place, and Zelensky’s political position, right up to the start Russia’s full-scale invasion, was rather tentative. Even in those first couple of years, Zelensky’s administration made some significant progress—but it’s unsurprising (if perhaps disappointing) that he didn’t go after his most significant and powerful political allies. My bet is that the war has empowered and liberated him. He now has overwhelming popular support, given his genuinely heroic and inspiring leadership. He doesn’t need Kolomoisky as much as he used to. And in the face of the existential threat that corruption poses to his country, the costs of tolerating (or being seen as tolerating) corruption and fraud are much higher.

Now, the fact that a national crisis can empower a popular chief executive to disregard previously significant political constraints is not always a good thing! It would not be hard to come up with plenty of examples where chief executives leveraged their increased popularity and power to do bad or misguided things. But in this case, my sense is that the war, though obviously horrific and not at all a price worth paying, has enabled Zelensky to become the anticorruption zealot that he always wanted to be.