KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine and its international supporters are gearing up for a massive reconstruction effort without sufficient practical plans to prevent corruption and ensure the efficacy of the aid, a respected former official warned.
“We are in the train, which is going faster and faster, [but] no one knows the route, no one knows what is the final station,” former reconstruction agency chief Mustafa Nayyem told the Washington Examiner. “Everyone talks about reconstruction, and no one cares how it should be done, how these projects should be prioritized, how these projects should be structured.”
Nayyem resigned from his post last month. His departure underscored the apparent defeat of a Ukrainian reconstruction team Western officials regarded as honest and professional — and a victory, it would seem, for other officials who remain in power. His exit deepened Western misgivings that the vast sums of money likely to flow into Ukraine to aid the recovery of the war-torn nation could be diverted by corrupt officials.
“This was very unclear, why such a capable manager, involved in practically all international financial cooperation and recovery cooperation, was put out of the game,” a senior European official who specializes in Ukrainian reconstruction efforts told the Washington Examiner in reference to Nayyem and former infrastructure minister Oleksandr Kubrakov, who was ousted in May. “Of course, these big concerns have been [there] from the very beginning, and this doesn't help or add up.”
The causes of Nayyem’s and Kubrakov’s fall remain opaque. Nayyem was careful to avoid discussing “personalities” in connection to his resignation, but he protested “systemic obstacles that prevent me from effectively carrying out my duties” in a lengthy Facebook post announcing his exit. His announcement came on the eve of an international conference in Berlin , a forum that his superiors in the Ukrainian government did not allow him to attend.
“I think it's just more about political issues, which I don't want to comment [on] because, from my point of view, it's just absurd,” he said. “Because now ... there is no one who is responsible for this area. It's a disaster, from my point of view.”
The upheaval within the Ukrainian government threatens to stoke Western misgivings about the character of the country that has attracted so much Western support — a doubt that Ukraine and its closest neighbors have been anxious to allay. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has cited his country’s history since the collapse of the Soviet Union to suggest that “victorious Ukraine may follow a similar path” from the status of a corruption-riven Kremlin vassal to a NATO bulwark and rule-of-law economy.
Nayyem, who welcomes the prospect and acknowledges that corruption presents a strategic vulnerability, nonetheless is frustrated at the way Western powers have used the problem to justify an arms-length relationship with Ukraine.
“I'm not [accepting the] argument that Ukraine is not ready. It is not true. If you compare Ukraine now to Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, [at] the moment they joined the European Union, they were much worse, believe me,” he said, dismissing the complaint as an excuse. “That was a lie, which ... was very comfortable for everyone. For our Western partners, it was comfortable not to have bad relationships with Russia. For our leadership, it was comfortable because it allow[ed] them to steal money. ... And for Russia, it was very useful.”
Estonian Ambassador Annely Kolk, whose country joined NATO and the European Union in 2004, suggested that Western allies “underestimated” Russia’s attempt to exert influence inside Ukraine.
“And now it’s a very difficult path for them to come back. But I think, also, [the] 2014 Maidan [protests] showed that those democratic Ukrainians ... they are ready to fight for that,” she told the Washington Examiner during an interview at the Estonian Embassy. “I don't know [if] Ukraine will be [the] next Estonia, the next Poland. Ukraine will be Ukraine. But we are now all doing our best and trying to help [to ensure] that they remain a democratic, sovereign country.”
The reconstruction process is bound to play a major role in Ukraine’s trajectory, as the influx of international aid, perhaps eventually including the $260 billion of sovereign Russian Central Bank assets that Western allies froze at the outset of the full-scale war, has the potential to mint new oligarchs or demonstrate that Ukraine’s political and legal environment is improving.
“This is the ultimate test of, the ultimate laboratory, for that trajectory out of the Eurasian, Russian orbit and into the heart of Europe as a member of the Euro-Atlantic community,” as a senior State Department official acknowledged.
The official emphasized that the reconstruction effort “needs to have, in its bones, EU and NATO accession,” which would require meeting the “member-state standards” of the alliance. Ukraine’s success or failure in that test will depend, Western officials said, on whether they develop and implement a decision-making process that mitigates the potential for political graft and ensures that money reaches its intended destinations.
“What is key, actually, is not the system itself, it's the transparency of it,” as another European official put it. “We should be sure that the system put in place is transparent, in the law, for tracking the use of funds, and tracking how decisions are made as well.”
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Nayyem, for his part, worries that neither the Ukrainian government nor international investors have a plan to convert abstract political commitments into effective process.
“The conditionalities that we have now — it's very good, it's OK, but it's very theoretical and very high level ... particular practical issues — it is not developed yet,” Nayyem said. “And that should be done not only by Ukrainian government and officials but also with the involvement of international community, so that they will understand how we are spending this money — What is the priority for spending? What [are] the procedures? — and then they can follow [up] and see [the] final result of this.”
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