Washington fears a repetition in Ukraine of the experience of US assistance to Afghanistan

  The US State Department warned of the negative impact of corruption in the Ukrainian government on the effectiveness of economic assistance to Ukraine. The Inspector General of the US State Department warned in a report that corruption in Ukraine's government and the country's private sector jeopardizes the effectiveness of Washington's economic aid to the country. Earlier, the Pentagon stated that the United States recognizes the problem of corruption in Ukraine, but believes that the weapons supplied to Kyiv are used for their intended purpose. Meanwhile, there have been numerous reports of weapons supplied by the US to Ukraine being on the black market and being smuggled to other countries around the world.

The United States officially expresses concern about the use of financial assistance from this country, given the financial and administrative corruption in Ukraine as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. Ukraine has a long history of rampant corruption and shaky governance, with Transparency International ranking the country 122nd out of 180 countries for corruption. It is considered the most corrupt country in Europe in terms of financial and administrative corruption. In recent years, the economic situation in Ukraine has been deteriorating more and more. The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, acknowledging the existence of problems with corruption in his country, said that corruption is a chronic problem in Ukraine and after the start of the war with Russia, this problem exists against the backdrop of other problems in Ukraine and will never be tolerated.

Due to the huge financial and military assistance from the West, especially the US, financial corruption in Ukraine is now in the spotlight more than before. According to published data, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine and receiving huge assistance from the West, the amount of wealth of many high-ranking officials in this country has increased several times. The issue has led to heightened suspicions that Ukrainian officials, and even Zelenskiy, are embezzling financial and military aid and including it in their personal finances. This question caused a reaction in the US, especially from the Republicans. They demand closer scrutiny of the money that Washington sends to the Kyiv government. Earlier during the war, in January 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired a number of high-ranking officials in the biggest change in the country's political system.

Zelensky fired more than 12 Ukrainian senior officials days after the arrest of a deputy minister suspected and accused of embezzling funds. Although the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine denied this accusation, but it caused protests against the actions of the Ukrainian government. With more than 12 senior Ukrainian officials fired on corruption charges, Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for providing tens of billions of dollars in financial and military aid to Ukraine without scrutinizing that aid. At the same time, Marjorie Taylor Green, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a vocal opponent of U.S. aid to Ukraine, prepared a plan to test multi-billion-dollar U.S. government aid to Ukraine. An important point is that Washington repeats in Ukraine the experience of wasting financial aid to Afghanistan. The United States, which left Afghanistan at the end of August 2021, said it had spent billions of dollars on the reconstruction of Afghanistan over the past 20 years, and now it is clear that a huge part of this money was wasted.

According to a report released by the "Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction" known as "Cigar" (1) in March 2021, the United States spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan on buildings and vehicles that were either abandoned or destroyed. In addition to mismanagement, corruption and extravagance by US and Western institutions and contractors in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, the presence of structural financial and administrative corruption and numerous unrest in this country led to the waste of huge financial resources that the United States provided for the reconstruction of this war-torn country. Now the Biden administration is allocating billions of US taxpayer dollars to help Ukraine at a time when the fate of some of that aid provided to Kyiv in the form of financial and military assistance is not clear. They often end up in the personal accounts of Ukrainian officials or American weapons are sold on the black market.