, Columnist
Ukraine Needs Money, Not Revenge
There was no final battle for Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's residence, no need to storm the
sprawling country estate on a bank of the Dnieper river, which turned out to
have its own zoo, a collection of Soviet-era
classic cars and a flotilla of
boats.
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About 18 months ago, I sat joking with colleagues at Forbes Magazine's Ukrainian website about how, one day, the people would storm President Viktor Yanukovych's residence, Mezhihirya. The estate, built with government funds but owned by a private company, was as heavily guarded as it was notorious. We teased one another about being out of shape and liable to shoot ourselves in the foot if handed an AK-47 rifle.
Everything we talked about that day seemed so far-fetched as to be ridiculous. Yanukovych was so firmly entrenched in the presidency that all our efforts to investigate and expose his regime's financial irregularities seemed pointless.