Welcome to Ukraine, the most corrupt nation in Europe

Ukraine’s National Cancer Institute occupies three smoke-grey, six‑storey blocks in a residential district on the edge of Kiev. The external walls are tiled, with occasional scars where the bricks peep through. When Soviet workmen completed the facade, they built the date – “1968” – into it. Since then, maintenance appears to have been erratic. Nonetheless, business at the institute has always been brisk, and is getting brisker.

Half of Ukraine’s men, and a fifth of its women, smoke; the national diet is heavy with animal fat; the national drink is vodka. Radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spread thyroid cancers throughout the 1980s generation, increasing the incidence among children tenfold. There are few family doctors, which means that breast, prostate and bowel tumours often go undetected for months. Survival rates for these cancers are among the worst in Europe.