So, President Yanukovych. I don’t always agree with the folks at Foreign Policy, but I think they nail this one:

Ukrainians were absolutely correct to stand up and defend their democratic rights back in 2004. Yanukovych and his party were guilty of egregious election fraud. Moscow supported Yanukovych so openly, and so brutishly, that some Ukrainians presumably ended up voting for his opponent out of sheer spite.

But let’s face it. The record since then hasn’t exactly been an exercise in the glories of Ukrainian democracy. No sooner had Yushchenko and Tymoshenko achieved power (as president and prime minister, respectively) than they began to indulge in a feud that essentially paralyzed Ukrainian politics for the rest of Yushchenko’s term. The result was a long list of non-accomplishments. Kiev-based commentator Mykola Riabchuk, an ex-supporter, ticks off the list: “He failed to bring Ukraine closer to Europe,” thus frustrating one of the central demands of the Orange demonstrators. “He failed to separate business and politics” — another key disappointment for a country where a tiny group of business tycoons wields power constrained only by their competition among themselves. No sooner was the new president elected, Riabchuk notes, than he appointed several of his oligarch supporters to ministerial positions.

Small wonder, then, that Yushchenko didn’t make much headway against Ukraine’s fantastically stubborn culture of corruption. Last year global corruption watchdog Transparency International gave Ukraine a ranking of 146 on the group’s notorious “Corruption Perceptions Index.” To offer some context, that was the same rating achieved by Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, East Timor — and, oh yes, Russia. In 2004, when Yushchenko scored his great victory, Ukraine’s ranking was 122. “I don’t think that’s changed, and no one’s tried to change it,” says David Marples, a Ukraine-watching history professor at the University of Alberta. “In Ukraine the corruption goes right down to the village level.”

Yushchenko turned out to be a pretty big disappointment all around: stubborn, clumsy, tone-deaf, and obsessed with internal rivalries. He got eliminated in the first round this time. The runoff election was between Yanukovych — a former petty criminal who seems unable to string three coherent sentences together — and the equally horrible Julia Tymoshenko. Under the circumstances, it’s hard to blame the Ukrainians for choosing Yanukovych. (N.B., while the 2004 elections were marred by gross fraud, this year’s elections seem to have been pretty clean.)

So far, Yanukovych’s young administration is interesting for two things: what he’s done, and what he hasn’t.

What he’s done: Yanukovych has swerved Ukraine sharply closer to Russia. Continue reading →