City Life with Alexandra Matoshko

I was, of course, amazed at such a definition, but as it turned out, he merely meant the contrast it makes with the rest of Ukraine. If you are a foreigner and you come and live right in the central area of the capital, moving between local clubs and restaurants, you will not be affected by the “brutish realities” of life in Eastern Europe much or at all.

With all these high-end establishments – restaurants offering dinners for $100 apiece, shops selling garments by top designers and gold-plated mobile phones, Kyiv looks quite similar to what you’d find in many other Western European capitals. Indeed, it’s hard to make someone believe Ukraine is “poor” while watching all Lexuses and Hummers park in front of the luxurious Mandarin Plaza.

Naturally, the percentage of rich in the population is very low, so who consumes all this ridiculously expensive stuff? Places like Louis Vuitton boutique stand empty for the most part, its shop assistants resembling mannequins with their stillness.

But, of course, how they keep their business going doesn’t concern me. What concerns me and many of my fellow citizens, locals as well as expats, is an obvious lack of businesses catering to the needs of the middle class. 

Each new nightclub opening in town seems to have one single goal – to exceed all others in terms of luxury and price level as well as face control. How else will you attract people to a new place, unless you tell them it’s almost inaccessible?

Also, there are more and more restaurants appearing, where people like to go not because of amazing food and service (which is often not the case), but because they don't mind paying ridiculous prices for things that are actually worth 20 times less. That means they have really “made it.” Decent low-priced hotels are also scarce. There are top-notch rooms for those who can afford it. If not, your best choice would be renting apartments by the day. Still, in general, renting in Kyiv is not a cheap enterprise and the city is fast approaching the world’s most expensive cities in this respect. The thing is, even if it gets as pricy as Paris and London, it’s not going to get any closer to becoming one of them. And the prices that keep going up may eventually start scaring people off, rather than attracting them. The fact that it’s possible to drink and smoke almost everywhere in Kyiv makes it all seem very free, but the “freedom” it creates is outweighed by the negative impact it has on the general level of morale and culture.