Before Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych signed a deal to bail out our country's economy last week, there was excitement among Western officials and analysts about the way some businessmen who have bankrolled the president's rise to power appeared to be distancing themselves from him.
Many Ukrainians weren't fooled. The country's so-called oligarchs still supported Yanukovych. And now they will be prime beneficiaries of the $15 billion in bailout loans and lower natural gas prices that he secured from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
We still don't know what commitments Yanukovych made to Putin in exchange for his largesse. Protesters remain in the streets of Kiev, and this should be seen as the start, rather than the end, of their struggle to remove a corrupt regime and link their nation's future to the values and norms of the European Union.
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