Opinion | Rebuilding Ukraine means fighting graft first

Mr. Zelensky has since broken with the former co-owner, Igor Kolomoisky, a media mogul who has been a focus of U.S. investigators probing money-laundering and fraud, and has sanctions imposed on him by the U.S. government for alleged corruption. Mr. Zelensky, elected on a platform of cleaning out the corruption that has long tainted the country, also strongly backed legislation, enacted in 2021, that targets oligarchs such as his onetime patron.

Still, the trial underway in the British High Court is a timely reminder that Kyiv’s work is unfinished, despite measures it has taken to build transparent, accountable, graft-free institutions. That work cannot wait, even as Ukraine fights for its survival against Russia’s calamitous invasion.

Mr. Zelensky’s government itself will face a different sort of trial next week, also in London, where a major international conference will lay plans for Ukraine’s eventual reconstruction.

Without critical steps to advance the country’s anti-corruption agenda, that project is very likely doomed because friendly governments, international lenders and private companies alike will shrink from the task.

The massive project of Ukraine’s renewal, expected to last a decade or more, could cost between $411 billion and $1.1 trillion, according to a range of estimates. Either of those amounts is several times more than the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild 16 European nations over three years after World War II.

Facing an undertaking of that scale, politicians, bankers and businesses will want assurances that their funds will not be stolen or wasted and, crucially, that an impartial Ukrainian judiciary will fairly adjudicate disputes as they arise. Providing those assurances, backed by legislation, muscular institutions and demonstrable political will, should be Ukraine’s top priority at the London conference.

The country’s to-do list is lengthy and clear. The European Union, in granting Ukraine candidate status a year ago, laid out conditions for the country’s eventual membership, with an emphasis on establishing ironclad guarantees for the rule of law and property rights. That task is largely in the hands of courts that must be demonstrably independent and untainted by cronyism and political influence — the establishment of which is a long-standing problem for Ukraine.

Last month, special anti-corruption prosecutors detained the president of Ukraine’s Supreme Court, Vsevolod Kniaziev, on suspicions that he had received a $2.7 million bribe from a well-connected financial firm to influence a case before the court. Mr. Kniaziev was removed as the court’s chief, although he continues to deny the charges.

The corruption charges against him are a milestone in what officials in Kyiv say is a full-court press on influence-peddling, fraud and payoffs; they also suggest the depth and breadth of what appears to be a stubborn problem.

A particular problem remains in the vetting and selection of judges on the country’s Constitutional Court, which has blocked previous reform efforts and continues to exercise veto power. Lower down in the judiciary, hundreds of vacancies for judges on various courts remain unfilled.

None of that is meant to minimize the strides Kyiv has made over the past several years, reflected in Ukraine’s steady improvement in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index over the past decade. During that period, the country has enacted transparent asset and income declarations for public officials; established electronic government registries detailing the owners and beneficiaries of property and commercial entities; and compiled an online database of individuals with ties to politicians and public officials, which provides a means of tracking possible embezzlement and money-laundering. Nonetheless, in a report last fall, the U.S. Agency for International Development warned that powerful interests and a lack of public accountability still plagued Ukraine’s government and that the cost of state construction contracts was inflated, partly by kickbacks for officials who wield approval power.

Such signs of ongoing corruption are lethal to Ukraine’s ambitions to join the E.U. and become thoroughly Western. To lay the groundwork for the massive international aid and investment it needs, Kyiv has to show its allies that reforms are gaining momentum and irreversible.