IN THE spring of 2014, as the war in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region was breaking out, deadly clashes wracked the elegant port city of Odessa. On May 2nd pro-Russian separatists shot at pro-Ukrainian demonstrators from behind police lines. The riot ended in a fire that killed 46 separatists. The city has been largely quiet ever since.
Yet over the past few months Odessa, now governed by Mikheil Saakashvili, a former president of Georgia, has become a battleground in a less visible sort of war. This pits the corrupt post-Soviet system that has ruled Ukraine for nearly a quarter of a century against the law-based state that was promised by the Maidan revolution in Kiev nearly two years ago.
It was Ukrainians’ aspirations for a modern Westernised country that spurred Russia’s aggression against them in the first place. But while the war has turned Ukraine against Russia, cost 8,000 lives and battered Ukraine’s economy, it has not created a functional state. All too often, the conflict has been used by the government as an excuse for its failure to change.
Only 3% of Ukrainians are satisfied with the pace of reforms. None of…
