Ukraine earned 33 points out of 100 in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2022, one point higher than the year before.
"Although it still scores low, war-torn Ukraine is one of few significant improvers on the CPI, having gained eight points since 2013," Transparency International wrote in an article.
A country’s score is the perceived level of public sector corruption among experts and business people on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means highly corrupt, and 100 means very clean, according to Transparency International's website.
A score of 33 means that Ukraine ranks 116 out of 180 countries monitored by Transparency International. The other countries with the same score are Algeria, Angola, El Salvador, the Philippines, and Zambia.
The organization also noted that despite Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has managed to take real steps toward combatting corruption in the country, including a National Anti-Corruption Strategy adopted by Ukraine's parliament and the appointment of a new head of the office that brings corruption cases before the courts.
It also noted, however, that Russia’s all-out war has "disrupted some of the reform processes and exacerbated corruption risks," citing the recent scandal following a report by Ukrainian newspaper Zn.Ua on Jan. 21 that Ukraine's Defense Ministry had purchased food for the military at prices that are between two and three times higher than those at Kyiv grocery stores.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) stated on Jan. 23 that it had begun investigating possible corruption in the Defense Ministry's food procurement before ZN.ua published that investigation on the issue on Jan. 21.
Then on Jan. 24, Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers officially dismissed six government officials and greenlighted the firing of five governors in the most significant reshuffle since the start of the full-scale war after a series of journalist investigations alleged misappropriation of funds among several top officials.
Some saw the reshuffle as an effort by Zelensky to clean house and show that state officials' corrupt and ostentatious lifestyle is unacceptable in a country at war. The EU said it welcomed the Ukrainian government's decision to take corruption allegations seriously.
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