This Is How Ukraine Will Destroy the Rule of Law While Claiming to Defend it
Once the entire legal system is harnessed to the support of “reform,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, or one of his successors, will be able to more easily suppress political opposition and irksome media criticism.
It is therefore ultimately in the best interests of both the West and of Ukraine to allow Ukrainian politics to develop however it sees fit and to rely on its own institutional checks and balances, rather than on ones that are imposed and administered by the West. As we have seen time and again, the West’s failure to trust the institutions of other nations results in those nations eventually turning away from the West, in order to get them back.
Nicolai N. Petro is a professor of politics at the University of Rhode Island. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine from 2013–14, and is the editor of Ukraine in Crisis (Routledge, 2017). He writes from Ukraine.
Image: Reuters