An IMF mission is in Kyiv until May 18 to look at restarting low-interest lending that stopped last year at $6.7 billion out of $17.5 billion over a four-year period through 2018. Ukraine’s leaders are touting the possibility of quick agreement to get another $1.7 billion installment by June.

In a May 13 front-page story, Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk details the 19 laws that Ukraine must pass to win IMF approval. The IMF, as Swedish economist Anders Aslund has written, focuses mainly on fiscal balance, public debt, current account balance and the exchange rate.

This is not enough. One of the reasons for the IMF’s existence is to help nations to achieve sustainable economic growth. Without rule of law, no sustainable economic growth is possible. To think otherwise is wishful thinking. Rather than “going slow” on reform, Poroshenko is guilty of willful obstruction at every turn. Who still remembers Poroshenko’s Nov. 2, 2015, promise that the arrest of Gennady Korban, an ally of billionaire oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, was only “the start” in the fight against corruption in which “no one will enjoy immunity…neither the representatives of the new dispensation nor the representatives of the old regime?” Nothing good has happened since then and Korban is free on house arrest.

The IMF program should continue only with stricter conditions, more so because at least another $1.8 billion in aid – from the United States, European Union and World Bank – are contingent on IMF sign-off.

Most Ukrainians cannot endure another sharp and painful currency devaluation. But many views inside Ukraine and among its supporters abroad are colored by wishful thinking. Those invested in Ukraine, like all of us at the Kyiv Post, have sets of rose-colored eyewear handy and are prone to see glasses as half-full even if they do not contain any water.

Two years into this presidency, the nation has another presidential loyalist, Yury Lutsenko, as prosecutor general (after three ineffective and allegedly corrupt ones were sacked). Lutsenko, who won 264 votes, is not qualified and did not reform the Interior Ministry in three years as the nation’s top cop from 2007-2010. Poroshenko cancelled a trip to London, where an international anti-corruption conference took place on May 12, to round up votes.

The nation has not prosecuted anybody who stole billions of dollars or who murdered EuroMaidan Revolution demonstrators. Stealing continues with injustice and impunity. Dire economic consequences come from this lawlessness. Ukraine would not need any IMF money if prosecutors recovered even part of the stolen money and brought lawbreakers to trial.

No prosecutions are on the horizon, either, because no major investigations are under way. Even if the nation’s 18,000 prosecutors suddenly stopped extorting bribes and started doing their jobs, they would have to send cases to one of the nation’s corrupt or incompetent 9,000 judges.

To lend under these circumstances would bring only short-term relief to the economy at an unacceptable long-term price.

Renewed IMF lending would give Ukraine’s political leaders undeserved reassurance that they are on the right track while they arrogantly keep taking the wrong track, especially by obstructing rule of law, the essential underpinning of any nation that aspires to be a democracy and to attract investment. The IMF should critically assess the political will for reform of Ukraine’s leadership. If they do so, they will find it sorely lacking.