At the kyiv Opera, we play Rigoletto, by Verdi. Life has resumed its rights in the Ukrainian capital and, if it weren’t for the unusual number of pedestrians in trellises, the concrete blocks and the horses of frieze placed in certain strategic places, one could almost ignore that the war, brutal and deadly, is raging on the eastern and southern fronts, a few hundred kilometers away.
Yet another, even less visible, offensive is underway in Kyiv. It unfolds in a theater familiar to the heirs of the post-Soviet space: that of the rule of law and the fight against corruption. The shock of the Russian aggression of February 24, then the positive dynamics of the prospect of Ukraine’s accession to the European Union, which opened in June, gave new impetus to democracy activists. Under this double catalyst effect, they are multiplying their efforts to try to make up for lost time in these three messy decades of Ukraine’s independence.
Can democracy progress in times of war? This is at first sight counter-intuitive, but Ukraine could well surprise on this ground too. Sergiy Solodkyy, from the local think tank New Europe Center, sums up three waves of dashed hopes: “After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, democratic transformation was captured by the post-Soviet nomenklatura and mafia. In 2004, the “Orange Revolution” failed to bring down the power of the oligarchs and President Viktor Yushchenko was incorporated into the system. » In 2014, with the Maidan revolution, Sergiy Solodkyy really believed that this time everything was going to change, “but Vladimir Putin understood it too”. Today, he says, February 24 opened a fourth wave of hope – perhaps the last”.
“No longer the right to fail”
Because now, we often hear in kyiv, “we no longer have the right to fail”. The toll already paid in human lives is too heavy. “People who are fighting at the front ask us: are you making progress? Because when we come back, we want to see results”, reports Roman Maselko, a lawyer very committed to the fight against corruption who has just been appointed by Parliament as a member of the Superior Council of Justice, the Ukrainian equivalent of the Superior Council of the Judiciary in France. This body is crucial for the reform of the judicial system because it appoints judges, an essential link – and so far a weak link – in cleaning up corruption. “We are fighting to recover our territory but also to change the system, poursuit Roman Maselko. We don’t want to be like Russia, we want to be Europe. » The war, he asserts, accelerated this effort: “A year ago, I would never have expected to be appointed to this position. »
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