Transitions Online: When reform isn’t
Viktor Yanukovych took Ukraine’s presidency in February 2010 affirming commitment to democracy and rule of law, and has continued to roll out the words on all state occasions ever since.
But instead, he kicked things off with a judicial overhaul in 2010 that gravely eroded judges’ already fragile independence. Wearied by Ukraine’s permanent state of chaos, Western observers were slow to react, but alarm bells became too loud to ignore later that year with the first arrests and subsequent trials of Yanukovych’s key political opponents and members of the former government.