Anastasiia Kudlenko is a GI ACE Researcher who works on the Building resilience to state capture project. Her research focuses on state capture and state capture recovery, community and societal resilience, as well as security governance, with a geographical focus on Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans.
Whether in academic journals or the speeches of policymakers, resilience is presented in a predominantly positive light. It is needed to raise children, cope with natural disasters and survive invasions.
However, at its core, resilience is a neutral concept that can be applied to any type of actor, including clandestine ones. If defined as a process of patterned adjustments adopted by a (social) system in the face of internal or external shocks (Bourbeau 2018), resilience can be equally discerned in the actions of, for example, a community dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist attack, as in a group of state captors resisting anti-corruption reforms.
Few contexts better illustrate the duality of resilience than Ukraine.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the Ukrainian people and Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) have constantly adapted and innovated in the face of Russian atrocities. Ukraine has been labelled a laboratory of resilience (Kutsenko 2025), with experts exploring the dynamic and complex nature of the concept from a multi-level perspective (Rabinovych et al 2023). Yet Ukraine has been trying to defeat the internal enemy of corruption at the same time as fighting an external aggressor. And this enemy has demonstrated a great amount of resilience, too. Despite the country embarking on an ambitious anti-corruption reform agenda in 2014 after the Revolution of Dignity and achieving remarkable results (Karatnytsky and Motyl 2018; Huss and Musiiaka 2022), a growing number of corruption scandals shows not only that the country’s anti-corruption agencies work effectively, but also that the existing system of state capture is difficult to dismantle (Politico 2026).
One area where the resilience of corrupt networks is painfully obvious is Ukraine’s defence sector. This blog will look at why corruption persists in this area and what can be done to dislodge it.
The Soviet legacy
Ukraine inherited Europe’s second largest military force and the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal from the Soviet Union upon gaining independence in 1991 (Polyakov 2018). It also took ownership of huge volumes of military hardware and stockpiles, including 6,500 tanks, 7,000 armoured combat vehicles, 1,500 combat aircraft, and 350 ships alongside huge stocks of small arms, light weapons, and ammunition (Melnyk 2003, 37). Furthermore, Ukraine’s military-industrial complex (MIC) included 3,594 enterprises and research centres employing nearly three million people (Dzerkalo Tyzhnia 2020).
On paper, therefore, Ukraine’s defence credentials were impressive, yet these numbers masked a different reality.
Ukraine’s actual defence credentials
1. Army fragmentation and Russian control
First, the army and the MIC were highly fragmented and designed to be controlled by the central government in Moscow. Soviet Ukraine did not have its own Ministry of Defence or General Staff, so these had to be created from scratch after independence, drawing on lower-level executive structures (Melnyk 2003, 41). These new institutions had to adapt fast to manage the cumbersome force, divided between more than ten armies, in circumstances of high economic and political volatility.
The MIC was also disjointed and unprepared to work independently, due to the design of the Soviet research, production, and distribution system – which discouraged self-sufficiency and promoted dependence on enterprises based in Russia. Moscow was keen to prolong this dependence after the collapse of the Soviet Union by continuing to place orders for outdated spare parts, produced in Ukraine, while simultaneously investing in its own independent capabilities (Beliakova and Detzner 2023, 14). This was not enough, however, to sustain the original size of the complex, which by 1997 shrunk to 250 enterprises (Dzerkalo Tyzhnia 2020).
2. Weapon and military equipment issues
Second, Ukraine’s arsenal of weapons and military equipment proved to be more modest than anticipated due to at least three reasons:
- Soviet records on the availability of resources and their usability were unreliable
- Assets had been lost to other post-Soviet republics, especially Russia (this included the transfer of the nuclear arsenal to Moscow under the Budapest Agreement (Pifer 2011)
- There was entrenched corruption in the defence system
In Soviet times, the military leadership was used to working under conditions of secrecy, without even a modicum of democratic oversight, and having responsibility over the distribution of large budgets. After independence, having lost priority in accessing state resources, the top brass resented any reform that could undermine their opportunities for patronage and rent-seeking (Polyakov 2018, 95). Further still, all levels of the military routinely engaged in corrupt activities, from misuse of infrastructure to bribes for career advancement and selling material defence resources.
3. Limited reforms until 2014
Third, in the context of a highly destabilised economy – with the inflation rate reaching over 10,000% by 1993 (Statbureau 1993) – and the country’s leadership seesawing between Russia and the West, the UAF did not undergo comprehensive reform until 2014.
As Ukraine could not afford to sustain the army of nearly 800,000 (nor was it immediately obvious that it was needed) some minor reforms were implemented, yet the key principle guiding them was that of reduction: to cut the number of troops, their tasks, the structures of the armed forces and the MoD, as well as the equipment, weapons, and even land at their disposal (Melnyk and Sungurovskyi 2013, 23).
This approach remained prevalent until Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and instigated conflict in Donbas. As a result, the UAF retained the essence of the Soviet army, although on a smaller scale (Melnyk 2003, Polyakov 2018).
From state capture to the test of war
The army was not the only institution that remained largely unreformed. The whole state apparatus retained many Soviet features, from structural excessiveness to lack of transparency, that in times of transition created a perfect background for corruption.
The first oligarchs emerged in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet collapse from the nomenklatura and apparatchiks as well as industrial and administrative elites, often referred to as ‘Red Directors’ (Barboutev 2017, 25-27). By the late 1990s, the oligarchs took a firm grip of the state, moving from simply exploiting its weaknesses to setting the rules of the game by changing laws and institutions to serve their personal interests, i.e. to state capture (David-Barrett 2023: 225).
Until 2010, the oligarchic state capture remained decentralised, while powerful groups with links to various regions of Ukraine (such as Dnipro, Donetsk and Kyiv) took control over large industrial, telecommunications, and energy infrastructures (Baillie et al 2024: 24). The defence sector remained underfunded and exploited for personal gain by the military and oligarchic elites. After a brief period of reform to bring Ukraine’s command and control system to NATO standards under President Viktor Yushchenko in 2005-2010, it entered a new phase in 2010 under Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency, defined by pyramidal state capture and Russia-sponsored strategic corruption.
Yanukovych established a pyramid-shaped system of control of the public institutions and the economy with his inner circle, known as ‘the Family’, at the top, oligarch-controlled ‘observers’ in the middle, and regional and local administrations at the bottom (IMF 2014; Zelenko and Kovalevsky 2023: 324). He primarily used law enforcement structures to prop up his regime, while the defence sector was deliberately weakened and, just like the security sector overall, put under control of pro-Russian figures, who worked to further Moscow’s foreign policy objectives rather than to protect Ukraine’s national interests. Strategic corruption – which can be defined as the use of corruption in pursuit of geopolitical goals – added another dimension to state capture under Yanukovych, undermining Ukraine’s democracy and sovereignty (Baillie et al 2024).
It is no surprise therefore that when Russia launched its hybrid attacks on Ukraine in 2014, the UAF was woefully unprepared to repel them. Following Yanukovych’s flight to Russia, many of the security elites followed suit, while nearly 3,000 military personnel in Crimea and Donbas switched to the enemy’s side (Kyiv Post 2015). Nonetheless, Russia failed to spread unrest beyond Donbas and occupied only a fraction of the region. This was mainly due to the resilience of civil society, which self-organised to fill the gaps left by the state: from fundraising for military equipment to setting up volunteer battalions.
As the conflict in Donbas raged, Ukraine embarked on ambitious reforms, including in the defence sector, which transformed the UAF from a dysfunctional post-Soviet army into a powerful and flexible force that withstood Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 and continues defending Ukraine’s independence today. Some of the defence reform’s achievements included training under irregular conditions, improved combat readiness, bringing volunteer and irregular forces under official control, and the transformation of the largest state-owned military equipment and weapons manufacturer Ukroboronprom into a joint stock company Ukrainska Oboronna Promyslovist (Ukrainian Defence Industry) (Beliakova and Detzner 2023).
Although the focus has been on immediate combat needs, some reform efforts have also been directed at eradicating corruption: for example, the MoD was the first institution to trial public procurement system Prozorro before its official launch, and the first ministry to fully adopt it (Bugriy 2018, 21).
Systemic corruption requires a systematic response
All this success notwithstanding, corruption remains a distinct feature of the defence sector.
Oligarchs and military elites continue to seek opportunities to extract personal gain from the sector even during war, as demonstrated by proliferation of private weapons manufacturers, linked to influential political figures (Beliakova and Detzner 2023, 25), or the more recent army food procurement scandal (Mukhina 2026) and a large-scale bribery scheme in the purchase of drones and electronic warfare systems (Wilson 2025). Russian influence has not been fully eradicated either: in 2022, the Ukrainian private company Motor Sich was found to be supplying engines for attack helicopters to Russia thanks to the survival of the Soviet MIC elements described above (Beliakova and Detzner 2023, 35).
These and other scandals are still possible because corruption in the sector has not been tackled systematically. To overcome the resilience of this system, anti-corruption action can no longer be treated as an afterthought but needs to be approached as a key priority in the defence sector.
What can be done?
A comprehensive anti-corruption reform in defence needs to be designed and implemented by the state in partnership with civil society and international actors.
Currently, there is a greater need for international support for local actors, such as the Independent Anti-Corruption Commission (NAKO), pursuing anti-corruption efforts in defence. Yet international partners should refrain from pushing for short-term, project-based interventions and allow Ukrainian society to take the lead, while simultaneously offering all necessary assistance. This is not only because previous reforms, led by international actors, stalled after their withdrawal, as demonstrated by partial changes in the law enforcement (IISS 2025:13), but also due to the popular understanding among Ukrainians of corruption as a threat, comparable, if not greater, in its severity to the Russian aggression (KIIS 2026).
Ukraine saw its first large-scale protests since the start of the full-scale war in July 2025, when President Zelensky attempted to strip the country’s anti-corruption agencies of their independence. These protests “reaffirmed a commitment to grassroots democracy that has defined the country’s post-Soviet experience” (Hurray 2025). Similarly, the protests that erupted on 16 July 2026 against the dismissal of the pro-reform Minister of Defence, Mykhailo Fedorov, was another expression of Ukrainian democratic action in the midst of war (Kyiv Independent 2026). Democracy alongside Ukraine’s foundational value of freedom have been shown to be at the root of Ukrainian resilience (Kudlenko 2023).
Any meaningful anti-corruption reform in defence therefore needs to be linked to a broader democratisation agenda. Corruption remains a problem in Ukraine’s defence system, but its resilience is mainly linked to the past. It can be overcome through comprehensive reform, backed by Ukrainian society, whose resilience, while rooted in the nation’s history, is also driven by a vision of a just and democratic future. For this vision to become a reality, corruption needs to be tackled alongside the Russian threat, as both are existential for Ukraine.
This blog draws on the GI ACE project Building resilience to state capture