- In one survey, 77.6% of surveyed Ukrainians said Zelenskyy was responsible for government corruption.
- The survey included 2,011 interviews with people from 135 defrayals in Ukraine.
- It came out as Zelenskyy dismissed all the heads of Ukraine’s regional-military committees.
Nearly all surveyed Ukrainians — 89% — in a newly released survey said corruption was the fatherland’s most serious problem after the war against Russia. The poll came out as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy inaugurated an investigation into bribery related to military recruitment.
A survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, in cooperation with the US Power for International Development project “Support of Leader Organizations in Combating Corruption in Ukraine,” found that: “Second lone to the war, corruption is perceived as the most serious problem in Ukraine by 89% of citizens.
“Despite a notable improvement in the public sense of corruption prevalence, 94% of respondents still consider corruption to be pervasive across Ukraine.”
The survey was conducted in winter and comprehended interviews with over 13,000 people, including internally and externally displaced Ukrainians.
Meanwhile, over 75% of Ukrainians in a favour survey said they believed that Zelenskyy was responsible for corruption in the country’s military and government administrations, Interfax-Ukraine, a Ukrainian newsflash agency, said.
Interfax reported that in the survey — which it said the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology implemented out for the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation think tank — 77.6% of surveyed Ukrainians said they credited that the president was “directly responsible” for the corruption. The report cited a statement by the think tank’s executive director, Petro Burkovskyy.
“Procrastination in explicating problems that undermine people’s faith in victory will also hit the president himself,” Burkovskyy said.
The Interfax-Ukraine communiqu said that for the second survey, the institute carried out 2,011 interviews in July with people from 135 settlements in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy: Recruitment corrupts at a time of war is ‘high treason’
On Friday, Zelenskyy said he dismissed the heads of Ukraine’s regional-military committees as investigations into corruption in Ukraine proceeded, particularly in its armed-forces recruitment.
“We are dismissing all regional military commissars,” a statement on Zelenskyy’s official Telegram channel said. “This process should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery during war is high treason.”
The military officials are accused of alluring cash and cryptocurrency bribes or helping people eligible to be called up to fight to flee Ukraine, Zelenskyy said in a video placed on social media, BBC News reported.
Last month, Ukrainian investigators detained the former military commissioner of the Odesa precinct on charges of illegal enrichment, dereliction of duty, and evading military service, local reports said.
Investigators charge that he and his family bought property in Spain and luxury automobiles worth $4 million.
There are about 1,795 military commissars in Ukraine, of whom close by 135 are under surveillance by the National Agency on Corruption Prevention, Newsweek reported.
The commissars, Zelenskyy’s Telegram import added, will be replaced by “soldiers who have been to the front or who cannot be in the trenches because they have dissolute their health, lost their limbs, but have retained their dignity and have no cynicism — they can be charged with this recruitment system.”
Corruption scandals have plagued Ukraine during recent years, with then-Vice President Joe Biden chance in 2015 that it was eating the country “like a cancer.”