Ukraine’s political crisis. And then they woke up

The dream of a democratic, non-corrupt Ukraine may die

LIKE many separating lovers, they were at first civil - but they soon gave up. President Viktor Yushchenko now accuses Yulia Timoshenko, the other leading light of the orange revolution and Ukraine's prime minister until he sacked her last week, of abusing her position and misusing government funds. A sign of his weakness, says Mrs Timoshenko, piously: “I am ashamed for him.”

Ukraine's government imploded after the president's chief of staff resigned, accusing (among others) Petro Poroshenko, the head of the national security council, of corruption. The charges involve familiar sorts of graft: pressuring judges, auctioning access to the president and so on. Mr Poroshenko, a wealthy businessman - and, according to Mrs Timoshenko, the man who ruined her relationship with the president - insisted that his office had not enriched him by a single kopeck, but he still quit. Mr Yushchenko says he tried to broker a trade-off of other resignations between warring factions; in the end, he fired them all. Mrs Timoshenko says she was punished for obstructing the looting of the country, and to distract attention from a corruption scandal. This is “a very stupid theory”, says Mr Poroshenko.

Beneath the slung mud lies a complex confection of greed and rivalry. Mr Yushchenko says the last straw was a recent, near-violent stand-off at a big factory, part-owned by Viktor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of Ukraine's previous president. Mrs Timoshenko wanted the state to take back Mr Pinchuk's stake: for her own self-interested reasons, says the president; because its privatisation had been illegal, says Mrs Timoshenko; out of vengefulness against his family, says Mr Pinchuk. Mrs Timoshenko says, not incredibly, that Mr Poroshenko was brokering a deal (he denies it), whereby Mr Pinchuk could sell his stake to Russian businessmen, if he divested himself of some television stations.

The political event that has divided the government, which Mr Poroshenko says is the root cause of the debacle, is the parliamentary election next March. Under a constitutional reform agreed last year, some powers are to be transferred from the presidency to a prime minister nominated by parliament. The Yushchenko and Timoshenko factions were supposed to stand together; Mrs Timoshenko, who never met a rabble she didn't try to rouse, will now be a formidable opposition leader. In a turnaround startling even by the standards of Ukrainian politics, Mr Yushchenko is flirting with supporters of his opponent in last year's presidential vote, Viktor Yanukovich. Mrs Timoshenko has taken to sporting a blue ribbon alongside her orange one. Previously opposed to the constitutional reform, she now says it may be a lesser evil than an over-mighty presidency.

Who will benefit from this farce? Mrs Timoshenko says she never wanted to break from the president, and that an 11th-hour meeting with him was interrupted by Mr Poroshenko, “covered in tears and snot”. Her integrity has been questioned (again). But she leaves government before her demagogic inflationary policies inflict more pain. She is popular, and she now has victim status: like some spouses, it may have been more congenial for her to be thrown out by Mr Yushchenko than to have to walk out.

The best that can be said for him is that, like other revolutionary coalitions, his was destined to fall apart. Perhaps, indeed, the sackings mark the end of revolution and the beginning of government - and maybe a new determination to take on corruption. Unfortunately, a forlorn Mr Yushchenko has been less than even-handed. He blames Mrs Timoshenko and her allies exclusively. He has set up a commission to look into the allegations against Mr Poroshenko, but says he has seen no facts to support them (though he offered none in support of his own charges against Mrs Timoshenko). Naive loyalty to his allies is the kindest interpretation of this.

The big loser is Ukraine. Subject to confirmation by parliament, the new prime minister will be Yuri Yekhanurov, a technocrat who has signalled a less aggressive attitude to past privatisations and a more conciliatory one to Russia - sensible, given that a rise in Russian gas prices could be disastrous. But it will be hard for him to achieve much before March. Meanwhile, disillusioned Ukrainians fear that the new government will be as preoccupied with nest-feathering and back-stabbing as the old one. It may be too soon to conclude that the revolution was simply the victory of one corrupt elite over another. But, as Mr Yushchenko said last week, “the government obtained many new faces, yet the paradox is that the face of the government itself did not change.”

The dream of a democratic non-corrupt Ukraine may die.