2015 in review
Analysis published during 2015.
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Air links: how a country connects to its markets, and what closing them costs
Route development through the 2010s did more for Ukrainian services exports and tourism than any policy. Then the airspace closed, and the cost of that closure is a…
Energy & Infrastructure -
Ukraine's public holidays and the working calendar
Every statutory holiday, what each one commemorates, the 2023 calendar reform that moved several of them, and the practical effect on production, logistics and staffing.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The 2015 reform record: what was actually achieved in the worst year
The economy contracted sharply, the currency lost most of its value and the country was at war. It was also the year in which more structural reform passed…
Economy & Macro -
St Nicholas Day, 19 December 2015
A greeting for the quiet gift, and for the people who arrange them for children who are not their own.
National Days & Anniversaries -
The restaurant scene and what it says about the consumer market
Kyiv's dining sector improved faster than incomes did, which is unusual and instructive. What drove it was a domestic produce movement, a devalued currency and a generation of…
Society & Regions -
Holodomor Remembrance Day, 28 November 2015
A candle in the window on the fourth Saturday of November.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukrainian Language Day, 9 November 2015
A day for a language, and a note on how much of one lives in its jokes.
National Days & Anniversaries -
What 2014 and 2015 taught about balance sheets
The second currency shock in six years destroyed companies that had survived the first one, and the reason was almost always the same line on the balance sheet.
Economy & Macro -
Ukraine Market Report — Q3 2015
A debt restructuring agreement with private creditors in August removed the immediate repayment pressure, and an electronic procurement system began piloting that would become one of the period's…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
The 2015 restructuring: what the GDP warrants really cost
A twenty per cent haircut, four years of maturity extension and higher coupons — plus an instrument that pays creditors a share of future growth. The warrants were…
Economy & Macro -
Knowledge Day, 1 September 2015
A first-of-September greeting for a year when a number of children in the yard had arrived from somewhere else.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Independence Day 2015: finding the bottom
The worst macroeconomic year since 1994 is also the year Ukraine cleaned out half its banking system, restructured its sovereign debt and raised gas tariffs to cost. Three…
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Market Report — Q2 2015
Household energy tariffs were raised substantially in April — the measure every government had declined since 2005. It was the single most consequential economic reform of the decade.
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Ivana Kupala 2015
The shortest night of the year, observed the way it has been observed for a very long time.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Constitution Day 2015
A short greeting in a year of rebuilding institutions, kept short as always.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Trinity Sunday and the green rites of early summer
Fifty days after Easter, houses fill with cut birch and floor herbs, and the smell is the point. Underneath the church feast is a rite about the dead…
Folklore & Esoterica -
Vyshyvanka Day 2015
By 2015 the day had grown from a student idea into something worn across the whole country, and the reasons people wore it had changed.
National Days & Anniversaries -
What external partners can actually deliver, and what they cannot
Expectations of what outside support can accomplish are routinely set far above what any external actor is capable of. Separating the categories makes both the support and its…
EU & Euro-Atlantic Integration -
Ukraine Market Report — Q1 2015
The currency fell sharply in February before stabilising, inflation reached its highest level since the 1990s, and a larger multi-year IMF programme replaced the one agreed a year…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
The patrol police and the visible reform
Ukraine replaced its traffic police entirely, in public, in a matter of months. It is the most visible reform the country has done and the lessons are not…
Politics & Governance -
International Women's Day 2015
A greeting in a year when a great many households were being held together by one person doing the work of two.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Annual Review 2014: the year everything deferred came due
A change of government, a floated currency, a lost region, an armed conflict, a signed trade agreement and a broken energy dependency — all within twelve months, and…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Day of Unity, 22 January 2015
A unity day greeting in a difficult January, kept to the gesture itself.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Market Report — Q4 2014
A parliamentary election in October, a heating season covered without eastern gas, and a year closing with the deepest contraction since 2009 and the currency at a fraction…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Christmas, 7 January 2015
A Christmas greeting for a year in which the empty place at the table was not only a tradition.
National Days & Anniversaries -
New Year 2015
A New Year at the end of a year that changed a great deal, written without any attempt to summarise it.
National Days & Anniversaries
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