Power Lines Season 1 Episode 10 Bonus Transcript
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Anastasiia: Hello listeners, welcome to our bonus episode of Power Lines: From Ukraine to the World. I'm Anastasiia Lapatina.
Jakub: And I'm Jakub Parusinski. Over the past few weeks, you've probably seen a few stories about the corruption in the Ukrainian government, something we haven't heard so much about since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
To shed some light on it, this week we're speaking to Anna Myroniuk, the Head of investigations here at the Kyiv Independent, to examine these recent stories and explore the role that journalists play in reporting on them.
Hi Anna. Great to have you on.
Anna: Hello everyone. It's great to be here.
Jakub: Before we start talking about the specific cases, I just wanted to get your broad feeling. Ukraine is known as a country that has a corruption problem. It's been the case for decades. How do you see the current situation compared to the previous years?
Anna: Honestly Jakub, I don't think that there is a huge change in terms of the scale of corruption in Ukraine compared to the previous years. It feels like up until recently, it was just a taboo to speak about.
It was just something that people rather would not look at or acknowledge because there was Russia's full-scale invasion happening. And I guess it was a very uncomfortable thing to think of, the fact that the corruption is still existing.
Jakub: It's kind of understandable that at the moment of the full-scale invasion, everyone's attention focused on defence.
But over the last couple of weeks especially, there's been more articles coming out and more discussions about potential issues of corruption. Do you feel like the taboo is breaking?
Anna: Yes, I do feel so. Because well, it's been almost a year since Russia unleashed its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And I guess to this point, civil society in Ukraine has already realised that the victory cannot be accomplished actually without proactive democratic society and watchdog agencies that are keeping track of public procurement, procurement for the military, et cetera.
People in Ukraine started realising that to actually contribute to the victory, civil society in Ukraine must watchdog the resources because these resources must better serve Ukraine's defence and not being funnelled somewhere else or being pocketed by some corrupt politicians or officials.
Anastasiia: I think it's also a matter of feeling the ground and getting used to the situation because I remember having discussions with journalists in Ukrainian media who've had certain content.
It was, I think, videos of the Ukrainian military perhaps doing something that could be allegedly illegal or something. And I had a conversation with a journalist who said that their newsroom decided not to publish it. That was in the early days.
And they mentioned how there was a whole conflict happening that some journalists were like, “No, this is our job. We have to keep the government to account.” But some journalists and perhaps the editors ultimately decided that maybe it's not the right time.
Anna you would know that it's really scary as well to publish these materials, not only because of potential government pushback or rich oligarchs hunting you down for the stuff that you wrote about them, but also the people.
I think a lot of journalists may also fear some sort of negative reaction, kind of like, “How dare you talk about this right now. Our military is dying for you and you're accusing them of stealing money.”
It can go all sorts of wrong ways. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it, but it's definitely an uncomfortable process right now
Anna: As we are speaking about the challenges journalists face as they're covering corruption or mismanagement of the government or well, the country’s establishment. I would probably take this chance to talk about the challenge I faced when we were considering to cover the story involving International Legion, which we first started looking into back in the end of summer.
We've received some information that International Legion, which is a part of both Ukraine's ground forces and military intelligence, was extremely mismanaged by their leadership, which was abusing their power, which was causing deaths of the servicemen.
But having received this information, we faced this moral dilemma as Nastya already said, when as a journalist in Ukraine, you are trying to weight all pros and cons and think about how this story would be perceived right now amid the war when Russia is an aggressor, which is trying to conquer your country.
And at the very same time, you know that there is something wrong happening in this very military in Ukraine, and you are trying to see how to pursue with this story.
So basically, I can share my thinking of myself and Olga Rudenko, our chief editor in the team who has been working on this story. What we took into consideration was the following.
First, at the very beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, addressed everybody in the world saying, “You guys, if you would like to help Ukraine's cause in defending itself, join International Legion.”
And we as the Kyiv Independent, published the story, like an explainer on how to join the Legion. When we received information that something was wrong inside the Legion, we started considering whether it serves public interest, and it did because we had an obligation before our audience to inform them on something we reported on in the past. And we said join because that's what Zelenskyy suggested.
But now we have some insider information coming in saying that it's not the great place to be and explaining why.
The second thing was the fact that this leadership mismanagement drastically affected servicemen. They wanted their stories to be heard and they wanted to bring change.
They had been knocking on the doors of every official in Ukraine, in the parliament, in the military, trying to attract attention to their problems. They weren't heard, journalists were their last resort.
And the important thing is here, that despite all the concerns about our safety by revealing mismanagement in the army, we still decided to do this story because well, in our opinion, it was actually contributing to Ukraine's victory because it was shedding light on something that is going wrong in the military.
And now is the time when you resolve these issues, when you repair what is broken, not after the war, because after the war it might be way too late.
Jakub: You can make the argument that this kind of stories are especially important to publish in a timely matter, because the people that might sign up to the Legion or who are currently serving in it could die because of the mismanagement, mishandling or malfeasance.
Anastasiia: I honestly think that Ukrainians are more scared of the way this would be perceived than anybody else, because I remember the comments under the story. All of the Westerners were to begin with shocked that we had the guts to do it and Anna, kudos to you and your team.
And they were all in awe that Kyiv Independent had the courage to investigate this and to publish this at such a time, because obviously the whole other side of this is Ukrainians are very scared, perhaps, rightfully so, that such reporting may impede the efforts to get as much aid as we possibly can and as many weapons as we can from the West.
And I've had this very annoying instance of a discussion like this when I was in DC and I was speaking at a Transparency International Conference and I mentioned this investigation because it just came a few weeks earlier. And I was explaining on a stage why this matters and why we did it.
Around that same time, at those same dates, there was a big delegation from Ukraine that was in DC. It was a lot of activists, some journalists, people from the Defence Ministry, et cetera, who were negotiating another military aid package.
A guy came up to me, he was a Ukrainian working within some sort of big international organisation, but Ukraine's office. He was like, “I really appreciated what you said and you guys did a great job, but you know there is a Ukrainian delegation in Washington right now. You know they're negotiating with the Biden administration and I just wanted to hear what you think about whether the timing may be a bit problematic here.”
And I was just annoyed to my core, because I was thinking, “Wow, you've really missed the entire point of my presentation, at this conference right now.” We have to show to the West that we're not just a corrupt country where officials run free stealing money.
We do have those officials, but we also have a whole bunch of people who are brave and intelligent and courageous, who try to fight these officials.
Anna: That is the argument sounding at the moment in response to the story which was broken by Yuriy Nikolov, a journalist who did the article for Zerkalo Tuzhnia, over the weekend. It was published, it was looking into military food procurement by Defence Ministry.
Basically, the essence of the story is that Defence Ministry signed a contract for the year 2023 for food, for the army, for the military, but not the army stationed on the frontline.
But those stations were far away from the active combat zones and some of the positions on this food list were higher in price than market prices in grocery stores, in say, Kyiv.
There was a document that got leaked to Nikolov and he published it with all the numbers that it had in it. The price for one egg in this contract was 17 hryvnia per item. While in a Kyiv grocery shop, that would cost something like seven.
Anastasiia: Okay Jakub, you are our money person. Is this really problematic or is there another explanation for something like this than wilful corruption?
Jakub: I personally don't think this is quite as big of a deal and here's why. So, when you are dealing with large scale procurement and you need to buy a bunch of different items for a bunch of different people, it's very easy to find yourself in this kind of situation.
One, it can be a mistake, maybe you didn't check what is the price and you're buying them in bulk. This is not a supermarket where you necessarily have comparisons next to the specific item.
If it was a tenfold increase, that would be really bad. You need to see how much spend essentially, he had, how big of a purchase he was making. Because if the… let's say the eggs and the procurement that was overpriced was in the 5% of the overall contract value, that's something that you might miss.
You're dealing with hundreds, thousands of different items that you're buying and the smaller purchases, you just kind of want to get them out the way.
There's also a second consideration, which is if you want to buy 12 eggs, you can go to any shop and presumably find them or go to a market, whatever.
If you want to buy, let's say 600,000 of those, the places that you can buy them from are much more limited. There's logistical considerations, there's timing considerations, eggs need to be refrigerated while they're transported.
And so, there's a lot of things that can influence the price and it might have been a case of carelessness or just not going the extra mile to do your due diligence and make sure that every single penny is spent as efficiently as possible.
But look, it is important to raise these questions now, and I was sort of thinking about two potential situations. One where all of the media decide to hold off on any reporting.
And look, the truth is a lot of media are making that decision right now. There's a lot of media that could be reporting on something uncomfortable and they're deciding not to.
And one where we sort of go and — just as before the war, report on any corruption or anything that seems suspicious and the answer is probably in the middle. If you hold off of anything, at some point these stories will break. And if they break like a flood, all of a sudden, the world decides, “Oh, my goodness, this thing was a giant scam.”
If we go and raise flags everywhere in a (I would say), non-judicious manner, there's a big risk that people will say, “Well look, there's corruption everywhere.”
The thing is, if you want to deal effectively with corruption, you do need to raise those examples. You do need to identify those examples, but you want to do this in a way that actually leads to results and sort of cleans the process.
Anastasiia: Another thing is Ukrainian journalists are not the only ones who are investigating these issues. So, if it is the Western journalists that are writing about corruption in Ukraine, it looks a hundred times worse than if our own guys are like, “Hey, we know that this is a problem and we're trying to take responsibility.”
Anna: I completely agree with Nastya and I also would like to add that as a Ukrainian journalist, you also know the context, you also know the background and you can better cover these issues because you have this knowledge of Ukraine and the track record of some corruption schemes and you can better explain why something is taking place.
Jakub: The other thing that I think is worth noting is (just to give our listeners a little bit of context), where is Ukraine coming from?
I first arrived to Ukraine in 2009 and believe me that corruption about egg purchases was the softest thing or the most trivial thing that you can imagine.
One of the first stories that I remember running into is: it's winter in Kyiv, none of the streets are cleaned from snow, none of the buildings have the ice removed. So, there's people dying every other day from icicles falling down and slipping on ice covered sidewalks and things like that.
So, the city is in a pretty bad state and the mayor is nowhere to be found. And then we hear a story about how his daughter is in Paris and her handbag is stolen with jewellery worth, I believe it was around 4 million euros.
Anastasiia: Oh, my God.
Jakub: Then we find out that the mayor is off on safari somewhere and then he's off on a beach in Israel. And the level of corruption and dysfunction that was taking place in Ukraine a decade ago is absolutely out of proportion with anything that you can imagine, was ridiculous.
Every single thing that you would do, you'd go to the office to get registered, passport controls on the border-
Anastasiia: Doctors.
Jakub: Doctors, university, everywhere you would have to pay a bribe, everywhere. What's the worst case of corruption that you remember?
Anastasiia: I don't remember that many cases because of my age, but the one that I think most of the people in my generation remember is obviously Yanukovych, and just everything about him, literally his body was the embodiment of corruption in Ukraine, I think.
Anna: An icon of corruption.
Anastasiia: Yeah. I literally imagine as if like a 15-year-old kid or as a 14-year-old kid, you go to a place where you are told that, “Okay, here's where your president lived.” And you walk around and you see a literal palace with gold everywhere and you read about it.
And you now see it being turned into a park and you have to wrap your head around like, “Wait, but this is not what my friend's houses look like. This is not how anything in my city looks like.” Yet, here is the person who was governing over us, here is how he lived. I think as a young person it really affects you.
Jakub: That's really the Kim Kardashian of corruption globally. I think in the documents that were found, there's so many cases there, but one that I remember is I think the squirrels.
So, he had imported squirrels on the territory of his residence and I think the budget for feeding them was several thousand euros a month.
Anastasiia: What?
Jakub: Some kind of special nuts or whatnot, which of course was several times the average Ukrainian salary back then, so yeah.
Anastasiia: For squirrels.
Jakub: For squirrels.
Anna: Ukraine has changed a lot since 2009, which is something we're discussing at the moment.
However, an important note here, I personally have this fear of Ukraine sliding back to something similar to what we had in 2009.
Anastasiia: Why?
Anna: Because of a lack of transparency, which exists right now. Look, public procurement, ProZorro, an amazing system which was put in place after the Euromaidan Revolution.
When there was huge demand and the society was hungry for reforms, people came up with this ProZorro system, which is public procurement website, where you can see the bidders and its transparent.
And for example, public asset declaration due to the war, right now, lawmakers don't have to file their asset declarations, hence law enforcement have no idea.
Anastasiia: That's really strange.
Anna: Well, it's not strange. Well, there is a reason to it because public declarations have all the information which could be sensitive.
Anastasiia: I see. Okay.
Anna: And amid the war well, lawmakers could be targeted by Russia for some specific laws that they're supporting in the parliament. So, it does make sense.
However, the point I'm trying to make is that the lack of transparency creates huge opportunity for mismanagement and corruption. And having this tradition in our country, I'm a little bit scared that some people can actually use this opportunity to pocket money and to just steal money or do whatever they want. And that is something that concerns me a lot.
I just hope that the majority of the Ukrainian civil society understand that whatever freedoms we have right now, we have thanks to these brave men and women standing on the frontline and defending us every and each day.
We as people who do not participate in the combat, have an obligation to be good because they're defending this democracy and we have to contribute as well.
And if somebody right now sees an opportunity to steal, I think it's worse than ever to steal in the country which is at war, which is being attacked and which has been defended by so many brave people.
And yeah I will say a cliche thing but people are dying for this country every single day and I think out of respect, people who see an opportunity, shouldn’t be doing any bad to this country because every single hryvnia must be paid to contribute to the victory right now.
Jakub: Listeners should realise just to what extent; I think Ukrainians hated the level of corruption that was plaguing the country for the last sort of 30 years.
Euromaidan was… I would say the number one reason that there was a revolution was corruption. But people hated it.
And by the way, when they actually went in and sort of checked the houses of the lawmakers that had fled after the revolution to Russia, there were photos of $200,000 watches, $50,000 watches, bricks of gold, suitcases full of euros.
And this is just the stuff that they didn't manage to make off with. This is the stuff that they had to leave because they didn't fit into their Maybach or their helicopter or whatnot.
And since then, Ukrainians have done so much to actually build a system that tries to bring this under control. You brought up ProZorro. This is actually a really impressive piece of e-procurement. I understand the fear of slipping back, but hopefully diligent and vigilant journalists will keep the public eye tracked on this.
Anna: And I think it's important to highlight here while we are speaking about that, the fact that during the past week there were so many investigative stories — some sort of corruption and mismanagement.
And the important thing which actually opposes my fear is that, well, there were many resignations after these stories. The dream of a journalist, when you do a story and then you see that it brings change or it contributes to change, and now these officials handed it their resignation letters.
So, I hope that it actually proves the point that there is hope for Ukraine and for everybody here, that Ukraine is actually very far away from Russia in terms of values and that corruption isn't being tolerated in our country, and that the officials understand that the war is not an excuse for not talking about these things. And that right now is definitely not the time for corruption or wrongdoings of any sort.
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Anastasiia: Anna, thank you so much for coming in. It was really interesting to listen to you.
Anna: Thank you for having me.
Jakub: Thank you so much for listening to Power Lines. We'll see you next week for our regular episode where we'll be looking at some of the people and organisations who are rebuilding Ukraine's infrastructure, both now and in the future.
Anastasiia: Power Lines is a partnership between the Kyiv Independent and Message Heard. It was produced by Bea Duncan, Harry Stott and Talia Augustidis. The executive producer is Sandra Ferrari. The theme music is by Tom Biddle and Alfie Godfrey.