Oleksandr Ratushniak/Reuters

Serhii, a local resident, stands next to his car that was destroyed by a missile strike amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kostiantynivka, the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Jan. 28, 2023.

Last January, Oleksandr Kachanovskyy and his family put all their savings into two big purchases: a new car and new furniture for their home in Mariupol.

A month later, Russia’s invasion destroyed that second purchase. Shelling and street fighting leveled the city over a three-month siege. “There was no place to live,” says Mr. Kachanovskyy. “The conditions were unbearable.”

So in late March, Mr. Kachanovskyy and his family packed into their new Volkswagen and drove to Lviv, where his father had once lived. They spent two weeks with family and then found free housing in a dormitory for students at the local hospitality college, on the outskirts of the city, surviving on his salary alone.

He, like millions of other Ukrainians, is caught in an economic tug of war. Ukraine’s economy is currently suspended between two competing forces. On one end, the Russian invasion has pulled it consistently toward decline: a 25% and accelerating poverty rate, a 35% contraction of gross domestic product, an inflation rate rising above 26%. On the other end are billions of dollars in military and humanitarian aid to the country, which experts say keep the economy stable.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine needs around $5 billion a month and $55 billion next year to cover the deficit and begin rebuilding. At least for the time being, Ukraine seems to be getting by on less, says Rajan Menon, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. But the longer the war goes on, the more expensive it gets, no matter how many weapons flow into the country. Ukraine has no shortage of willpower to fight, but how long can the country afford it?

“As long as Western aid continues to flow in ... they can survive,” says Professor Menon. But without the support, “it will be an economy that is subject to enormous strain, and people will find basic life, basic things that we take for granted, much more difficult to come by.”

For now, Mr. Kachanovskyy feels fortunate to have a home and some income, starting as the dormitory’s nighttime security guard last fall. With subsidized housing, his family can survive on the small salary. “Of course, our income is not that big,” he says, “but it’s enough and could be much worse.”

Noah Robertson/The Christian Science Monitor

Oleksandr Kachanovskyy worked at a metal plant in Mariupol for 39 years, only leaving because of the war. He's now a nighttime security guard at the university dormitory where he and his family are staying in Lviv, Ukraine, Dec. 1, 2022.

Diminishing employment, rising costs

Lviv is a portrait of the country’s fragile, and often contradictory, economy. Its western location has made it a sanctuary for citizens fleeing the war. Some 400,000 displaced people stayed in Lviv at some point last year, though only 200,000 remain, says Andriy Moskalenko, the city’s deputy mayor for economic development.

These displaced people need housing and income. While the city has been able to provide temporary shelter through renovated dormitories, like the one Mr. Kachanovskyy lives in, jobs have proved more difficult.

On the official regional job center registry, there are only 10,000 available positions, says Orest Hryniv, deputy head of the Lviv region’s department of economic policy. More can be found on online platforms, he says, but there is still a large gap between job needs and job openings. Even those who do get work may find themselves making wages that are unsustainably low. About 41% of the jobs on the official registry are in the service economy.

“The salaries that people receive in these jobs are not [high enough to] help people to afford the renting and also to take care of their families,” says Mr. Hryniv.

Meanwhile, the streets of Lviv are busy and businesses are open – though they’re often powered by generators humming outside. Souvenir shops sell patriotic tchotchkes, from mugs adorned with Molotov cocktails (“Smoothie, Ukrainian Style,” they read) to traditional Ukrainian garb. Street markets for groceries and other goods are still active. Operating shops suggest consumer demand, and disposable income.

Regardless, that income has lost much of its value in a year of rapid inflation. Mr. Kachanovskyy, speaking on the ground floor of the dormitory as students pass in and out, says much of his family’s monthly budget is spent on food and fuel, both of which have become more expensive.

“I don’t know when this will be over,” he says, “and the prices will be rising for sure again.”

Nationwide, the war has forced the Ukrainian government to budget tightly. Mr. Moskalenko says the military, critical infrastructure, and hospitals occupy almost all of Lviv’s spending, just as they do nationally. Inflation has made those budget decisions more difficult. Already, he says, there have been government layoffs.

Noah Robertson/The Christian Science Monitor

Oleh Risny's second-floor office at the Lviv, Ukraine, state employment center is filled with plaques, flags, stamps, and memorabilia kept in a corner armoire, Dec. 1, 2022. Mr. Risny mostly sees women coming to his office, since many men are reluctant to register as unemployed out of fear of conscription.

“We can survive”

Just blocks away from the college dormitory is the Lviv employment center, housed in a large administrative building. In the atrium is a series of standing bulletin boards, advertising openings and training opportunities – many that the region will subsidize – across different industries. Aside from employees, the building is almost empty.

On the second floor, Oleh Risny, head of the employment center, sits at a large desk next to a conference table and Ukrainian flag. Since the start of the war, he says, government unemployment benefits have fallen in amount and length – from nine to now three months. That’s meant fewer people visiting centers like his, atop of other factors such as men fearing conscription if they register as unemployed. The lack of visitors is “not about a good economic situation,” he says. “It’s about changing legislation.”

Ukraine already had problems in taxing its unofficial economy, he says, which makes up a large share of employment around the country. Those have grown more acute during the war, when tax revenues are scarcer. Other offices like his have lost 30% to 40% of their staff in short spans. They’re bracing for something similar, says Mr. Risny.

“But we understand why it is,” he says. “We can survive.”

So can Mr. Kachanovskyy. “We are very glad for these conditions,” he says. He, his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, and his two grandchildren split two rooms upstairs – though his daughter-in-law just left to work abroad and his son, who registered as unemployed months ago, hasn’t been able to find a job.

He, like many other Ukrainians, lived through the 1990s, when a toddling independent government mismanaged the economy into crisis. Industrial production and GDP losses were higher than America’s during the Great Depression. In 1994 alone, GDP fell by 23%.

“I am sure that the ’90s were worse than this,” says Mr. Kachanovskyy, who worked multiple jobs and sold personal possessions just to get through. Now he has his family with him, he has his needs met, and he has a job that keeps him from going crazy, he says.

“We have nothing to complain about. Of course, it was much better before the 24th of February. Now we have what we have.”

Oleksandr Naselenko supported the reporting of this article.

The sanctions imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine were supposed to prevent it. But Russian audiences have been enjoying “Avatar: The Way of Water,” James Cameron’s new blockbuster film, much as they have most Hollywood movies in recent decades.

It’s the sort of thing that wasn’t supposed to be possible after the West cut economic ties with Russia. Big Western film companies withdrew from the Russian market, and local distributors were stripped of their licenses to show almost all Western movies.

But while the mechanics have changed, the end result is similar. Big movie halls are rented out to another company, often representing itself as a “film club.” That company then sells tickets for a short Russian-made film, but then also shows the more than three-hour-long “Avatar” movie “for free.” Experts describe the quality as top notch, and the showings are widely advertised.

Welcome to the Russian consumer economy a year into the war.

Frustrating U.S. and European sanctions hawks, Russia appears to be weathering the West’s attempts to damage its economy in response to the invasion of Ukraine. And in the most visible sign of its resilience, the Russian consumer market still offers ample supplies of Coca-Cola, iPhones, Western car parts, computers, appliances, designer clothing, and more. Via what are known as “parallel imports,” Russian businesses have been able to use legal and semilegal channels to bring name-brand goods into the country despite Western attempts to deny Russia access to them. 

While parallel imports do come with their own set of problems – and don’t stave off potential long-term damage that sanctions could still cause – they have shown the limits of Western sanctions as a blunt instrument against Russia.

“Parallel imports are not an ideal solution, even if they seem to solve the problem,” says Ivan Timofeev, an expert with the Russian International Affairs Council, which is affiliated with the Foreign Ministry. “The goods don’t come with the servicing, the warranties that they used to. They’re more expensive. But, at the same time, a lot of unofficial services have appeared to fill those gaps. So, you wouldn’t think you could get your German or Japanese car fixed anymore. But all sorts of businesses have sprung up where they have the parts – obtained through parallel imports – and expertise to do it. That’s why, when you look at any Moscow street, it’s still crowded with those cars running along as usual.”

Fred Weir

The Samsung outlet at the Europark shopping mall still has its brand-name goods on sale in Moscow on Jan. 27, 2023.

“Everything can be done”

The Russian economy looks much the same as it did a year ago, with well-stocked supermarkets, bustling e-commerce, crowded shopping malls, and a lively cafe, restaurant, and nightlife scene. Prices are up, but at around 12%, inflation seems manageable and has been declining in recent months. The ruble is stable, employment is high, and public opinion maintains at least tepid support for the war effort. Even Russian President Vladimir Putin recently noted that he had not expected Russia’s economy to survive the sanctions storm quite so well.

At least so far, Russia appears to be confounding wave after wave of Western sanctions.

Some of that is down to good fortune, such as high energy prices last year (which are now falling) and a bumper grain harvest last fall, and Russia’s ability to find non-Western markets for those vital exports.

Another factor is long-term economic planning aimed at sanctions-proofing the economy since 2014, which explains why Russia’s banking system didn’t skip a beat after the war started, and domestic payment systems like Visa and Mastercard continued working domestically even after the parent companies pulled out of Russia.

Yet another is import substitution – a very controversial subject in Russia – in which state support and some degree of market innovation enable Russian businesses to generate local replacements, which may prove acceptable even if they are somewhat inferior to the sanctioned goods.

But it is parallel imports where the big Western brands get through sanctions. Last year Russia’s Ministry of Trade approved the import of over 100 categories of goods with no need for permission from the companies that produce them.

Russian distributors order goods from companies located in countries that don’t participate in the sanctions regime, such as Turkey, Kazakhstan, or Armenia, which buy the goods and send them on to Russian customers. Circumventing the old supply chains has become a huge business, estimated to be worth around $20 billion in the second half of last year, which somehow retains a semblance of legality.

Sometimes that legality can be stretched thin, as in the case of “Avatar: The Way of Water” playing in “film clubs,” about which big film distributors expressed shock and denied involvement. “This is a violation of the law of the Russian Federation and all international copyright conventions,” Olga Zinyakova, president of Karo, Russia’s leading chain of cinema houses, told journalists. No one has publicly explained how the quality prints of the film arrived in Russia.

But many parallel imports are more transparent. Stanislav Mareshkin is sales director of the Magna Group, a St. Petersburg-based logistics company that has pioneered the rerouting of supply chains from Europe to friendly countries in Russia’s immediate neighborhood. He says business has tripled since last February, when the war started.

“Many companies that used to work directly with suppliers in Europe and America are now unable to interact with them at all,” he says. “Everything is broken and blocked. So, people are looking for new ways. We were able to find alternative routes rather quickly, through Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Armenia, and other countries. We now offer our customers fast delivery, including customs clearance, legal advice, insurance, and certification. When trucks with Russian and Belarusian license plates were banned in Europe, we figured out how to switch to alternative means of transport. Everything can be done.”

“A much more dynamic system”

Dr. Timofeev argues that it’s a mistake to look for Soviet-style dysfunctions in Russia’s economy, like empty shop shelves and long line-ups, as some Western observers tend to do.

“Russia today has a market economy, and even state companies have to play by market rules,” he says. “If you perceive the Russian economy as something rigid and static, like the Soviet economy was, then you might expect that it would start to collapse as vital imports are denied. But it’s a much more dynamic system. People have incentives to find solutions, or workarounds, and they often do.”

It also seems likely that the much advertised withdrawal of Western companies from the Russian market may not have been as total as often assumed. The speaker of Russia’s State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, said recently that 75% of foreign companies never really left, but rather found creative ways to disguise their continued participation in the Russian market. That appears to be borne out by foreign studies.

In some cases Russian businesses have simply taken over a Western one, and run it pretty much as before. That’s what happened to McDonald’s, whose 847 outlets and vast infrastructure in Russia were taken over by a Siberian entrepreneur and have returned to the market under a new name, Vkusno i Tochka, offering almost exactly the same services at similar prices. Similarly, Starbucks is now Stars Coffee, Baskin-Robbins is now BR and Ice, while KFC is, well, KFC.

In some cases Western companies have paid a high price for leaving. The Canadian mining company Kinross, for example, was forced by Russia’s regulatory agency to sell its lucrative Far Eastern gold mine to a Russian buyer for half the agreed price.

Experts say the damage inflicted by sanctions will show up over time, resulting in demodernization, slowdowns, and loss of productivity.

For example, Russia is mostly self-sufficient in food production, which explains why grocery stores are full of produce. “In the late 1990s we imported about 40% of our food. Now it’s 10%,” says Pyotr Shelishch, chairman of Russia’s independent Consumer Union. “But Russian agriculture faces serious challenges in obtaining seeds, equipment, and spare parts to keep it going. It will be some time before we see if these problems can be overcome.”

Despite present appearances, and the relative success of some stopgap measures, Russia’s effective decoupling from the main engines of the world economy is likely to have lasting negative consequences, says Yevgeny Gontmakher, an economist and former Russian government official.

“The Russian economy, which benefited so much from cooperation with Western companies over the past years, is now going to be on its own,” he says. “They will now have to accept goods at higher cost and lesser quality, and revert to less modern technologies. Overall, we’re looking at a primitivization of the Russian economy.”

Armin Durgut/AP

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan waves to the crowd during a welcome ceremony in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sept. 6, 2022. His veto on Sweden's joining NATO is straining Mr. Erdoğan's relations with other members of the alliance.

Two strongman leaders could go a long way to determining how the Ukraine war ends. Both are intolerant of dissent, both harbor 21st-century ambitions fueled by nostalgia for vanished empires, and both are scornful of what they see as America’s outsize influence on the world stage.

Yet while one, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, is a sworn enemy of the U.S.-led NATO alliance, the other is a key NATO member, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

And as the war in Ukraine enters a potentially decisive stage, he is presenting a thorny challenge for Washington and NATO: how to manage relations with an ally who is inscrutable and unreliable ... yet also indispensable.

The immediate concern is to keep Mr. Erdoğan from undermining NATO’s unified response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, bolstered by Finland’s and Sweden’s decisions to abandon their long-held neutrality and join the alliance.

President Erdoğan is blocking Sweden’s application, which requires unanimous approval.

But Turkey’s importance within NATO goes deeper. With the alliance’s second-largest military force after the United States, it straddles Europe and Asia, across the Black Sea from Ukraine and Russia.

Even before Russia’s invasion, Mr. Erdoğan had adopted an a la carte approach to NATO – most dramatically in 2017, when he shrugged off allied pleas and turned to Moscow to acquire a Russian missile defense system. That prompted Washington to cancel the sale to Turkey of America’s newest fighter jet, the F-35.

Khalil Hamra/AP/File

Women chant slogans during a protest outside the Swedish Consulate in Istanbul, Jan. 22, 2023. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said that Turkey won't allow Sweden to join the NATO military alliance as long as it permits protests such as a recent gathering at which a demonstrator burned Islam's holy book, the Quran.

Since the war began, Mr. Erdoğan has carved out a role distinct from his NATO partners, keeping lines open to both Moscow and Kyiv.

He did oppose the invasion. Turkish drones helped Ukraine repel Russian forces, and under the terms of a 1930s international convention, Turkey has barred naval vessels from entering the Black Sea – in effect preventing Mr. Putin from reinforcing his fleet.

The Turkish president also mediated a deal with Mr. Putin to allow the export of Ukrainian grain.

But he has opted out of moves to isolate Moscow over the invasion. Turkey has increased its trade with Russia, and welcomed more than 5 million Russian visitors.

Beyond Ukraine, there’s a further source of friction, over Syria. Officials in Washington are concerned that Mr. Erdoğan might launch a new military push into northern Syria against Kurdish forces there. Ankara regards them as terrorists, although the Kurds were critically important U.S. allies in the battle to defeat Islamic State.

And although Washington and other NATO capitals hope they might find a way of resolving these tensions, they could, in fact, intensify in the coming months.

That’s because of domestic Turkish politics.

In May, Mr. Erdoğan faces elections, which are shaping up – amid economic turmoil – to be the most serious political challenge of his two-decade rule. Unsettled by polls suggesting he might lose, he has begun a huge campaign of handouts, including tax concessions, loans, and subsidies for energy and other household expenses.

If those are the carrots, Mr. Erdoğan also has an arsenal of sticks. He has accumulated wide-ranging power, enjoying effective control over most of the media and the judicial system, and has cracked down on opponents, especially since a failed military coup in 2016.

The figure seen as best placed to defeat him, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, was handed a jail sentence six weeks ago for criticizing election authorities over their ultimately failed attempt to question his 2019 mayoral victory. If confirmed by an appeals court, the ruling would bar him from running.

Dilara Senkaya/Reuters

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu attends a rally in Istanbul on Dec. 15, 2022, to oppose his conviction and political ban. He is a popular rival to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Still, Mr. Erdoğan’s main asset – and the reason his NATO partners doubt that their relations will improve significantly before election day – is his flair for embodying Turkish national pride, and asserting Turkey’s power and influence.

While the election comes in the centenary year of the modern Turkish state – established as a secular republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk after the final demise of the Ottoman Empire – Mr. Erdoğan has projected a decidedly Ottoman vision of his majority-Muslim country, as a power not just in NATO, but in Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.

With the risk of a preelection strike into Syria, frustration over delays in ratifying Sweden’s entry into NATO, and Mr. Erdoğan’s purchase of weaponry from Mr. Putin, the Turkish leader’s political stock in allied capitals has rarely been lower.

Key members of the U.S. Senate have been outspoken in their criticism. One legislator, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, has gone so far as to question whether Turkey even belongs in NATO.

But President Joe Biden seems loath to pick further fights, and is seeking congressional sign-off on the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.

That’s not because he’s comfortable with Mr. Erdoğan’s policies, as other administration officials have made clear.

But the United States and its allies recognize that an outright split within NATO would be a boon for Mr. Putin.

They appear to have concluded, as the old saying goes, that while it often seems that they can’t live with Mr. Erdoğan, they can’t live without him, either.

It is a Monday at Everglades Correctional Institution (ECI), a place few outsiders want to – or ever will – visit. 

Incarcerated men line up for a head count against the Brutalist beige backdrop of the state prison west of Miami, not far from the glowing neon of the Miccosukee Tribe casino.

Grackles flit and chatter beyond the razor-wire fences. Some of the almost 1,800 people housed here trudge along, staying between red lines painted along sidewalks that cross meticulously manicured lawns. 

Inside the prison library on a December morning, the mood is ebullient. There is not a computer screen in sight. Nor a typewriter.

Pens and paper, however, swish on cafeteria tables as about two dozen writers try out for a special event: the graduation ceremony for Exchange for Change, a Miami-based nonprofit that brings writing classes into prison and pairs incarcerated writers with writers on the outside.

Adorned with NFL team logos, the book room simmers with mumbling and ribbing. As men in prison blues read their poems and essays, a participant nicknamed Panda clocks their time. At the request of Exchange for Change, all of the participants are referred to by either their first name or a nickname. Many have been convicted of serious crimes, including sexual assault.

Kathie Klarreich, the founder of Exchange for Change, jots it down. Without fanfare, she calls out, “Who is next?”

They take turns, exploring topics from the perfect day – a beach, a surfboard, aloneness – to the primacy of numbers, including an inmate ID stitched to a shirt. 

One launches headlong into an essay, and a fellow writer pipes up: “Hey, hey, hey, take a breath, man!” 

Gustavo steps up. “He entered a world where he spent most of his time: the moonless landscape of his melancholic thoughts,” he reads from a short story.

These incarcerated writers are part of an innovative rehabilitation program in one of the most progressive prisons in Florida. The state houses the third-highest number of incarcerated people – some 80,000 – in the United States, just behind Texas and California.

After ballooning 700% between the 1970s and 2009, U.S. prison populations have declined about 7%. But while overcrowding has lessened, overall conditions, by some estimates, are at their worst in decades. Many states have seen a rise in prison deaths. Guard shortages are endemic. 

That reality has put a new focus on prison nonprofits that focus on the humanity in the individuals who inhabit them. For some at least, writing can feel liberating, if not essential.

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

Kathie Klarreich, founder of Exchange for Change, takes a break after a daylong visit to Everglades Correctional Institution in Miami on Dec. 5, 2022. Inmates say the prison writers' program gives them a necessary form of expression from inside the U.S. justice system.

“If we want to succeed as a society, as a human race, we need to recognize that humanity in each other,” says Marc Howard, a professor of government and law at Georgetown University and the founder of the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice. “There’s now a much greater realization of the capacity for change.”

The writers’ words also flit over the razor wire, informing Americans about larger issues inside the U.S. criminal justice system. One recent visitor called her trip to ECI revelatory, in terms of seeing the people in prison as fellow humans: “Any one of us could end up in here.”

“If you can write about it, you can survive it,” says Miami poet George Franklin, author of “Travels of the Angel of Sorrow.” The general counsel for Exchange for Change, Mr. Franklin facilitates inmate classes. Nodding toward the class, he says, “Yeah, my life is on the outside, but this is my community.”

Having grown from one class in 2014 to 33 classes across half a dozen south Florida prisons before the pandemic, Exchange for Change has rebounded to over 350 students.

“We don’t think about people who are incarcerated – that’s by design,” says Ms. Klarreich, a former journalist. “But they all have stories. And as a journalist, we tell people’s stories. That’s what we do.”

Another poet, Mike, hobbles up in front of the group on a cane. Straightening his broken frame – he says he was brutally beaten as a child – he clears his throat. The room is rapt as he reads from a poem called “You Haunt Me.”

My eyes go deaf at what you sing,

My feet crumble when I see you run,

My fingers crawl before the light,

My ears go blind at the words you bring.

Ready to quit after writing his first poem, Mike had, by Dec. 5, 2022, penned 677, all hand-scrawled in worn notebooks. A teacher calls him “one of the most accomplished poets I know.”

Some of his poems delve starkly into the abuse he endured as a child. “I was forced to do things that were dirty / as I told men I was good,” he writes in “Abused No More.” 

Panda looks at Ms. Klarreich when Mike wraps up: “A minute-five.” The applause is a light flourish, accompanied by finger snaps.

During a break in the program, Panda muses about the changes he has witnessed among the class, including Mike. 

“Kathie’s program is the most important one we have in here,” he says. 

“In [prison], we do have voices, but they are muffled,” says another incarcerated writer. Writing for an outside audience, even of one, “unmuffles us.”

A self-described “bulldog,” Ms. Klarreich spent 24 years working as a foreign correspondent, reporting primarily from Haiti.

Ms. Klarreich, who has worked for ABC, Time, and The Christian Science Monitor, returned to Haiti in 2010 to report on the massive earthquake. “Your life gets turned upside down by major events that you’re reporting on,” says Ms. Klarreich. “I can’t think of one that was more like that than the earthquake. The house where I had lived toppled. ... I didn’t recognize anything.”

That resonated deeply, she says, when she returned to the U.S. and resumed teaching incarcerated people to write: “When I came back to Miami, these women’s lives looked exactly the same: same uniforms, walking the same paths, eating the same meals. But it’s not true. Everything wasn’t the same. Their lives had evolved. We just don’t know it, because nobody pays any attention to them.” 

The program expanded in 2014 when a professor from Florida Atlantic University wrote with an offer to partner people in prison with the professor’s writing students for a course on the rhetoric of incarceration.

“We hashed out what turned out to be the basis of Exchange for Change,” says Ms. Klarreich. “Her students and my students read the same thing, and write responses to what they read, and then exchange papers. So all semester we have an exchange of papers between two sets of writers and two different institutions.”

Collaborating with the Frederick Douglass Project, which facilitates prison visits, Ms. Klarreich found traction.

Today, ECI is part of a broader prison reform movement that creates incentives for incarcerated people – including those in prison for life – to pursue projects and goals. Participants have to be discipline-free for four years to qualify for ECI.

Originally from Massachusetts, one writer nicknamed Boston now lives in what he calls an “artist colony,” a dorm replete with art supplies and work. The collective had a charity art show at a Miami art gallery last year. Other dorms are built around themes like religious studies or leadership training. (The leadership dorm supercleans the prison kitchen every day as an expression of professional pride.)

“Believe it or not, I wake up every day excited,” Boston says. “I find a lot of inspiration in prison.” 

When it comes to potential publication, he admits being afraid to submit his work to outside journals. “It feels like ... [the words] will just fly away,” he says.

Mike is trying out for the upcoming “showcase graduation,” which is expected to draw some 50 community members. About 12 out of 100 students are chosen to perform their work. It would be Mike’s first event. 

“I really like being a writer,” he says. “It’s a way to work through my past.”

Suddenly, the poetry tryout is broken up by a head count. Several times a day, the men march outside and line up. There are always discrepancies, so they stand and wait – and wait – until the count is right. The Exchange for Change team takes the break to huddle about who will perform at the graduation. 

As Ms. Klarreich reads off the names of the winners, Mike waits, stone-faced. His is the final name called.

He balls his hands into celebratory fists, closes his eyes, and tilts forward, as in prayer. “Yes!” he says.

AP

Zambia's President Hakainde Hichilema speaks Jan. 23 with Kristalina Georgieva, International Monetary Fund Managing Director, who commended the government’s efforts to improve transparency and tackle corruption.

It is a mark of progress in honest governance that a few experts are starting to ask this question: Do national laws against corruption apply in outer space? The question is not so far-fetched.

One American company, Lonestar, plans to put computer servers on the moon later this year. And Elon Musk’s next big space venture, Starship, promises “long-duration interplanetary flights” for people who can afford them. The struggle to ensure integrity in business and government – wherever they exist – keeps on expanding.

As a leader on Earth in exposing transnational corruption, the United States sees this struggle as not only a benefit to its economy, democracy, and national security, but also, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in December, “a challenge in many other domains.” That’s why, Mr. Blinken added, it is important to show “that pockets of transparency and accountability can actually be nurtured.”

Many of those “pockets” were highlighted in two global surveys released this week that hint at terrestrial progress.

The 2022 Democracy Index found the number of countries improving on measures such as political accountability has risen compared with 2021. And Transparency International called attention to eight countries – Ireland, South Korea, Armenia, Vietnam, the Maldives, Moldova, Angola, and Uzbekistan – that have improved their scores on its corruption perception index in the past five years.

Both surveys made a point to cite progress on a continent where corruption remains rife.

In sub-Saharan Africa, “citizens’ movements calling for deeper democratization and accountability remain a core part” of politics, stated the Democracy Index. The region saw improvements in political culture and political participation. On the corruption index, seven African nations are on the list of 24 nations worldwide that made significant progress against corruption. They include Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Angola.

“More leaders in [Africa] have stood up for democracy, and the African Union has spoken out against military takeovers,” stated the Transparency International report.

The Biden administration has elevated the struggle against corruption to the top of its foreign policy. Part of its strategy is to reinforce progress in honest governance worldwide. “We see the ways that the fight for accountability can actually motivate real, positive change – from Kyiv to Kuala Lumpur, from Lusaka to Bratislava,” says national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

And, as he might add someday, on the moon and beyond.