Ukraine's Invulnerable Corruption, Explained By A Foreign Reporter

“I heard a lot of stories in everyday life where people tell you that corruption is the same” explains freelance journalist Moritz Gathmann, “the problem is that the people don’t see that people get punished for being corrupt or being criminal.” However, Gathmann emphasises that there have been “certain success stories” such as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Ukraine's new police force who want to show that they are different.

Nevertheless, while Gathmann has hope for Ukraine overcoming it’s inbuilt culture of corruption, he points out that “there is a corruption on another level, for instance doctors” who earn less than 2,000 hryvnia a month. Without the state providing a decent salary, Gathmann finds it difficult to “criticise them for taking extra money from the patients because they have to live.”

Moritz Gathmann, freelance journalist for Der Spiegel and Der Tagesspiegel, was interviewed by Hromadske on January 30th 2016 by Rachel Judah and filmed by Eugene Evreyskiy.