Ukraine’s experiment with foreign reformers

In the winter of 2014, Ukraine faced a peculiar institutional trap. The Revolution of Dignity had swept away the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych, but left behind its law-enforcement apparatus. Public trust in government agencies had been low even before the protests: in 2013, only 15.5 per cent trusted the police, and around 22 per cent trusted the courts. From late 2013, law-enforcement agencies responded to peaceful demonstrations with detentions and criminal prosecutions. Later, the violence escalated and, by the time the protests ended, more than a hundred civilians had been killed, including by ‘Berkut’ special police forces. In November 2015, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) released a report which found that Ukrainian security forces had used ‘excessive and indiscriminate’ force against protesters. After the Revolution, there was an urgent need to reform the system.

Kyiv came up with a rather unorthodox solution: bring in foreigners. Over the following years, Ukraine tested three distinct models of international expert engagement.

The first attempt to amplify the reforms was the direct appointment of international figures. In 2014, Eka Zguladze became Ukraine’s First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, bringing her experience of Georgia’s police reforms. In 2015, another Georgian politician, Khatia Dekanoidze, assumed the position of Head of the National Police.

The attempt to reform the police did not, however, go as planned. By October 2016, 26 per cent of the police’s senior leadership and 14 per cent of middle-level officers had failed the vetting process, and 5,257 police officers had been dismissed in total. Most of those who were dismissed challenged the decisions in court, and Dekanoidze later claimed that more than 90 per cent had been reinstated. Thus, the reform turned out to be only as strong as the system supporting it: loopholes in the legislation made dismissals almost impossible to sustain in court, and the judiciary processing the appeals was itself unreformed. Both Dekanoidze and Zguladze resigned in 2016.

Similar patterns were visible across government. Aivaras Abromavičius, the Lithuanian-born Minister of Economic Development and Trade, announced his resignation in February 2016. Alexander Kvitashvili, the Georgian-born Minister of Healthcare, had tendered his own resignation the previous summer. Both cited systemic resistance. It became clear that placing foreigners at the top of unreformed institutions would not in itself ensure proper transformation.

The second approach pursued by the Ukrainian government was inviting international experts to participate in selection commissions without giving them a decisive say. The difficulty was that participation without the power to block a candidate could result in questionable outcomes.

For example, the first head of the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), Nazar Kholodnytskyi, was appointed in 2015 by a commission on which international experts were a small minority. In 2018, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) released recordings that appeared to show him warning suspects of impending searches and pressuring prosecutors to block cases. Even the US Ambassador to Ukraine called publicly for his removal. He resigned only in 2020.

Meanwhile, the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), established in 2015 and operational from 2018, succumbed to the same problems. Since its creation, the SBI’s leadership has been accused of political dependence on the President’s Office and, even after an attempt to ‘restart’ the agency in 2019, it still isn’t considered fully independent. This has the potential to delay Ukraine’s bid for European Union membership: the EU’s 2025 Enlargement Report explicitly states that Ukraine should introduce ‘transparent and merit-based selection procedures’ for the SBI’s management ‘with the meaningful involvement of independent experts nominated by international partners’.

The third approach, which embeds international experts directly into selection commissions with a decisive vote, was introduced during the creation of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC), which had itself emerged as a direct response to a deep crisis of trust in the judicial system. By 2017, only seven per cent of Ukrainians trusted the courts. Alongside NABU and SAPO (both operational since 2015), the HACC was designed to be the cornerstone of an entirely new anti-corruption architecture at every stage of the legal process, from investigation through prosecution to verdict. A new, transparent and trustworthy selection model was essential to avoid the newly established court being tainted before it heard a single case.

The resistance to this overarching plan was considerable, slowing down its implementation. The idea emerged in the 2016 judicial reform, but the dedicated legislation was only adopted in June 2018, and the court began operating in September 2019. The HACC selection process, launched in August 2018, attracted 342 candidates for 39 positions. The debates during vetting were intense, but the Public Council of International Experts (PCIE) stood firm; of 49 candidates whose integrity was questioned, only seven were allowed to proceed.

For the selection of the next head of SAPO, the model faced a harder test, with sabotage attempts throughout the process. The most significant obstruction came after Oleksandr Klymenko emerged as the leading candidate in December 2021. The selection commission did not agree to formally approve the result, with five members appointed by parliament declining to vote, leaving Klymenko’s victory effectively blocked for months. In July 2022, the result was finally approved, following objections from international members over the delay and the EU making the appointment of a new SAPO head an explicit condition attached to Ukraine’s candidate status.

Public trust did not come immediately. In 2020, 70 per cent of Ukrainians distrusted the HACC, a figure broadly similar to that for the general court system at the time, where distrust stood at 77.5 per cent. The polling data from November 2025 covers only the general court system (66 per cent distrust), which still suggests that the architecture as a whole is moving in a positive direction. Among anti-corruption specialists alone, the picture is clearer: an OSCE-supported survey conducted over the winter of 2025–26 found that 57 per cent of experts rated the HACC’s work as effective and 63 per cent considered it fully or predominantly independent.

The performance data reflects this shift. Before the HACC opened, Ukrainian courts delivered fewer than ten high-level corruption convictions per year. By mid-2026, the HACC had delivered more than 400 verdicts. In 2025 alone, the number of verdicts grew by 41 per cent. NABU and SAPO together had recovered UAH 11.4 billion (£189 million) for the state as of December 2025.

The model has since expanded beyond the HACC. Among other things, international experts with a decisive vote have participated in the selection of members of the High Council of Justice.

The revised draft Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2026–30, now before parliament, retains a decisive vote for international experts in selecting the head of the SBI, though it no longer guarantees them one in selecting members of the High Council of Justice, providing only for their ‘temporary involvement’. An initiative born out of a trust crisis is now a principle Ukraine is committed to, even as the political will to implement it remains uneven.

Ukraine’s experience demonstrates that, when reforming state institutions, the effectiveness of international participation depends largely on how it is structured. Under current circumstances, that means giving foreign experts actual decision-making power in vetting procedures. This should not, however, be considered a permanent arrangement. The real measure of success will be whether Ukraine eventually builds the institutions and the system of checks and balances credible enough not to need to lean on foreign expertise.