Ukraine

Ukraine you’re visiting today is not the country that previously existed. ‘Post-Orange Ukraine’ might have the political blues as successive parliamentary stalemates drag out, but its press is freer, its attitudes more open and its economy improving. Memories of demonstrating on ‘the maydan’still fuel increased civic awareness. There’s fledgling democracy instead of autocracy, fair elections and a tolerance of genuine public debate. At the same time, the unfulfilled promises of a weakened president have injected a sense of realism, if not cynicism. Ukraine, whose name means ‘borderland’, is slowly, and sometimes indecisively, shifting. You still frequently encounter the surly, unhelpful bureaucracy that reigned when this was part of the Soviet Union, but now it’s tempered by widespread aspirations to eventually join the EU. The younger generation, central to the Orange Revolution, are looking forward and revelling in newfound freedoms. Traditionalists, meanwhile, are concerned about floating too far out of neighbouring Russia’s orbit