Ukraine After the Revolution

Five years ago, post-Soviet Ukraine, a critically placed country of some 46 million people, seemed to be on the fast track toward modernity. The Orange Revolution, the spontaneous mass protests of fraud in Ukraine’s November 2004 presidential election, presaged a mature civil society and free media. The protests led to the election of Viktor Yushchenko, a banker and former Prime Minister who had joined the opposition and challenged Viktor Yanukovych, handpicked successor of the authoritarian Leonid Kuchma.

But the Orange Revolution’s rhetoric of democracy, reform and NATO integration never lived up to reality. Internecine conflicts and the vanity and venality of the two main leaders of the Orange forces, Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, plagued a series of governments and led rapidly to political deadlock, dysfunctional populist eruptions, and the squandering of a rare mandate for fundamental reform. Indeed, internal Orange camp rivalries led to the collapse of two governments and one incipient majority. When the second Orange government of Prime Minister Tymoshenko took power in December 2007, her policies faced vetoes and nearly endless obstacles strewn before her by President Yushchenko.