[A quick note: I drafted the post below last week, before the horrific events in Israel over the weekend. I have nothing useful to say about that tragedy–I have no expertise in military or security policy, Middle Eastern politics, terrorism, or anything along those lines. But I wanted to express my deepest sympathy to those who have been affected by Hamas’s horrific and inexcusable attack on innocent civilians. I will continue to write posts on assorted corruption-related issues, like the one below, because that’s what I know and that’s what I do. But this is one of those moments when other things seem so much more important. Am Yisrael Chai.]

Last week, a piece in Politico discussed the contents of a confidential (but not classified) U.S. State Department’s “integrated country strategy” for Ukraine; a shorter public version of that strategy document was released last August, but the version Politico obtained was longer and more detailed. The big headlines coming out of the Politco story (both literally and figuratively) concern corruption. The U.S. strategy document, Politico notes, “sees corruption as the real threat,” and “warns Western support may hinge on cutting corruption.” The Politco story made a bit of a splash among some of the people who follow these issues closely, but I don’t think it tells us much that we didn’t already know, and the new material from the confidential version of the report, so far as I can tell from Politico’s reporting, mainly concern political calculations that are basically common knowledge, though perhaps a bit sensitive for the U.S. government to declare formally in a public document.

Let me start out by noting one thing that I think the Politico piece gets exactly right, and that poses a general, and by now familiar, challenge to those who both support Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression and believe anticorruption reforms are vital for the country’s future success. As the Politico story puts it:

The [Biden] administration wants to press Ukraine to cut graft … [b]ut being too loud about the issue could embolden opponents of U.S. aid to Ukraine, many of them Republican lawmakers who are trying to block such assistance. Any perception of weakened American support for Kyiv also could cause more European countries to think twice about their role.

This is indeed a real issue, and a rhetorical and political challenge. Having said that, I think the Politico story, perhaps inadvertently, may simultaneously (1) understate the extent to which the U.S. government has already been willing to publicly raise the need for serious anticorruption reforms in Ukraine, and (2) overstate the extent to which the U.S. is relying on a coercive approach (mainly express or implied aid conditionality) to press for such reforms. A few thoughts on each:

The Politico story portrays the confidential version of the strategy as painting a “starker” and more concerned picture about Ukraine’s corruption problem than the public document. Though the story does not include a link to the confidential strategy on which it is based, it quotes that document as declaring that “[p]erceptions of high-level corruption … [could] undermine the Ukrainian public’s and foreign leaders’ confidence in the war-time government.” Well, I guess that’s sort of a “stark” assessment, though really this is conventional wisdom, and has been for some time. And it’s not like the public version of the country strategy shies away from this issue. That document declares, right at the beginning, that demonstrating a commitment to anticorruption and judicial reforms will “reinforce U.S. and international military, development, and economic support.” It later emphasizes that President Zelenskyy’s government “cannot afford to push [anticorruption reforms] to a post-war period.” The document declares that one of its key mission goals (part of “Win[ning] the Peace”) includes the adoption of sustainable anticorruption reforms,” justifying this in part by observing that failure to do so might “diminish Ukraine’s legitimacy …, undermine the credibility of the government[,] and create space for anti-reform elements, risking destabilization and/or public backlash.”

While I get that the confidential document (which Politico reports is three times longer than the public version) is much more detailed, I’m straining to see what the big revelation is here regarding U.S. concerns (which by all accounts much of the Ukrainian leadership shares) about corruption, and the threat that it poses to longer-term domestic and international support for the Ukrainian government.

The other (supposed) revelation from the Politico story (not really based on the confidential country strategy, but rather on other sources and inferences) is that the U.S. is has been putting more direct pressure on Kyiv to take a more aggressive line on corruption. The way the Politico story frames the narrative is that for the first year of the war, the Biden Administration “stuck to brief mentions of corruption,” out of a desire to show solidarity with Ukraine and avoid providing talking points to critics of U.S. aid to the country, but that now “U.S. officials are pressing the matter more in public and private.”

That strikes me as not exactly wrong, but quite exaggerated. I can’t say I’ve done a careful analysis of administration statements regarding corruption, but as a casual but reasonably attentive observer I haven’t noticed a substantial shift in tone on this issue over the past year. Impressions could be wrong, of course, but the Politico piece offers only three pieces of evidence for the idea that the Biden Administration is now taking a harder line with the Ukrainian government on the need to crack down on corruption.

• First, the story notes that early last month National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with a delegation from Ukrainian anticorruption institutions. But nothing in the brief synopsis of the meeting suggests that this was an occasion for Sullivan to pressure these entities, nor is it clear which side requested the meeting. This could be an indication that the Ukrainian side wants to raise the profile of the corruption issue.
• Second, the story mentions “reports that the Biden administration is talking to Ukrainian leaders about potentially conditioning future economic aid on” anticorruption reforms. This piece of the story is based on a leak of a confidential letter from Deputy National Security Advisor Mike Pyle to a body called the Ukraine Donor Coordination Platform, a multilateral body jointly run by Ukraine and leading donor governments (including the European Commission) to coordinate current and future financial assistance to Ukraine. Pyle’s letter laid out a set of reforms that, it appears, the U.S. government would like Ukraine to accomplish. The reporting on this letter (not just in Politico, but in numerous other outlets) suggested that the U.S. had attached stringent anticorruption conditions to U.S. aid, with headlines like “White House letter sets out reforms that Ukraine needs to implement to receive aid,” “The US demands anti-corruption measures from Ukraine in exchange for economic aid,” and “White House Sends Letter Outlining Reforms for Kyiv to Get Financial Aid.” This reporting is not exactly wrong, but it is rather misleading. The idea that there may be certain conditions attached to reconstruction aid is not new, and many of the conditions listed in Pyle’s letter are already targets that the IMF and EU have publicly announced. Only two of the items in the letter (neither of them go to the core of institutional anticorruption reforms” are explicitly listed as “reforms linked to conditions on U.S. assistance.” The others are all described as “priorities.” As most of the news stories properly note (though often a bit far down, below the eye-catching headlines), none of these potential conditions applies to military aid. And rather than announcing a new policy, the Pyle letter is marked—clearly and explicitly—“Deliberative // Pre-Decisional Working Draft – Subject to Review.” In other words, this is not the announcement of a firm policy of aid conditionality, but rather a discussion draft that raises issues for further consultations with Ukrainian and G& partners. And again, very little of this is all that new.
• Third, the Politico story observes that President Zelenskyy “has fired several top defense officials in a recent crackdown on alleged graft – a message to the United States and Europe that he’s listening.” I confess, this may be irrational, but this sentence really irritated me. Look, it may well be that President Zelenskyy undertook this shakeup of Ukraine’s Defense Department because of direct or indirect U.S. pressure. But Politico provides no evidence for this. Has it occurred to these American journalists that the President of Ukraine might have decided to take down graft in his government because (1) he genuinely cares about the issue, (2) the Ukrainian public cares about the issue, and (3) corruption in the defense sector poses genuine threats to the country’s national security? The idea that this crackdown was (primarily or exclusively) “a message to the United States and Europe that he’s listening” is condescending in the extreme. The idea that we could reason backward from the fact that Ukraine’s action took action against corruption to the conclusion that the U.S. has stepped up its pressure on Ukraine presumes that only U.S. pressure could achieve such a result. That may be true—I don’t really know. But it seems hard to believe that this is the only explanation.

To be clear, none of this is to deny that the core claims of the Politico story might be largely, albeit roughly, correct. It may be that the U.S. is somewhat more concerned about Ukrainian government corruption than it has been willing to say publicly. And it maybe that in the last few weeks or months, the U.S. has stepped up its pressure on Kyiv to take bolder action on this issue. But my impression is that we haven’t actually seen that much dramatic change, and nothing in the Politico story convinces me otherwise. Yes, U.S. officials (like many Ukrainian officials) are worried about corruption in Ukraine, and the threat that it poses to the Ukrainian government’s legitimacy, effectiveness, and international support. But that’s been true for a while, and has been made clear numerous times. Yes, U.S. officials may be raising this issue more with their Ukrainian counterparts than they were a year ago, and there have been discussions of conditionalities attached to future aid. But there haven’t really been any notable recent policy changes, at least that we know about. The Politico story, while not exactly a nothingburger, seems to me to be much less than meets the eye.