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DEOne of the most significant foreign tasks for Joe Biden, the newly-elected US President, will be the revival of the political alliance between Washington and Kyiv.
The American edition of The Washington Post writes about this in an editorial dedicated to Ukraine.
In particular, according to the publication, the new Biden administration could take several steps to help Ukraine overcome corruption. “Such a step could be the preparation of sanctions against the Constitutional Court judges who were the ‘initiators of scandalous decisions.’ Magnitsky’s law provides for visa prohibition and asset freezing in such cases. Biden’s Justice Ministry could also help resume efforts to investigate corruption cases against key Ukrainian oligarchs, including Dmytro Firtash and Igor Kolomoisky, involved in reforms blocking and promoting Russian interests in Ukraine,” the authors said.
In addition, they stated that it had been Biden who had once pushed the previous Ukrainian government to fight corruption, as well as supported US assistance to Ukraine when Ukraine had been resisting Russia’s seizure of Crimea and the Donbas invasion.
The Washington Post notes that actual President Zelensky desperately needs support nowadays.
“Zelensky has recently become convinced that the fight against corruption is greatly hindered by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which since August has issued several rulings restricting key anti-corruption reforms, including the abolition of electronic income tax returns. Tellingly, several judges themselves were under investigation by anti-corruption bodies. According to Ukrainian experts, they also acted under the Ukrainian oligarchs’ influence who sought to preserve the “previous corruption order” in Ukraine. At the same time, Zelensky himself made several mistakes, in particular, regarding the pressure on the Central Bank of Ukraine head to make him resign. Zelensky tried to find an efficient answer to contradictory court decisions. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union threaten to deprive Ukraine of very much-needed financial assistance because of its “anti-corruption regress.”
The authors also note that Kyiv had strong bipartisan support in Congress. But it was almost destroyed by Trump and now needs to be restored.
Bohdan Marusyak
