Congratulations to National Bank of Ukraine chief Viktor Yuschenko for his skilful handling of the threat posed to Ukraine by Russia's economic meltdown. Depite the dire warnings that Ukraine would inevitably follow suit, he has managed to stave off disaster, albeit at the cost of a devaluation of the hryvna.
But the sort of currency freefall and political chaos that hit Russia have not happened here. Importantly, the economic crisis in Ukraine has not burned foreign investors as it did in Russia, where they have fled the country in droves and are unlikely to return for a long time to come.
Foreign investors have certainly had sleepless nights here over the past few weeks but, if Ukraine continues to remain relatively stable, there is little reason for them to ditch the country.
Ukraine has been helped by a series of high-profile votes of confidence by leaders of other nations and by financial institutes, notably the approval earlier this month of a crucial $2.2 billion loan by the International Monetary Fund.
But there are already signs that the Ukrainian Parliament is going to fritter away the country's best chance for a long time to crawl out of its economic mire. Sadly, that is not surprising. Much of the parliament's membership is made up of ignorant, selfish or plain wicked people with no vision for Ukraine other than as a huge cash trough into which to stick their pig-like snouts.
Instead of moving ahead with economic reforms that could set the country on its feet, the talk again is of impeaching President Leonid Kuchma. Maybe there are grounds for impeaching Kuchma and probably few Ukrainians would weep at his departure. But unlike the world's foremost economic power, America, where the president could also face impeachment, Ukraine has more pressing problems to be solved. Months of wrangling will not succeeed anyway in yielding an impeachment but they will see the economy sinking to still more pitifully low levels.
The threat of spillover from the Russian crisis is not over by any means. With the prospect of old-style Communist diehard Yevgeny Primakov becoming prime minister there, Ukraine's Communists and their leftist allies will take heart.
Ukraine's Communists yearn for the times when they were top pig and they will do anything to get their snouts back in the best troughs. The welfare of the Ukrainian people, let alone the country's independence, means nothing to them.
Kuchma's fate will be decided at next year's presidential elections. Instead of wasting time on talk about his impeachment, the non-communists in parliament – who are still the majority – should work on building a decent future for Ukraine, not prolonging its agony.
