A couple of times I thought Natalie Jaresko was going to cry. But she did not. It was twilight in May 2015, and we sat on the terrace of her house just outside Kyiv. As we talked, all the emotion of trying to save Ukraine from economic oblivion bubbled to the surface. Each time, though, the Minister of Finance regained her composure. Her two daughters, aged 17 and 11, drifted in and out asking homework questions. “I just feel incredible pressure,” said her mother. Ukraine’s very “existence as a country” was under threat, and “we have no choice but to succeed.”
The figures were dire. In 2014 industrial production declined by 21 percent and the hyrvnia had lost 69 percent of its value against the dollar. The country had lost territory, resources, industries, people and markets. Between 40 and 60 percent of economic activity is in the gray economy. In the first quarter of 2015 the economy was 17.6 percent smaller than a year before. The war, which was costing between $5 and $7 million a day, was being fought with guns, but securing the home front meant saving the economy too. After 23 years of poor and often literally criminal management, making sure that the country did not implode under the weight of its debts and generalized corruption was a responsibility which fell, out of the blue, onto Natalie’s shoulders.
