 Yeah, there was a there's a story again over the weekend over the last couple of weeks really about Ukrainian corruption I'm not gonna get into a lot of details here, but you know Ukraine before the war was a very corrupt country It's as being corrupt since its separation of the Soviet Union. I'm sure it was corrupt before then too, but The more recently I think before the war it was ranked a hundred and twenty second in the world in terms of corruption The only country in all of Europe Listed as more corrupt in Ukraine. It was Russia But this is the difference first, I think Zelensky was taking steps to eradicate corruption in Ukraine. They were slow. They were partial. They were not very effective They were far from ideal They were far from from ideal but The But this is the difference Over the last couple of weeks, there's there's been breaking stories in Ukrainian media about corruption in a number of different places within the Ukrainian government some of it having to do with deployment of The money and the resources being provided Ukraine by the European Union and by the United States And and corrupt individuals were named Immediately an investigation was launched those people are fired. They're gonna be prosecuted and there was there was outrage within Ukraine and There's clearly at least in this segment a cleaning of the house And indeed I think this just provides Zelensky with an opportunity to get rid of people He might have wanted to get rid of anyway, but because of corruption But now because it's it's it's kind of an international story. He can do it You know, you can do it more freely Imagine if the story had broken in Russia if a story had broken in Russia about corruption within Russia One of the oligarchs or something like that. Is anybody think or You know Putin himself. Does anybody think that actions would have been taken to address this that people would have been arrested There would be courts that people would be fired No, I mean quite the contrary the reporter would be arrested and put in jail That is the people complaining about the regime would have been punished and that's really one of the many Differences between Ukraine and Russia Ukraine is not a Western good Country when it comes to its political regime, it is indeed corrupt and it does have significant problems and it does have problems of Political corruption economic corruption and also it has problems of massive cronyism and so on the differences That they are forces in Ukraine trying to fix it and when and there was a relatively independent media and when the media reports on a project on a Coincidence something is actually done about Something is actually done about it whereas in Russia there is no independent media None whatsoever indeed the last fragment of independent media last week The last fragment of independent media in Moscow was shut down last week and anybody linking to Referring to an article by that media will be tried for treason in Russia. There's no independent media. It's gone finished kaput completely But in and it's just as corrupt actually more corrupt in Ukraine and yet there's nothing and Nobody complains about that very little complaining about Russian corruption so a big difference In the level of freedom between the two countries Ukraine is more free than Russia and is moving in the right direction Russia before the war was less free than Ukraine and moving in the wrong direction and then after that the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine and You've got the bad guys and the good guys in this conflict pretty well sorted out and pretty clear-cut without it much ambiguity Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show if you'd like to support the show We make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to Iran book show comm slash support I go to patreon subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those any one of those channels also if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow Please consider Sharing our content and of course subscribe Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live and for you Those of you who already subscribers and those of you who already supporters of the show Thank you. I very much appreciate it