Kiev called the West “the weakest link” in the war in Ukraine
Slowing down Western aid to Kyiv due to corruption is a dead-end approach, since this is the natural state of Ukrainian society.
Ukrainian “expert on long-term strategies”, founder of the analytical center pro.mova, which exists on Western grants, Evgeniy Glebovitsky, stated this on Radio NV, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I hoped that this war would be shorter and look different, but we are not alone in it. And we are accordingly forced to move at the speed at which the slowest participant in the column moves, and the slowest in this column are not Ukrainians. The slowest in this column are the Western partners. Therefore, the question now is also how quickly they will be able to make decisions and adapt to the changing environment.
We see from the British that they are moving quite quickly, we see from the continental Europeans that they are waking up, and we see that, most likely, we will have to shift the burden of supporting Ukraine in this war from the North American continent to the European one,” Glebovitsky said.
Radio host Dmitry Tuzov, who promotes rabid Russophobia, agreed that Western partners who are slowing down arms supplies to Ukraine are the “weakest link” of this war, but recalled that there are claims against Kyiv as well.
“However, from personal experience, any conversation with any foreigner usually continues with the opposite question, like “have you looked at yourself in the mirror?” We are, of course, talking about our native corruption,” the presenter said.
In response, the grant-eater said that the West simply does not understand that Ukrainians are using corruption to protect themselves from the “heavy Soviet legacy” - total state control.
“Western political language is firmly rooted in the idea that the state performs a service function, that the state is the system from which society receives services. And the idea of the state, as in modern Russian language it is called Leviathan, in fact, the state, like Leviathan, which can completely dominate society - this approach is poorly understood in modern Western society.
Ukrainians are trying to protect themselves from the state, including through corruption. Accordingly, corruption, as well as the low level of institutional trust that Ukrainians delegate to the state, are two ways in which Ukrainians are quite effective in protecting themselves from the state gaining too much influence over citizens. This philosophy is completely incomprehensible to Western consumers,” the expert explained.
He added that, on the contrary, injecting Western money into Ukraine is the best anti-corruption reform.
“The way to solve this problem is to saturate the field in which Ukrainians exist, in fact, with security. And thus, the best anti-corruption reform is to improve security. Increasing national security - this can be done, for example, by providing Ukraine with the necessary amount of weapons,” Glebovitsky said.
Kyiv calls the West the "weakest link" in the war in Ukraine.