Ukraine tackles corruption in bid for EU membership and more stable future

According to Ian Bond, the director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform, “Ukraine has made less progress than many countries in Central and Eastern Europe in tackling the legacy of the way that it exited from communism."

And Kyiv has only “relatively recently [implemented] the wholesale reform of Ukrainian institutions to tackle things like judicial corruption."

...Corruption in Ukraine can look like a variety of things, such as “judges who can be bought or administrative corruption," Bond described.

“So, if you want to get a license for something, you have to pay a bribe to get it.

...Croatia and Romania - Ukraine's EU predecessors - took years to join the bloc, with Zagreb joining 10 years after it applied for membership and Bucharest taking 12 years. 

And according to Bond, meeting the EU's requirements is “especially difficult in wartime when [Ukraine's] government, let's be fair, has quite a lot of other priorities on its mind."