Trust as a weapon of war: fighting corruption and corporate crime in Ukraine

Abstract

We explore the ways in which elite crimes impact the development of society, and specifically address the harmful impact of such activities on social trust. We single out the issue of corruption in Ukraine during the Russian war to analyse the ways in which political elites exploit social trust in emergency situations. Employing a critical criminological approach to crime and justice, we analyse the effect of anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine, paying particular attention to the issue of trust to consider how and why trust has been “weaponized” by war. The war has changed Ukrainian attitudes towards state authorities and engendered in them a remarkably high degree of trust. We hypothesise that this change is based more on emotion than on rationality. The understanding of how and why the political elite might use this trust in the future is important for the development of anti-corruption policy both in Ukraine and generally in Europe. We conclude that the weaponization of trust poses a number of risks to advancing anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine. Sustaining progress in this area, therefore, will require a careful navigation of competing wartime priorities.