I am quickly getting a sense of post-Soviet politics here in Kiev, between the local events and my Russian colleagues talking about the situation in their country.

Well, two events in the past couple of days. First, one rising Russian oligarch, arrested at Kiev’s Borispol airport late last year, was being moved from one wing of a courthouse to the other. That was enough to be in the line of fire and in a second, Maksim Kurochkin, was gone. Inside a courthouse? How did they do that? Oh surprise, he didn’t have a bullet-proof vest. And for sure, nobody had informed anyone else of that transfer within the building.

And yesterday, some demonstrations started in Kiev, on Independence Square where all the demonstrations during the Orange Revolution took place. Nothing big, only 40-50 people, but the President already mentioned that he may call early Parlementarian elections.

Never a dull moment…

I have arrived in Kiev, Ukraine, about 2 weeks ago, only to be sick from day 1. Today is my first day back at work and I am learning quickly about the political situation of the country. That’s very helpful when one works on public sector reforms issues…!

Suddenly, the word oligarch which semed like a dirty word in the West, is a very common thing here in Ukraine, or for my Russian colleagues. It’s part of the picture. The issue is, are you working for the right one, or have you make the right alliance? Or should one say allegiance…?

One thing is sure is that people are ready for change and after many years of corruption at the highest level, they wants things to start moving. The Orange Revolution of late 2004 was a clear expression of change from the street. It left only a few months to President Yushchenko to do so. One of the main thing that led the President’s lead opponent to be appointed Prime Minister was that the President didn’t do much to reform the country between the presidential election of 2004 and the parlementarian elections of 2006. That’s a short amount of time in terms of public policy. For once, it seems like political and public opinion short-termism may coincide. Policy implementation is another thing.