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Jack Jordan, Spiked: online

When the spotlight of the Western media was last on Ukraine, optimism was in the air. ‘Our man’ was in, the oligarchs were out and a new era in Eastern European politics was being predicted by journalists and politicians alike.

The so-called Orange revolution – in which the opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko fought his way to the presidency despite electoral fraud, the state-controlled media and an attempted poisoning – was hailed as a shining example of the New Europe in action. It made for a good Hollywood narrative: the dioxin-scarred Yushchenko finding the strength through ‘people power’ to take on the dark forces of the post-Soviet world. With the colourful occasion of his inauguration ceremony and the party afterwards on Kyiv’s central square, the story was given a neat climax, and the attention of the world turned elsewhere.

Since then, however, cracks have appeared in the new democracy, the origins of which lay long before the revolution was first considered a possibility. Yushchenko’s Nasha Ukraina party (’Our Ukraine’), a loosely bound coalition of liberals, socialists, communists and environmentalists that he had been gathering since he was dismissed as prime minister in 2001, has shown a lack of unity in pushing through the new government’s reforms, with recent parliamentary debates on key issues ending in punch-ups.

Struggles at the top have also marred progress. Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister whose high personal popularity rating gave the revolution much of its vigour, has been jealously guarding her job from the rest of the cabinet, and may consider challenging Yushchenko for the presidency if the opportunity arises. Known as the ‘Gas princess’ for her multibillion dollar personal fortune from natural resources and wanted for embezzlement in Russia, Tymoshenko has been accused of bringing a new oligarchy into power at the same time as condemning the actions of the previous establishment.

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