Most politicians try to say something uplifting when they take office. Arseniy Yatseniuk took a different approach. Accepting the post of interim prime minister of Ukraine in February, his opening words were: “Welcome to hell.”
Sitting in Mr Yatseniuk’s office in Kiev late last week, I asked him if the job had proved as hellish as anticipated? The prime minister, a gaunt 39-year-old, removed his glasses and rubbed his face wearily. “Worse,” he said. “We face the Russian military, Russian-backed terrorism, the economy is insolvent, our own military has been dismantled, the police are disorientated. The last government stole everything they could.”
The day after our conversation, the Ukrainian government responded to this desperate situation by launching an offensive to retake buildings and territory in the east of the country that had fallen under the control of pro-Russian separatists. The authorities in Kiev felt that if they did not fight back, they risked losing the eastern half of their country by default.