Despite the relentless Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities since this summer’s start, Kyiv recently chalked up some impressive wins. A week after “pausing” some U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine, President Donald Trump reversed policies again; on Monday, at a White House meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte, Trump announced a new weapons pipeline for Ukraine. And at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome on July 10-11, the Europeans above all reached deep into their coffers to raise about 3.55 billion euros ($4.15 billion) for recovery, municipal infrastructure, energy, heat supply, transport, and business support.
But neither the United States nor the Europeans stepped up to replace funding for the democracy, human rights, and governance programs that the Trump administration slashed earlier this year. This funding, which last year totaled $286 million, was crucial to driving key public sector reforms.
Despite the relentless Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities since this summer’s start, Kyiv recently chalked up some impressive wins. A week after “pausing” some U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine, President Donald Trump reversed policies again; on Monday, at a White House meeting with NATO chief Mark Rutte, Trump announced a new weapons pipeline for Ukraine. And at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome on July 10-11, the Europeans above all reached deep into their coffers to raise about 3.55 billion euros ($4.15 billion) for recovery, municipal infrastructure, energy, heat supply, transport, and business support.
But neither the United States nor the Europeans stepped up to replace funding for the democracy, human rights, and governance programs that the Trump administration slashed earlier this year. This funding, which last year totaled $286 million, was crucial to driving key public sector reforms.
The Ukrainian representatives of civil society, which had spearheaded this reform, went to Rome to rectify this shortcoming—but left empty-handed. “We got zero public results,” said Mykhailo Zhernakov, the executive director of the legal group Dejure Foundation. “Political reform was mentioned only once, very briefly,” he added, referring to a comment by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “It looks like the U.S. may have changed its tune on security issues some but not on pushing forward reforms of our institutions and laws. There was a resonating silence from all of our friends.”
This year, when the United States shifted away from Ukraine, it not only weakened its security prospects on the battlefield but also removed the political clout that had for years pushed forward rule of law and good-governance initiatives. “Just about all of the successful reforms in Ukraine in recent years have come about from a combination of internal pressure applied from [Ukrainian] civil society and an external push from the international community, in particular the U.S.,” Zhernakov said. “The U.S. had a very direct approach and wasn’t afraid of playing the bad cop to press our more reluctant politicians to pass and implement laws that might lessen their own clout.”
Moreover, Ukraine’s hard-nosed civil society itself is now weakened, too, Zhernakov argues, referring to the aid cuts. Ukraine possesses an impressive array of NGOs that in wartime have weighed in meaningfully in areas such as judicial independence, accountability, and anti-corruption, scoring significant improvements.
Until the U.S. withdrawal, Zhernakov said, there were four major players comprising the muscle on the international side—the United States, European Union, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and G-7—which together packed a punch. “Three out of four of those are now sidelined,” he said, citing the United States as well as the IMF and G-7, in which Washington plays a major part. “The EU still has carrots, but it doesn’t use the stick as well as the U.S. did.”
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was responsible for $37.6 billion in aid to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale war, for humanitarian aid, development assistance, and direct budget support. This was money well spent, said Viktoriia Melnyk of the Centre of Policy and Legal Reform (CPLR), a Kyiv-based think tank: “The USAID funding was critical for the implementation of a host of our most important reforms. Driving the implementation process forward was what the U.S. did best.”
Although other donors, such as the EU, contribute to civil society and Ukraine’s reform agenda, the United States was a particularly effective ally for civil society in pushing the toughest-minded reforms, including those to the judiciary and election laws. “The U.S., through its aid and advocacy, ‘owned’ a number of key reforms,” Melnyk said. “We need a lot of time to restore this.”
Ukraine’s lofty ambition is to become a bona fide, Western-style democracy—ultimately one that will join the EU—in the midst of a brutal, multiyear attack on its territory. This objective was no given when the full-scale invasion started in February 2022. It is not the kind of priority that most nations, when mired in an existential war, opt to pursue. But a coalition of Ukrainian civil society, reform-minded politicians, and Ukraine’s international partners insisted on it. Democracy, the Ukrainian reformers say, is after all what this war is about.
Organizations such as Melnyk’s received funding from USAID and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, for example, to lay groundwork for the first postwar elections, for judicial reform, and to promote bertter paraliamenrtaey processes. The think tank also monitored the efficiency of the State Bureau of Investigation, an investigative agency that combats crimes committed by public servants and law enforcement officers. Another project addresses the rights of Ukrainian citizens to make constitutional appeals. These and many other governance projects were left high and dry; CPLR lost funding for three-quarters of its staff positions.
A large part of CPLR’s remit is judicial reform: modernizing and strengthening the Ukrainian judiciary by making it more efficient, transparent, and accountable. Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the judiciary has been plagued by corruption and political interference, among other rule of law issues. But in the aftermath of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, democratization processes were sped up, setting in motion procedures to depoliticize judicial careers; redevelop the Supreme Court through competitive procedures; launch qualification assessments of all judges; and create specialized courts, including for anti-corruption and intellectual property rights.
“Of course, the EU and the European states play a large role too, but they work differently,” Melnyk said. “The U.S. does it less bureaucratically and faster. The EU can’t easily replace U.S. support because it has a different way of funding.”
Tetiana Shevchuk of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC), a Kyiv-based NGO, is equally disgusted at the stalled progress. “With Hungary blocking things on the EU level, the U.S. support was all the more imperative. Now, for example, there’s a hole in our state budget that had been for our new customs regime,” she said, referring to the reform of the State Customs Service (SCS) that aligned with EU standards and enhanced efficiency, transparency, and revenue generation.
Last year, Ukrainian lawmakers passed historic legislation that was to dry up the corruption inherent in its long-problematic customs regime. But Ukrainian groups such as AntAC say its implementation, which should have begun in January, is not happening. “Our state is losing money that should be going toward Ukraine’s defense. There are vested interests ensuring that nothing overturns the status quo,” Shevchuk said.
Implementation of the customs reform could eliminate a shadow economy worth between $2 billion and $4 billion a year in lost tax payments. Last year, a diverse coalition of forces scored a major win for Ukraine—over the head of the finance minister. Namely, the SCS would designate selected international partners to evaluate top personnel decisions, long a bone of contention.
And, for the first time, the SCS itself would be composed through a competitive process, monitored by internationals. Josh Rudolph of the German Marshall Fund of the United States recognized that the law’s passage was “only the beginning of a long and difficult reform process. Without sustained international political attention, Kyiv will probably not dedicate enough wartime political capital to see through such a protracted and painful reform process.”
This is where we are now. The Ukrainian government, which has persistently delayed this reform, has postponed the appointment of a new head of the agency to December.
In much the same vein, an overhaul of the Economic Security Bureau (ESB), an anti-corruption watchdog body, has floundered. The office had come under heavy fire for misusing its authority to extort businesses. This month, the Ukrainian government refused to accept the nominee to lead the ESB, Oleksandr Tsyvinsky, who was chosen by a selection commission consisting of three government and three international experts. The government cited grounds “related to national security.”
Observers surmise that Tsyvinsky was not chosen because of his role as a law enforcement officer who helped expose a large-scale land corruption scheme run by members of the Kyiv city administration; he is currently a senior detective with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, an independent agency. The IMF had set July 31 as a deadline for Ukraine to appoint a new director.
Ukraine’s civic activists faced even worse when they returned from the Rome conference. On July 11, the State Bureau of Investigation charged one of Ukraine’s most prominent anti-corruption activists, Vitaliy Shabunin, chair of AntAC’s executive board and current member of the Armed Forces, with evading military service and fraud. Law enforcement agents raided his military post near Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine and his family home in Kyiv, which elicited sharp protests from civil society.
“Certain people in the government have the feeling that they can now do whatever they want,” Zhernakov said about the case, “because nobody is there to stop them.”
