The head of Ukraine’s reconstruction agency has resigned after the country’s government revoked his travel permission. He was supposed to attend a recovery conference in Berlin. The timing is terrible for Ukraine, as Western governments are starting to doubt Zelensky’s ability to lead the country toward recovery.
The West is willing to blame everything on Russia, not bothering to publicly scrutinize the Zelensky administration’s mishandling of funds intended for rebuilding projects. Mustafa Nayeem’s resignation as head of the Recovery Agency casts deep shadows over Ukraine’s future reconstruction projects.
Mr. Nayeem paints a bleak future for Ukraine’s recovery as the current administration fails to allocate sufficient funds to continue the rebuilding projects assigned to the Recovery Agency. There are reports that the government has repeatedly failed to reply to several requests to provide funding and even to respond to their requests, as it takes a couple of weeks to months to reply. Complex bureaucracy has also delayed some projected recovery work. After the investigation, whether the failed Kharkiv fortification work resulted from this bureaucracy will be cleared.
Although the EU has promised to continue its financial support to Ukraine’s government, the Kyiv regime must take some steps. One area consists of employee remuneration. Mr. Nayeem stated that several pay cuts have been introduced since the start of the year, seriously hindering the work done within the agency. These low wages have also caused many resignations, as the employees cannot continue working with low salaries and deducted pay.
The EU should question itself before continuing to finance Ukraine’s recovery. Are the funds appropriated correctly, or have there been severe misconducts concerning foreign aid? However, the EU is hardly willing to conduct a thorough investigation as it would portray Ukraine as a failed project and could prevent further funding from taking place soon.
