One of the most unsettling experiences for anyone traveling in Ukraine nowadays is the sight of the country's cemeteries with many of the crosses and tombs stripped of their metal ornaments. Clearly, the poverty that has befallen the people of Ukraine has reached such a nadir that even stealing from the dead has become a strategy for survival. The purpose of this chapter is to assess Ukraine's experience as an independent state, to explore why Ukraine has ended up as the third poorest country in Europe, and, finally, to ponder the future of Ukraine as it enters its second decade as an independent nation.

Upon attaining its independence in December 1991, Ukraine was almost universally conceived as potentially the most viable post-Soviet state. It did not have to start the process of nation-building from the same rudimentary level as most of the former Soviet republics did. Not only was Ukraine endowed with nearly a third of the world's black soil, which made it – along with Kazakhstan – one of the only two Soviet republics able to feed itself, but it also possessed some of the world's richest deposits of both iron ore and nonferrous metals. Ukraine's population numbering 52 million was thoroughly educated and literate, with many Soviet high-tech military and data-processing enterprises located on its territory, giving it a concentration of some of the best human capital anywhere on the territory of the former USSR.