The currently ongoing reforms in Ukraine are hindered by internal enemies and obstacles, as well as by Moscow’s “hybrid war” against Kyiv. Given the scale, complexity and challenges of the Ukrainian transformation project, its intermediate results are not unimpressive, yet still far from sustainable and successful. Ukraine’s slowly advancing Europeanisation is, sooner or later, going to affect the whole post-Soviet space via demonstration and diffusion effects. To support it further, Western states and organizations should cooperate more closely with Ukrainian politicians, bureaucrats, experts and activists who are backing the reforms.
The Ongoing Ukrainian Reforms in their Social and International Contexts*
Since the victory of the Revolution of Dignity at the beginning of 2014, Ukraine has been trying to radically restructure its economy, governance, judiciary, healthcare, education system, and cultural landscape. Kyiv’s implementation of reforms is actively supported by the Ukrainian civil society and diaspora in the West, as well as by such development institutions as the IMF, World Bank, EBRD, etc. In addition to numerous other European governmental and semi-governmental organizations, like the German GIZ and DAAD, the EU has been playing a key role in the process of transformation and Europeanisation of Ukraine, after the Association Agreement with Ukraine came into full force on January 1, 2016.
Indeed, a number of potentially important legal acts have been adopted after the publication of the ambitious “Strategy 2020” program of President Petro Poroshenko in July 2014. Among others, laws regarding lustration, fight against corruption, state procurement, financing of parties, reorganizing state governance, higher education reform, a new police force, public broadcasting etc. have come into force [1]. Four new specialized agencies are being exclusively established to fight corruption in different spheres [2]. Eminent Kyiv political scientist Olexiy Haran thus argued in January 2016:
It is precisely now that the most important institutional changes are occurring, such as the establishment of new institutions and adoption of laws [3].
Despite such a remarkable beginning, Ukraine’s reformation has, however, not made much progress so far.
Causes of Delays in the Reform Process
The main causes of the sluggish reform process are its large scale and complicated setting. The Warsaw Centre for Eastern Studies characterized the specific challenge of Ukraine’s current reformation in the following way:
The Ukrainian modernisation, given the size of the country and the scale of the existing problems, is unprecedented in the post-Soviet area. Ukraine has been facing the challenge of reforming almost all the key areas of the state’s operation. Furthermore, the back
