However democratic a society might be, its real freedoms depend on the balance of social interests in politics and the economy. For example, business tries to create favourable conditions for itself - minimal restrictions, liberal legislation, low taxes and easy access to resources. To defend its interests, business creates and finances political parties, advances candidates into parliament and local councils, and seeks to influence government work.
It’s unsurprising that, despite the constant concern in Ukrainian media about “pressure on business”, business (particularly big business) actually enjoys ideal conditions for its existence: oligarchs become presidents and governors, they have access to offshore zones where you can avoid or pay minimum tax, and they have a monopoly in many sectors. Their incomes increase even in conditions of economic crisis. The state, or more accurately, the public officials who represent it, has its own interest: collect as many taxes as possible, implement the policies of those who brought them to power, reduce expenditure in those sectors of the economy where there is little resistance from society. And so we see that, in Ukraine, the state introduces the Rotterdam Plus formula for calculating coal prices (which benefits Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov), ignores the rise of monopolies, retreats on its social guarantees in the health service and education, and pays pensions and wages at a rate that you can barely live on.
The fact that Ukraine has become the poorest country in Europe is possible only because the country lacks those civic forces that could defend the interests of workers vis-a-vis the state and business. The Communist Party has been banned, and other left-wing parties have been more or less marginalised. Ukraine’s trade union movement is under attack from all sides. The old unions have not been reformed, and across the country we see the rise of “yellow unions”, which work in the interests of business, and not their members. (For instance, in my town of Kamianske, a new trade union was recently set up at the local metallurgical plant - a shop manager was designated its head.) Ukraine’s real trade unions, the ones that are independent, are under constant pressure, and the heads of local branches - under threat of losing their jobs.