Just three years after the Euromaidan uprising prompted Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovych to flee Kiev for refuge in Moscow, Ukraine has finally begun to make tangible progress in its reform agenda. Yanukovych, who in his two-and-a-half years as president was infamous for stealing the country’s remaining wealth to line his pockets and those of his friends, was drummed from office in large part because of his administration’s rampant corruption.
So perhaps the citizens of Belarus and Russia have taken a cue from their neighbor’s success, though limited, in rooting out the corruption that makes the lives of so many ordinary citizens miserable.