"Few people know that Ukraine is the world’s most unequal country, if you look at wealth (not income). The second-most unequal is Russia," noted The Economist.
And few people know that Ukraine's Maidan Revolution was not about the Russian language, or even about signing an agreement with the EU. It was about systemic corruption and political cronyism that was slowly yet unstoppably choking the life out of the economy, chasing out foreign investment and the country's best and brightest, and depriving a whole generation of smart, ambitious young Ukrainians of any kind of future where their hard work and merit could better their station in life.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin cannot let the Maidan Revolution succeed in stamping out corruption and reforming the economy. Now he is perfectly content to let Ukraine be a freezing economic and political basket case with a Russian-fomented "frozen conflict" in its eastern Donbas region.
By C.W.
November 20, 2014 | The Economist
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