Mind-blowing. They will affect our lives for years to come and the effects will be overwhelmingly – though not exclusively – negative.

Financial crashes of this sort almost invariably lead to severe slowdowns in the real economy, hitting output and jobs. And a slowdown in the global economy is not going to spare Ukraine, although there are reasons to hope that the country might escape relatively lightly from it. It’s still impossible to say with any confidence that the nightmare is over. At least, I wouldn’t recommend you believe anyone who shows any such confidence, as the chances are that he or she was saying the same thing after Bear Stearns collapsed in March.

The prevailing picture is still one of fear and doubt, with brief and intermittent “relief rallies” when the latest in an ever-larger series of bailouts and rescue plans is announced. When – as it ultimately will do – the stock market bounces, it will be because people have started to convince themselves that the system can deal with the problem it is currently facing.

By definition, that conviction is impossible as long as the true scale of the problem is not known. Confidence, the lifeblood of markets and economies, has vanished: first from the U.S. subprime debt, then from those who had issued or bought it, then from their analogues in other economies such as Spain and the United Kingdom, then from the U.S. economy in general, and now from the emerging economies that depend to varying degrees on demand from the U.S. to keep themselves ticking over.

It seems that no one is immune. Even commodities such as oil and steel, which for a long time defied the bearish signals coming out of the States, have suffered sharp falls in prices since June on the perception that a stricken world economy will want less of the stuff in the foreseeable future.

So where does this leave Ukraine? Well, however many opportunities we see, the financial markets have already made their feelings about Ukraine clear. Ukraine’s leading stock trading platform, the PFTS, has lost 67 percent so far in 2008, giving up all it had gained since January 2006.

The cost of insuring against a Ukrainian default has risen to nearly 600 basis points (although this may not be the best indicator as the sellers of such insurance are now driving up such premiums in an attempt to recoup some of what they lost in their ill-fated bets on subprime debt). Would-be Ukrainian borrowers in London are advised not to ask for credit, as a refusal can often offend.

The international debt markets have been effectively shut to all but the richest Ukrainian borrowers – such as Rinat Akhmetov’s DTEK energy holding company – since the start of the year. The initial public offering market, which proudly outstripped Russia’s in the first half of this year, is also now moribund. Businessmen who want to fund the construction of new sunflower seed-crushing plants or improve the efficiency of their metallurgical factories might have sold 25 percent of their company to fund the investment, but will feel differently about selling 75 percent to raise the same amount of money. They may not even be free to do so, if they have pledged shares (now sharply devalued) as collateral for the loans they have already taken out.

Instead, many Ukrainian companies will be forced to make better use of what capital and cash they have. Sometimes this will take the form of a retreat from their more ambitious plans. Already, London-listed XXI Century, a leading Ukrainian real estate developer, is selling assets to raise money, and postponing projects it had hoped to develop in the near term. Insurer Universalna is putting off its plans to expand in Belarus and Moldova. Heavy truck manufacturer KrAZ is admitting that it can’t afford a low-rate leasing incentive for truck buyers. The list goes on.

Others may face harder choices. Steel and chemicals companies with inefficient or depreciated facilities have to invest and modernize or die. If their owners can’t – or don’t want to – spend the money themselves, they will have to sell to someone who will.

Banks will have to scale back their growth plans: the London debt market will not lend to them as freely as it did, and Ukrainians fretting about their future will be leery of taking on big loans at high interest rates.

In short, things are going to get worse before they get better, but this in itself does not need to be a calamity. Adversity can enforce discipline, and crisis can generate the kind of change that Ukraine has failed to make in the last three years of easy money. The agriculture sector is visibly increasing its productivity and competitiveness.  The banking sector has been largely taken over by well-capitalized European universal banks that have – fingers crossed – escaped the worst of the credit disaster this year and should avert the risk of systemic failure.

The passing of the joint stock company law has proved again that cross-party consensus is possible on truly important reforms (as it was with the entry to the World Trade Organization).

Moreover, the Union of European Football Associations looks likely, according to the most recent reports, to confirm Ukraine’s right to co-host the Euro 2012 championships, which will provide a framework and focus for billions of dollars in investment to be invested in infrastructure.

None of these on its own will be enough to allow Ukraine’s financial markets or its economy to escape the consequences of the credit crisis unscathed. But they are real and substantial reasons for optimism to sustain us through the slowdown that is almost certainly coming.

Geoffrey Smith is a consultant and strategist for Renaissance Capital, the Moscow-based investment bank. He moved to Kyiv this year from Moscow after serving for more than five years as bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires covering the former Soviet Union.