Anne Applebaum

I talked this morning to a senior figure who's involved in a corruption investigation inside Ukraine.

Maybe you've heard that the Ukrainian state is investigating itself, which is actually at this point in history hard to imagine in the United States.

There's an anti-corruption bureau inside the government, and they are investigating people, some of whom are very close to the president, for a kind of kickback scheme to do with the energy industry.

The details aren't that important.

What matters is that it's the Ukrainian state that's doing it.

It's as if our FBI was investigating our president, which right now is hard to imagine.

You can't imagine that happening.

And I asked the investigator, how is it that you have the legitimacy to do this?

How do you have the support to do it?

And he said, look, it comes from Ukrainians.

You know, there was a moment last summer when some people in the presidential administration tried to shut down this investigation and there were popular protests.

You know, Ukrainians understand that this is an important part of their democracy.

They want corruption ended.

They think it's important not just

not just for moral reasons, but because corruption weakens them and makes them more susceptible to Russian bribery and blackmail and so on.

So this is a state body that's acting with the support of Ukrainians.

And I don't know that we have the equivalent movement here.

Could you imagine big national protests if...

Well, I mean, you can't imagine it because it's already happened.

I mean, if the president were to replace the heads of the FBI and the Department of Justice with flunkies who would never investigate him, what would happen?