Anyone who lives simultaneously in two information spaces — the American and the Ukrainian — found this past week truly jarring. In a matter of minutes, without any real discussion, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on 17 July appointed 39 year old Yuliia Svyrydenko as the country’s new head of government. She is only the second woman ever to become prime minister. On paper the move was meant to signal renewal and an economic breakthrough, since her portfolio has always been the economic bloc. In practice, Ukrainians received confirmation of an old axiom: on Bankova Street, loyalty and controllability have long outweighed competence, and yet another “rearrangement of deck chairs” is being sold as a momentous reform.
In the United States, similar appointments involve committee hearings, tough public questioning, and ultimately a media scanner that exposes every shadow of doubt. In Kyiv, not even a token debate took place. The opposition muttered something vague about “the dullest premiership contest,” the authorities remained officially silent, and an entire pool of “experts” nurtured by the government burst into coordinated approval — or rather into obsequious flattery, as one Kyiv colleague aptly put it. A few sentences, and the issue was closed. Discussion, unlike a black and white showdown, always generates nuance, and nuance in a wartime democracy can be dangerous because of the unexpected turns it may bring.
Who is Yuliia Svyrydenko? Since 2019 she has overseen the economic bloc as first deputy prime minister, yet she has neither relaunched deregulation, nor eased the tax burden, nor tamed the arbitrariness of fiscal authorities. Business associations have already dubbed 2024 “the year of tax strangulation”: entrepreneurs closed their sole proprietor licenses, micro businesses slipped into the shadows, and heavy industry fled to safer jurisdictions. The problems are supposed to be offset by a “new” mega ministry that lumps together the economy, agriculture, and ecology — a merger criticized by more than a hundred sectoral NGOs. In truth, it is, without exaggeration, a handy mechanism for manual control of cash flows and, sadly, yet another argument for skeptics in the West who claim Ukrainians cannot operate without cabals and schemes.
And then it gets even more interesting. The second mutation involves the defense industrial complex. The Ministry of Defense, together with the Ministry of Strategic Industries — which together command more than 60 percent of the state budget — has been placed under the supervision of Denys Shmyhal, with technical “tuning” by Mykhailo Fedorov. Publicly this is billed as “effective weapons management,” but in reality it creates a state within a state: a structure that will handle billions without transparent accountability. And here again there was no institutional discussion, only political expediency.
We should also remember that every ministry remains under the direct coordination of Bankova Street. The staffing shortage had already become a systemic problem before the full scale invasion and has only intensified: capable specialists are either at the front, in the private sector, or in emigration. The logic is therefore simple: they recruit those who are loyal, and if there is no “their own” professional available, they rotate top officials or consolidate everything under someone who has already proved their devotion.
When a true professional does make it into the Cabinet, he or she quickly runs into two blank walls. The first is the absence of a personal team: any attempt to assemble one is blocked with the formula “there are no resources—work with what’s on hand.” The second is the demand for quick victories. A minister must constantly generate newsworthy storylines—“we signed a memorandum,” “we held a meeting,” “we’re working on…”—anything that even resembles activity is used to drown out alarming reports from the front or yet another scandal at the Territorial Recruitment Centers (none of that has gone away: in just the past two months journalists have documented plenty of schemes, where merely being “removed from the wanted list” costs $1,300). Yet talking openly about these problems is forbidden, because that would be “fanning Russian narratives and undermining the state’s resilience.” So let us unpack this.
Kremlin propaganda, contrary to our stereotypes, hardly invents fake news; it exploits our real pain—corruption, economic collapse, ministerial incompetence, the ineffectiveness of the courts—and inflates it until even the West’s staunchest friends begin to doubt. The FSB and its communications branches, deeply infiltrated into Ukraine’s media space, portray the country as “just as bad, or even worse” in moral terms. This is far more effective than straight up demonization. When an American reads about yet another scandal involving stolen aid, he quite logically asks, “Why should we give them another $60 billion?” And while we scramble for counter arguments, the Russian propaganda machine amplifies the resonance, multiplies the quotes, and jerks contexts out of shape. A nation at war is an easy target for information psychological exhaustion.
Donald Trump’s sometimes sharp reaction to Ukrainian troubles is therefore not surprising. The U.S. president has given Putin a 50 day deadline: either the Kremlin cuts a deal, or Washington will impose killer tariff sanctions on anyone who buys Russian oil. It sounds loud as a declaration, but its effectiveness is uncertain: first, Senator Graham’s oil price cap bill is stalled; second, China and India are in no hurry to quarrel with Washington for the Kremlin’s sake; and the Gulf states are already boosting output, trimming Russia’s share without any extra decrees.
Inside Moscow itself, behind the outward bravado, genuinely interesting processes have begun. The budget pie is shrinking, a new wave of re privatization is under way, the siloviki are jailing “their own,” and within the FSB a Korolyov Bortnikov duumvirate has taken shape. Political agency is retained by only a few clans—Patrushev Chemezov, the Kovalchuk Kiriyenko tandem, and Igor Sechin. Public discussion of power transfer is taboo, yet the elites are already modeling “post Putin” scenarios. Outwardly that changes little, but it matters for us to grasp that Russia is not omnipotent; it, too, is riddled with cracks under the weight of the war, and a drawn out conflict exhausts it no less than it does Ukraine.
The West is not abandoning Kyiv, yet it is also not laying down harsh conditions, aware that surgical intervention in Ukraine’s internal “cancers” could kill the patient. Donor countries operate on the principle of “treat and help fight at the same time.” It is difficult and expensive, but better than losing another democracy in Europe—better than letting the war reach their own soil.
Responsibility therefore remains the main burden on Ukrainians. Citizens cannot go to the polls for entirely obvious, objective reasons. But they can tighten their control over public officials, demand accountability, and make every outrageous story even louder, because each of our missteps increases the price our allies must pay in explanatory briefings to their own taxpayers.
The diaspora in the United States plays a unique role. We live alongside the very same taxpayers, watch the same TV channels, and can correct the “Ukrainians = corruption” narrative without the filters of Russian propaganda. Fact-checks, a comment under an article, your own op-eds, calls to organizations and elected officials—none of these are trivial. This is precisely how public opinion is shaped, and public opinion influences voting in Congress. By the way, Vilni Media was created exactly as a platform for this work: to translate Ukraine’s complex realities into language an American in Ohio or California can understand—without sanding down the sharp edges, but also without dumping ashes on our heads.
A sober view grounded in knowledge, not guesswork, is not scorched-earth criticism for its own sake. It is love and respect that refuse to deceive ourselves or others. We have matured to the realization that after victory (yes, victory!) we will not be rebuilding the country from a blank sheet, but from what we will actually have: demoralized, exhausted—but carrying a unique experience of self-organization and mutual aid. And right now the backbone is forming of those who meet the three “P”s: Professionalism, Probity, Patriotism. There are not many of them, but they exist. Our task is to support them, grow that critical mass, and not allow it to be drowned in the swamp of attempts to hold on “the old way.”
Because the central question of the coming years is this: how do we help Ukraine save itself from itself—not only from Russia? The answer begins with an honest conversation—without hysteria or masochism, but also without self-deception.
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