UKRAINE….

The head of the International Monetary Fund’s Second European Department could not have been more clear. He told a Kyiv audience last week that “no one now will give Ukraine additional money.” Ukraine, he said, has borrowed extensively abroad and at home but has failed to apply the funds to real reform while “taxing the population more heavily than any other country of the former USSR.” The IMF suspended disbursements to Ukraine last fall. Without infusions of cash from abroad, Ukraine faces devaluation, inflation and default on its foreign borrowings. The political paralysis which has frustrated reform seems certain to continue at least through presidential elections scheduled for October.