Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday he would tolerate no corruption or treachery in affairs of state while his country is struggling to find the means to defend itself against Russian invaders.
Ukraine has come a long way in fighting their corruption issues (which were in part caused by russian loyalists). I really hope they can kick out Putin quick and then join the EU.
What is your source for it being more corrupt than it's ever been before? This directly contradicts the data from Transparency International's corruption perception poll, which shows that it's the best it's ever been, but still bad. There has also been pressure by the EU to reduce corruption as part of the roadway to EU membership. The US has also been apply pressure for going on a decade. Recently, this has resulted in several high profile indictments against high ranking officials.
War tends to make corruption harder to tackle. Everything is so focused on war efforts that a bribe here or there seems trivial in comparison. You also have a tremendous number of displaced people, which make them vulnerable. The resolution of the Russo-Ukrainian War will make corruption much easier to tackle.
This is lemmy.ml, which is full of clueless tankies who confuse modern fascist Russia with the Soviet Union and love to consume Russian and Chinese propaganda. Anything "Western" is automatically bad and evil (those damn Anglos or something) and since Ukraine is backed by NATO, it has to be the bad guy. Take a wild guess at what the ".ml" means.
I guess what changed is that you are not on reddit anymore where nations advertise their propaganda. Ukraine government declared martial law, they are basically a dictatorship.
Plenty of russian likes putin too, they are victim of propaganda. I'm sure these Ukrainians between 18 and 60 who want to leave the country but they can't don't like their government much.
I'm not going to take a hard stance here cause I don't think a side by side comparison with Putin is a useful conversation to have, but I want to point out a couple things that may add some nuance to what you've heard before.
Since 1991, Ukraine has been in an increasingly precarious geopolitical position, with many differences among it's population and political leadership about how to proceed. One could argue that Zelensky ended up stuck between a rock and a hard place, but at the end of the day his fumbling around and repeated motions towards joining NATO were bad political moves that nearly forced (kinda, maybe not forced idk) Russia's hand into a military action. Even if going to NATO was definitively the correct choice (weird thing to think, tbh), he managed doing so incredibly poorly.
Be aware that Ukraine has had a lot of division among the populaton about whether the country should be Western/EU aligned or Russian aligned. There are many historical and cultural reasons for different regions, communities and individuals to have their particular views (like any political stance). Consider that if you spoke with a Ukrainian person somewhere outside of Eastern Europe, and used the English language, they are probably going to have a pro-western, pro-zelensky viewpoint. You probably won't hear much from Russian speaking Ukrainians who wouldn't prefer to emigrate to "the West", and support Ukrainian alignment with Russia.