Anne Applebaum

But that's going to create the long term problems.

You know, if we create this atmosphere of lawlessness where, you know, you can buy a pardon from the president if you've broken the law.

You can assume that nobody will enforce regulation if you decide to break it.

You can rip people off and you won't pay any price.

You can do all these things with impunity.

I mean, that begins to create a kind of business culture

that is ultimately bad for everyone.

I mean, I guess, you know, bad guys will benefit from it, but if you've ever lived or worked in a really corrupt country, and I have, you know, I spent a lot of time in Russia in the 1990s.

I spent a lot of time in Ukraine, actually, in the era before it began to reform itself.

And, you know, I remember that it's even for, I mean, maybe particularly for ordinary people,

You know, daily life is different in a really, really corrupt country.

You know, you don't make business investments in a normal way.

You can't make judgments about how to work or where to work unless you know, you know, who's really in charge or who's the person behind each one of these companies.

It distorts ordinary life and ordinary decision-making.

You know, in Russia, universities became very corrupt.

The state services became very corrupt.

I mean, if you wanted a driver's license or any kind of license, you could pay for it.

And people knew that.

And then that has a corresponding effect on safety and so on.

So you can get into this very ugly downward drift if you don't stop it soon.