Seriously, Folks— Ukraine Is Corrupt

Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy leads in polls as Ukrainians prepare to pick their next president.

- Jillian Goodman

There’s nothing funny about why a comedian is getting a shot at becoming president of Ukraine, a country at war.

In the dramatic revolutions of 2004 and 2014, Ukrainians twice sought to buck a political system in which wealthy oligarchs appeared to take turns milking the state. Both attempts to root out systemic corruption are widely seen as failures, despite a new antigraft agency and a sweeping bank cleanup.

Faced with candidates who seem to offer the status quo—the near-billionaire incumbent, Petro Poroshenko, and the onetime natural gas mogul and prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko—voters appear to be turning to the absurd. Television comic Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose show Servant of the People takes aim at the nation’s hated elite, is leading in opinion polls ahead of the March 31 election.

From allegations of politicians being bought to violent attacks on activists and suspect trials, the impact of kleptocracy on Ukraine is hard to overstate. A well-educated nation of 42 million with a fertile landmass the size of France now threatens to displace Moldova as Europe’s poorest. Rampant graft has left Ukraine unattractive to investors and vulnerable to Russian manipulation at a time of rising tension between Russia and the West. Money from the former Soviet Union allegedly being laundered in European and U.S banks has attracted international scrutiny.