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Tuned_Out t1_j5qiiol wrote

Sadly, as much as we all want to see the Russian aggressor humiliated and kicked out of occupied lands, it's important to remember Ukraine has a history of corruption and is no saint.

Hopefully this is just the start of more purging of government ranks. Ukraine needs to keep it's image clean if it wants continued support from the west.

Scary to think that if Ukraine didn't have it's charismatic figurehead and just enough good apples in upper government, Russia would've been calling the shots months ago.

In fact, Russia was actually counting on corruption being easy to manipulate. It has a long and semi successful history of doing so during peacetime.

This is not to discredit the fighting spirit of Ukraine. They're an amazing people and their fighting spirit is second to none. I'm just grateful that despite the challenges of being at Russia's backdoor after the fall of the Soviet union, corruption and despotism didn't cripple these valiant defenders from losing their county.

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itsdeeps80 t1_j5r0bw5 wrote

They’ll have to work to clean things up very quickly. Most westerners had zero knowledge of Ukraine at all prior to a year ago let alone about the corruption in the Ukrainian government. When this war ends those people are going to be in for an enormous shock if more stuff like this isn’t done before it all ends.

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TjW0569 t1_j6agsic wrote

They've been attempting to clean up their government about as long as they've been attempting to reform their military along western lines. The Western military equipment and training was dependent on them making progress. That was briefly in the news when Trump withheld some of the money.

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itsdeeps80 t1_j6bpgnc wrote

True, but the corruption and neo nazi problem have been completely swept under the rug since last year in the media and that is definitely going to lead to longer term problems. Those elements are now completely aware that the vast majority of people in the west are willing to overlook those problems because of what is happening right now and that makes me extremely nervous about what could unfold in the future.

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TjW0569 t1_j6dg589 wrote

I don't see that at all. The diplomatic corps of the Western countries giving aid have been holding them to continuous progress on eliminating the corruption. If anything, the war gives them more incentive to remove corrupt officials. Losing Western support loses them the war, of course, but so does not removing corruption.

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itsdeeps80 t1_j5pcdep wrote

This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone with knowledge of the country prior to last year.

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count023 t1_j5sngh4 wrote

it isn't, and most people who were following this know Zelensky was trying and hamstrung with his anti-corruption measures. Something about a war with the country that's backing all the corrupt politicians suddenly got a lot of his anti-corruption measures through finally. Funny that.

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redux44 t1_j5tqkng wrote

Oh I'm sure Zelensky, who was named in the Pandora papers was really frustrated with his anti-corruption drive.

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God_in_my_Bed t1_j5trid3 wrote

Is everyone with an off shore account a criminal? That link is scarce in details. I just repeated all I've learned from it.

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[deleted] t1_j5u7zdp wrote

[deleted]

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redux44 t1_j5ufn8o wrote

Wait, you're tarring me with Ford because I'm from Ontario because I pointed out Zelensky had his name leaked in the case of all those corrupt politicians with offshore accounts when someone brought up his anti-corruption credentials?

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