Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Children during Victory Day celebrations in Kyiv on May 9. From an estimated population of 54 million people in Ukraine in 1991, the nation has fewer than 46 million people today. A grim year ends, voter fatigue high ahead of vote.

Staff Reports — The year 2009 was not the worst in Ukraine’s independent history, especially for those who lived through and remember the early 1990s, the dangerous and desperate days that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. But for Ukrainians accustomed to a decade-long economic boom and who thought that their nation was finally turning the corner from poverty to prosperity, the year provided one shock after another.

Grim may be the best one-word description of the year.

A fresh generation of educated, middle-class citizens got their first bitter taste of economic recession and swallowed hard as employers shed jobs while home and car loans came due. Looking ahead to 2010, economic recovery is expected to be slow, volatile and full of challenges. And into the mix, Ukrainians will decide whom to elect as their president for the next five years.

Here’s a look at 10 key events:


Economic recession

Economic growth came to a screeching halt in the fall of 2008 and plunged the nation into a deep recession that lingered throughout this year. Ukraine fell from its perch as one of the fastest-growing nations to one that suffered the most, perhaps ending the year with a 15 percent slide in gross domestic product. The nation relied on the International Monetary Fund to rescue it with a $16.4 billion credit line, the first such bailout in a decade. The country's leaders proceeded to squander much of the assistance and goodwill of the international community, as stories emerged of embezzlement in bank bailouts and wild budgetary expenditures. The nation ends the year on the verge of default with the IMF lending program frozen. The recession exposed how badly the country depends on the exports of raw materials, namely steel. It also showed that the easy lending practices of recent years were not justified. The troubles glaringly exposed Kyiv’s politicians as ill-equipped to govern. Corruption and bureaucracy that stunt economic growth and diversity still thrive. The long-battered hryvnia, meanwhile, ended its sharp slide of 2008 and ended 2009 worth roughly eight to the dollar, about the same value as at the beginning of the year.


Gas war

The year started out with a nearly three-week cutoff of natural gas from Russia to Ukraine, the major transit route of supplies to Europe. The Kremlin smeared the nation as unreliable and corrupt. Finally, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, made a deal that put the nation on a path to market pricing and that removed a shadowy intermediary, RosUkrEnergo, which was believed to be pocketing billions from gas-transit trade annually. Tymoshenko claimed the company, controlled by Dmytro Firtash, had links with political rivals, President Victor Yushchenko and ex-Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych. They denied such links. State-owned gas company Naftogaz remained on the brink of insolvency all year, while Tymoshenko closed out the year still trying to shut down Firtash’s interest in media, regional gas utilities and chemical companies.

Corruption, scandal

It was a bumper crop year for scandals. Among the memorable ones: The pedophilia case, in which a few lawmakers from Tymoshenko’s camp were implicated in the sexual abuse of minors. They denied involvement and claimed to be victims of a smear campaign. But earlier in the year, another Tymoshenko ally, lawmaker Victor Lozinsky, fled to evade charges that he murdered a villager in Kirovohrad Oblast. Law enforcement, as usual, seemed more engaged with corruption than the fight against it. One high-ranking law enforcement official, Andriy Kislinsky, was fired as the deputy head of the State Security Service after his educational credentials were revealed as bogus. The country’s top cop, Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, held on to his job despite many missteps, including the notorious incident at an airport in Frankfurt, Germany, when he was banned from boarding a flight amid reports that he and his son were drunk and obnoxious. On Dec. 15, a top prosecutor, Oleksandr Shinalskiy, quit amid accusations of corruption and incompetence. And so this old story goes on.


Pukach caught

After seven years on the run, the former police general who confessed to killing with his own hands journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000, was finally caught by law enforcement last summer. He was hiding out on a farm in a small village in Zhytomyr Oblast. Oleksiy Pukach was freed from custody in 2003 under suspicious circumstances, but his capture hasn’t led to the case being solved. Details of testimony that Pukach has given to investigators and whether he has revealed the identities of those who ordered the horrible crime are secret. And there are fears that too many witnesses have died and too much time has passed to solve this case.


Flu fears

As predicted by medical experts worldwide, Ukraine was not spared by the global swine flu epidemic. When it hit, the nation’s dilapidated health care system was overrun. The epidemic struck western Ukrainian oblasts this fall, curtailing the academic year and presidential election campaigns. Tamiflu, the main drug used to treat it, was nowhere to be found for most citizens. But plenty of politicians played doctor on television, either boasting of their success in combating the crisis or lobbing accusations of incompetence against opponents. By year’s end, the flu-related death toll topped 500 people and nearly 3 million were infected with flu-related illnesses.


Euro 2012 saved?

The Union of European Football Associations’ decision on Dec. 11 to keep four Ukrainian cities as co-hosts of the Euro 2012 soccer tournament was a rare bit of bright news. And, this time, two of the country’s deep-pocketed billionaires acted in the public's interest. Rinat Akhmetov built a new stadium in Donetsk while Oleksandr Yaroslavsky refurbished one in Kharkiv. Doubts remain over the woeful state of airports, hotels and roads – not to mention with local experience over hosting international tourist events.


Pirates

Dozens of Ukrainian sailors spent months on the high seas as captives of Somali pirates and virtually abandoned by their state. The 24-member crew of the Ariana was freed on Dec. 10 after seven months of imprisonment. And 17 Ukrainian and Russian sailors of the Faina were held hostage on the Indian Ocean from Sept. 25, 2008, until their release on Feb. 5. Ukraine is estimated to have more than 70,000 men and women at sea at any given time, the majority of them are under non-Ukrainian flags.


Foreign policy adrift

It was a year of ups and downs for Ukraine’s relations with Russia, with Tymoshenko managing to ignite a working – if not flirting – relationship with the Kremlin while Yushchenko continued to be assailed by Moscow for his pro-European and pro-NATO rhetoric. The Kremlin took delight in the derailment of Ukraine’s hopes for speedy NATO membership. Meanwhile, as Ukrainian politicians put the national interests behind their personal ones, Brussels and Washington started talking about “Ukraine fatigue.” The inability of Ukraine to meet democratic European Union standards has stalled progress on free trade and an association agreement that could lead to eventual membership in the 27-nation bloc.


Election fever

At some point in the year, the nation’s politicians looked ahead to the Jan. 17 presidential election and all other interests became secondary to securing the nation’s top spot. Despite a desperate search for new faces, the same old ones – Yanukovych and Tymoshenko – ended the year as the two most likely candidates for president, according to polls. But challengers such as Arseniy Yatseniuk and Sergiy Tigipko were also gaining strength.


Zahoor buys Kyiv Post

Many businesses, big and small, cut costs and fired people to survive. With advertising revenues falling sharply, the Kyiv Post was no exception to the hard-hit news media sector.

But salvation came in the form of a new investor, Kyiv-based businessman Mohammad Zahoor. New York City native Jed Sunden, who started the newspaper in 1995, sold it for $1.1 million in July to Zahoor. The British citizen and native of Pakistan, who made his fortune making steel in Donetsk, gave the Kyiv Post a new lease on life. Zahoor pledged that the best years of Kyiv’s top English-language paper “are still ahead” and he also bought into its mission of independent, investigative journalism.

He also plans more investment into other media, including print, Internet and television.