Whether it is because he is a wartime commander-in-chief, popularly elected in 2014 or still a darling in the West, President Petro Poroshenko is getting a free ride for his continued defense and perpetuation of corruption in Ukraine.

His areas of responsibility include prosecutors and judges, two of the least trusted and most corrupt professions in Ukraine. Yet he obstinately clings to Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, for dishonest and ridiculous reasons, and the 15,000 ineffective or corrupt prosecutors that Shokin commands.
Poroshenko’s rationale in his Jan. 14 press conference is that Shokin’s fate is not so important because prosecutors soon will have fewer legal powers. It is a bogus explanation since the powers will remain considerable in representing the state in criminal cases against suspects brought to trial. The president’s explanation is appalling. There is no justifiable reason to keep an incompetent and obstructionist person. Shokin has failed miserably in prosecuting corruption, with not even one case to his credit during his nearly year in office. He is kept in office because Poroshenko can control him.
Instead of firing Shokin, the president threw justice-hungry Ukrainians the tiniest of bones on Jan. 19 by firing four judges who made politically motivated rulings in the time of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. The dismissed judges include Rodion Kireyev, who convicted Yanukovych’s foe, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in 2011.

Poroshenko is insulting everyone’s intelligence with his belated and cosmetic moves. In many ways, Poroshenko is acting more like his former role as co-founding member of the Party of Regions, Yanukovych’s corrupt club, than a democratic Westerner. He has promised to dismantle the oligarchy but his actions are preserving it.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk is not much better. He has a Shokin of his own: Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has failed as the nation’s leading law enforcer but is kept on because he is Yatsenyuk’s ally.

Western politicians, pundits and diplomats should drop their allegiance to Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk lest they find themselves looking as foolish as some of them did when they championed ex-President Viktor Yushchenko as a reformer and Yanukovych as a man with whom they could do business right up to his flight from Ukraine on Feb. 21, 2014. The lessons of the sordid past should be to stand with Ukrainians, not their corrupt leaders.