The New Ukraine: Inside Kiev's House of Cards

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/post-yanukovych-ukraine-looks-to-avoid-past-pitfalls-a-956585.html



In the days after Yanukovych's fall, the Ukrainian president's lavish lifestyle spurred outrage around the world. Now the provisional government is struggling to avoid the corruption and clientelism that plagued its predecessors.

The New Ukraine: Inside Kiev's House of Cards
By Christian Neef, Wladimir Pyljow and Matthias Schepp
March 03, 2014 – 05:23 PM

It was 11:37 a.m. last Wednesday when Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's wealthiest and most powerful oligarch, released a statement: "Like all Ukrainians, we want to create a new country in which democracy and the rule of law are supreme. We will participate in the blossoming of Ukraine."

Akhmetov, who controls more than 100 companies with 300,000 employees, was a close confidant of toppled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. In contrast to many others of his standing, he remained in the country and his statement was a clear indication that he had switched allegiances to the new government in Ukraine. It was received with a sigh of relief in Kiev.

By then, many other rich and powerful Ukrainians had long since left, including the top Ukrainian official sitting sitting in a café near Pushkin Square in the center of Moscow last week. He too had served the Yanukovych government in recent years. "Only God knows when I will be able to return to Kiev," he says. Afraid that the country's new leaders might take revenge, he adds, "please just call me Oleg."

Oleg can effortlessly recite the names of section heads responsible for issues pertaining to Russia and Ukraine in the foreign ministries of Western European capitals. He knows them all. He soberly recounts how Europe rebuffed him and his delegation while the Kremlin ratcheted up the economic pressure on Ukraine in recent years. "The EU should have gotten involved," he says.