EDITORIAL: Ukraine's rating as "free" (12/25/05)

EDITORIAL

Ukraine's rating as "free"

According to an annual report released this past week by Freedom House, Ukraine now ranks among the free countries of the world. The report, "Freedom in the World 2006," found that Ukraine moved from the previous year's rating of partly free to the highest rating of free.

"In all, five countries that were once part of the Soviet Union recorded gains, the most significant being Ukraine's improvement from the status of partly free to free," Arch Puddington, director of research at Freedom House, wrote in the report, released on December 19, which covers developments in 2005.

While political events in the aftermath of last winter's Orange Revolution have somewhat clouded the gains Ukraine made during the 2004 presidential election, the country has nonetheless moved forward.

On a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 representing the most free and 7 representing the least free rating, Ukraine received a 3 for political rights and a 2 for civil liberties. Both of these ratings were increases for Ukraine, which last year scored a 4 in both categories.

"Ukraine thus becomes the first non-Baltic country of the former Soviet Union to attain a rating of free," Mr. Puddington, the report's author, wrote.

Ukraine improved due to "overall changes in the political process and the civil liberties environment following the Orange Revolution of December 2004," according to the report.

In an interesting turn of events, Russia, which dropped from a rating of partly free to not free in the 2005 report, scored a 6 for political rights and a 5 for civil liberties. In 2005, it scored a 5 in both categories.

But, more importantly, the report found that, while many countries around the globe have made significant gains, other countries, notably Russia, have not only regressed, but seem willing to pull others down with them.

"In this, Russia's position is the most powerful and influential," Mr. Puddington wrote. "Furthermore, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has taken initiatives to undermine the success of neighboring democracies - such as Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic states - while offering support to some of the region's most repressive regimes, most notably those in Belarus and Uzbekistan."

The report found that, "the Putin leadership's anti-democratic tendencies appeared, if anything, more pronounced in 2005."

This is, indeed, a worrying trend. For, while Ukraine has made great strides to become a strong and influential Eastern European democracy, Russia seems stuck in the mentality that it must rule the region. Now that it no longer directly controls the former Soviet space, Russia seems intent on indirectly influencing its neighbors abroad and strongly suppressing any democratic movements within its borders.

It is encouraging that, while freedom in Russia has deteriorated, Ukraine has not fallen prey to its neighbor's pressure. It has, on the contrary and in spite of some setbacks in the wake of the Orange Revolution, moved forward. We only hope this trend continues and that political rights and civil liberties in Ukraine continue to improve.

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