International expert group assessed Ukraine’s gains and losses after the Orange Revolution

The project was supported by the European Program of the IRF, the Stefan Batory Foundation and East East: Partnership Beyond Borders Program of the Open Society Institute.

The idea for the publication emerged in the context of disappointment with processes taking place in Ukraine on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Orange Revolution and also on the eve of the presidential elections in 2010.

The International Renaissance Foundation and the Stefan Batory Foundation (Poland) invited experts to elaborate a joint vision and evaluate processes going on in Ukraine not only in five years after the Orange Revolution, but also in almost twenty years from the moment when Ukraine gained independence.

The authors of the publication emphasize that despite almost overall political crisis and absence of reforms during the last five years, Ukraine laid foundations in a longer term perspective for transformation into a consolidated democratic country with developed market economy and it also surpassed other countries of the post-Soviet space in terms of democratic freedoms. At the same time, the development gap between Ukraine and the Central and Eastern European countries, which became the EU members in 2004-2007, became even bigger during the recent years.

The main points of the publication are that an undisputable gain of the Orange Revolution is Ukraine’s return to the evolutionary development path, which was interrupted during Leonid Kuchma’s second presidential term. At the same time, absence of institutional reforms and low level of political culture did not allow to use the public resource of the Orange Revolution to the full extent. During the last five years pluralism (the political one, pluralism in economy, in information space, regional differences) gained strong positions as an important feature of the processes in Ukraine, but the low level of consensus and lack of strategic vision hamper further development and create risks for deepening of the authoritarian trends.

According to the authors of the publication, considering the first steps of the new authorities of Ukraine, the country’s further development in a short term perspective will mainly depend on whether the society will prove to be capable for protection of its democratic gains and freedoms and outline ‘the red lines” for the authorities.