In an article titled “Ukraine gets a new government, same corrupt politics”, written by Leonid Bershidsky and carried by Bloomberg, the author writes that “Yatsenyuk’s departure was only a matter of time. In February, he barely survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament, and a burly legislator tried physically to carry him off the dais as he hung on to the lectern. His party, the Popular Front, defies its name by not even showing up in recent polls for lack of voter support.”
Furthermore, he reminds the reader that “Under Yatsenyuk, the Ukrainian economy has moved from sharp recession to stagnation. The tax system is still oppressive, property rights uncertain, bureaucrats greedy and the middle class impoverished. Despite tiny quarter-on-quarter output growth at the end of last year, the Ukrainian retail sector was still shrinking in February, 2016. These are not the kind of results Ukrainians wanted from their 2014 “Revolution of dignity.”
Looking forward, the prognosis seems pretty grim, as Bershidsky predicts that “An early election would extend the political crisis by months and almost certainly scupper fresh installments of aid from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF has lately halted disbursements because of the political uncertainty.”
Arkady Moshes, Director of the Russia and Eurasia Program, at the Finnish Institute of International Relations (Helsinki) and Gabor Horvath, foreign editor at the Népszabadság paper (Budapest) shared their views.
