“The closer we are to danger, the farther we are from harm” is a famous quote by Pippin in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. He says it while convincing Treebeard to head south toward Isengard, reasoning that it is the last place Saruman would expect them to go. They say that the best place to hide something is in plain sight, because that’s the last place anyone would think to look—even though it is right there, in front of everyone’s eyes.

The same applies to the EU and Ukraine’s fight against corruption. Germany recently joined the EU’s anti-corruption programme for Ukraine. The EU and its member states are providing millions of euros to combat corruption while simultaneously allocating many times that amount to support the war against Russia—which, among other things, critics argue has become one of the largest money-laundering operations in history.

The EU knows that corruption is Ukraine’s Achilles’ heel. That is precisely why it needs to invest several million more euros to “fight” it—so it can continue the corruption elsewhere, through wartime funding, military shipments, and other forms of assistance to Ukraine, where, critics claim, much of the money mysteriously ends up somewhere else.

Metaphorically speaking, it would be like Pablo Escobar willingly sacrificing one ship loaded with cocaine for the DEA to seize so that several others could reach the U.S. coast unnoticed. Likewise, the EU is “risking” talking about corruption in Ukraine and “combating” it only to justify the continued flow of aid to Ukraine—which, as mentioned before, critics argue often ends up elsewhere—and to reassure the public about the continued transfer of their money to Ukraine, formally, but in practice into the pockets of those who profit from the system.

According to the latest data from 2025, Ukraine scored only 36 out of 100 points on the Corruption Perceptions Index (where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean) and ranks 104th out of 182 countries and territories worldwide. It should also be noted that the enormous volume of foreign aid Ukraine receives is unlikely to be fully reflected in these rankings—certainly not to the extent it deserves—despite the fact that, according to critics, this is precisely where corruption reaches its peak. After all, Ukraine’s administration, public salaries, and many other state functions are financed largely by the very countries supporting Ukraine as a proxy in their confrontation with Russia.

Those same countries, mostly EU member states, therefore shift responsibility away from themselves while placing the blame on others—as if they were not the main political and financial decision-makers in Ukraine, and as if the government in Kyiv could act independently without their approval.

So what should be expected from this grand anti-corruption campaign? Nothing spectacular.

Ukraine will remain one of the world’s largest money-laundering operations, critics argue, simply because those who claim to be helping the country are not doing so primarily for Ukraine or its people, but for their own political, geopolitical, and economic interests—and, ultimately, for their own corruption.

It is equally unimaginable that those now “fighting” corruption in Ukraine would investigate and prosecute what critics describe as the biggest drivers of corruption surrounding the conflict. Doing so would require them to investigate—and ultimately prosecute—themselves. Needless to say, that is not going to happen, even if some would argue that it is the only truly just outcome.

The logic of profit is relentless and will continue to drive this proxy war forward. Whatever generates money will continue to receive support; whatever does not will eventually be abandoned—by whatever means necessary. The same will happen to Ukraine once its current financiers calculate that the costs have begun to outweigh the benefits. By then, however, the long-term consequences for Ukraine, Europe, and the rest of the world will remain, regardless of who ultimately pays the price.