The ongoing wrangle over Kyivstar's ownership between Russian mobile giants Altimo and Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor was aired before an international audience last week when various Western media outlets documented what Telenor claims are attempts by the Russians to buy a negative press campaign in Ukraine to blacken the image of the Scandinavians. Bribing journalists to publish loaded stories is such a widespread practice in the former Soviet Union that in itself it barely warrants a mention, but of more interest in this case is the allegation that the campaign opened with a general attack on the idea that Western businesses always 'play fair,' followed by a slew of stories accusing Telenor of corruption.
According to the Norwegian side the idea was to create an environment where their strong legal position in the dispute was undermined by a more general feeling that 'the Westerners' were also corrupt and were guilty of engaging in double standards. Here we have laid bare one of the great barriers to reform in the old USSR - namely the tendency to cry "you're no better" rather than engage in meaningful soul-searching or embark on the difficult task of addressing the endemic corruption which continues to throttle free enterprise in this part of the world.
I have seen the same logic applied to Stalin's crimes against humanity and more recently to media censorship and the blatant theft of elections, with the bottom line consistently being the idea that we foreigners are just as corrupt in our own way and have no right to be so judgmental. The parallels that are generally offered up as evidence of this universal corruption are often patently ridiculous but that does not seem to prevent an awful lot of people taking comfort in such ideas.
In my experience there has never been such a thing as an ethically irreproachable business venture in the history of the world, but surely nobody in their right mind would compare the business climate in Russia with that of Western Europe.
This sort of thing nevertheless strikes a popular chord among populations tired of being lectured by what they perceive to be holier-than-thou foreigners, but ultimately this kind of flawed moral relativism stinks of defensive insecurity and denial. If it works in this particular instance, it will be to the detriment of Ukraine in ways that extend far beyond the immediate repercussions for future foreign investment.
