Ukraine: promise and possibility

UKRAINE WAS FOR decades considered a backwater of Russia. Its very name suggested as much – it derives from the word for “outskirts”, “border” or, by extension “the sticks” in Russian. Its standards of political and corporate governance were likened to those of other Russian backwaters, such as Belarus or Armenia. But it’s not a Russian backwater any more. Despite a reputation for being apathetic and fatalist, Ukrainians suddenly seemed to wake from a long sleep, to reject Viktor Yanukovich’s version of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “managed democracy” and demand instead western standards of democratic governance.