Ukraine gained its independence with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, but it did not gain its freedom until the Orange Revolution in 2004. Yet even freedom did not bring change, as Ukraine’s first lady Kateryna Yushchenko notes, but the opportunity to achieve change. On the foundation of the Orange Revolution, the formidable task of building democratic institutions, economic growth, rule of law and civil society, begins.
About the Author
Kateryna Yushchenko is the first lady of Ukraine and chairperson of the Ukraine 3000 Foundation. Before moving to Ukraine from the United States, she served from 1986 to 1988 as special assistant to the U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs. She was also a cofounder and vice president of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation. This essay draws on her address to the Fifth Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in Kyiv on 6 April 2008.
In March 2002, three-fifths of Ukraine’s voters chose a party or coalition opposed to the overbearing presidential apparatus of Leonid Kuchma, but the antipresidential forces found themselves frozen out in…
