Rotten apples of the Orange Revolution

"Why does the Western media report only on the oligarchs and not the common people in Ukraine? If they did they would explain to the world the enormous corruption in our country." Such was the contention - or rather, angry query - put to me by a fiery young journalist in Kiev last week, in an abrupt break from explaining the 30 September election and its possible outcomes.

He was far from being the only one, in both explanations and demands - which is not surprising: corruption is the issue that most interests Ukrainians.

Regardless of the subject of discussion, or the profession and rank of the discussants, everything always leads back to the cloud of corruption. And not merely as a political issue or one of theory or morality. It appears to have touched the lives of many average Ukrainians in one way or another - from the need to bribe an official in order to receive state services, to being bombarded by apparently lucrative promises from politicians in return for votes. Since these solemn offers then often fail to materialise, elections are actually deemed by many to be a sort of double corruption: a dubious, probably illegal offer to start with, that is then reneged on once power has been achieved and the average citizen can once more be ignored.

In such examples of daily life, the issue can be understood as the type of corruption seen in Nikolai Gogol’s ‘Government Inspector’, in which officials are many and petty and wield disproportionate power but are part of the very fabric of society. It can be understood as the modern manifestation of this approach, which Aigars Stokenbergs, a Latvian politician, recently defined as a "kleptocratic, post-Soviet model".

Stokenbergs’ comment is important here, not least because he was talking about Latvia, which as a member of the EU should now be a model of probity. His insight therefore suggests that Ukraine is not unique in its problems, but rather the latest to suffer the pains of removing the vestiges of lengthy Soviet rule. But then again, maybe not. No former Soviet asset in Europe is so large and so naturally endowed with natural assets - which leads to the oligarchs, who put the Ukraine in a class of its own.

This group of people appears to be viewed by many Ukrainians with a mixture of revulsion and fascination. They wield so much power, so blatantly, and therefore so unpleasantly and so politically that they probably cannot but be viewed in such a light. The common assumption seems to be that behind every political party, including the ‘good’ ones, there is a resident oligarch with specific interests.

The good news is that on the whole this extremely small group of power-brokers appear to have decided that the pro-western approach is marginally better - both lucratively and as an inevitability - than a purely and defiantly pro-Russian one. The bad news is that they are still there and have no intention of leaving or having their assets diminished.

Since oligarch-watching now seems to be a near national sport, their existence is probably not the worst of it for Ukrainians. What really hurts the average citizen - which is at the core of the feeling of deprivation - is the asset- stripping. Even for a post-Soviet Gogolesque society, it is simply too large. It is corruption gone mad, and nobody seems to care - or do they?

Regardless of western attitudes, which to be fair in the case of the EU is far from simply accommodating to corruption, there has been a massive change in the Ukraine. While three elections in as many years may suggest instability and an inability to change deeply ingrained political attitudes, it may equally reflect precisely the opposite - a massive shock to the system that is bearing fruit. If the change was not working, the old power brokers would have managed simply to take it over and make it their own. They have clearly tried and are trying, and therein lies the achievement. They have not succeeded and the longer they are staved off, the greater the chances of their ultimate failure since the new modes will take ever deeper root.

The trick will be to entwine these roots with trust, within the political system and between politicians and citizens - for it is only with such trust that corruption can begin to recede. And that is the true challenge for Ukraine - and the EU.

• Ilana Bet-El is an academic, author and policy adviser based in Brussels.

"Why does the Western media report only on the oligarchs and not the common people in Ukraine? If they did they would explain to the world the enormous corruption in our country." Such was the contention - or rather, angry query - put to me by a fiery young journalist in Kiev last week, in an abrupt break from explaining the 30 September election and its possible outcomes.