Riesenschlamassel im “Dazwischenland”
B. Bischof, Die Presse
February 25 2010

Everyone is looking to Greece and Spain, but in the East there is a country that is economically far worse off that them and that cannot even count on the EU’s support: the Ukraine. Here the crisis is not only economic, but also political and social. The newly elected President Viktor Yanukovich is a typical representative of the old political elite responsible for today’s disaster. The country needs a heavy-duty cure, also because in the past years the former President Viktor Yucenko and the Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko did not adopt the necessary economic reforms. The major obstacles to a radical reformist policy lie in the weakness of the Ukraine’s political system, and in particular in the unhealthy relationship between the oligarchs and politics. The new President himself is a puppet of the oligarchs of eastern Ukraine, Rinat Achmetov. For the reforms there is also the need of Parliament’s support and a Prime Minister who collaborated. At the moment, however, Yanukovich has neither one nor the other with him, and Tymoshenko will do all she can to make life hard for him. Ukraine’s friends and neighbours should perhaps stop considering this country as an area to be drawn into their own sphere of influence, and this is not only true for Russia. The vast majority of Ukrainians as well as the country’s elites are pro-Western and look to Europe, but as a “buffer country” the Ukraine can do no more than nurture good neighbourly relations with Russia.