Insight
Five years (is/is not)* a long time in Ukrainian politics (*Delete as applicable) by Ian Bond, 14 February 2019
It is five years since Ukraine’s then president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled the country for Russia. Since then, some commentators say a lot has changed, while others say not much. But however confused the picture, Ukraine still merits attention. On March 31st, Ukraine will hold its second presidential election since 2014’s so-called ‘Revolution of Dignity’. None of the leading candidates is scandal-free: the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko, formerly a successful businessman, turned up in the Panama Papers in 2016, allegedly transferring funds out of Ukraine illicitly. Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister who made a fortune in the murky gas business in the 1990s, has long been suspected of corrupt ties to another former prime minister, Pavlo Lazarenko (imprisoned in the US in 2006 for money laundering). And Volodymyr Zelenskiy, an actor and comedian whose best known character is a school teacher who becomes president of Ukraine, seems to be backed by Ihor Kolomoiskiy, accused by a business rival in 2015 of ordering contract killings in Ukraine. There is plenty more to put on the negative side of the balance sheet. In 2013, Ukraine was ranked 144th of 177 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index; by 2018 it had only limped up to 120th out of 180. By way of comparison, when Georgia overthrew the corrupt administration of Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003 it was ranked 124th out of 133 countries; by 2008 it was 67th of 180 (and it has continued to improve, to 41st in 2018). Freedom House’s annual ‘Freedom in the World’ reports also show little progress in Ukraine: it was rated ‘partly free’ in 2013 and still is. Ukraine’s population, which shrank by 13 per cent between 1990 and 2014 to 45 million, has fallen further since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine; a recent Polish study cited Russian estimates (which may be exaggerated) that 1.7 million Ukrainian citizens sought protection in Russia from April 2014 to February 2018; the same study estimated that on average there were 900,000 Ukrainian citizens in Poland at any one time. As a result, Ukraine risks labour shortages.
CER INSIGHT: Five years (is/is not)* a long time in Ukrainian politics (*Delete as applicable) 14 February 2019
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