“You should have made an appointment,” the clerk says, eyeing us dubiously. But Olena Ivanchenko isn’t the kind of woman to take no for an answer. She launches into a flurry of objections, and soon we’re being led into the office of a local official named Vasil Grisha. I’m in Skvyra, a small town 75 miles outside Kiev, to see if Ukraine’s post-revolutionary reforms have reached this far. The slight but ferocious Ivanchenko – a longtime local activist – isn’t happy with the way things are going, and she wants me to meet one of the men she holds responsible.

Grisha, who clearly isn’t glad to see us, complains that he hadn’t had any time to prepare. He begins by telling me that things in Skvyra are looking up since the Euromaidan revolution two years ago. “I’d put it very differently,” Ivanchenko interrupts. “What have the citizens gotten? How open is our government, really?”

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