Post card from Ukraine

This is one in a series of post cards from Reuters reporters across Europe, Middle East and Africa

Ukraine’s famous instability, verbose politicians and haphazard legislation present the investor – and the journalist – many red herrings. While talk of impeachment of President Viktor Yushchenko ring alarm bells, constitutionally it is nonsense. As CDSs go off the rails, Ukraine’s sovereign debt repayments are small and manageable. As Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko calls for the central bank governor’s blood, he is still at the helm. And while Yushchenko and Tymoshenko fight like Itchy and Scratchy, the country – to the amazement of some – has yet to collapse. 

Investors inside Ukraine have long known this and with good lawyers have managed to get on with business as the economy driven by steel and grain exports boomed at 7 percent annually since 2000. They follow political events constantly but are less quick to judge, because often their significance appears later or in fact does not exist. Those outside Ukraine overestimate the consistency of its politics. None of the three major parties – Tymoshenko’s, Yushchenko’s or opposition leader Yanukovich’s can be branded liberal, conservative, socialist, pro or anti Russian. Populism and pragmatism – usually at the last minute — are the key policies.

Always a marriage of convenience in Ukraine?

He was a suave central banker and she a “gas princess”, a young politician desperate to make her mark. In 1998 Yulia  Tymoshenko, now Ukraine’s prime minister, said she knew her destiny lay with Viktor Yushchenko, who went on to become president.

“We understood that we are a team,” she said at that time.

It’s an assertion Yushchenko disputes — a clash of views that has defined this partnership since they overturned a Soviet-style leadership in the 2004 “Orange Revolution” and vowed a modern, Western future for Ukraine’s 47 million people.

Then they stood shoulder-to-shoulder — her revolutionary speeches firing up crowd after crowd, his more academic approach comforting those who feared she was reckless in her pursuit of power.