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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Daniel Boffey in Kyiv

‘No return to the past’: the man leading Ukraine’s fightback against corruption

Oleksandr Novikov, head of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency
Oleksandr Novikov, head of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency. Transparency International has ranked Ukraine as the second most corrupt country in Europe, behind only Russia. Photograph: Ed Ram/The Guardian

For the first two months of the war in Ukraine, Oleksandr Novikov, 40, lived with a coterie of his staff in the basement of the austere offices of the national agency on corruption prevention in Kyiv.

“We have a munitions room – it has machine guns. We were ready to fight on these streets,” Novikov says, looking down from the window of his third-floor boardroom.

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