The other battleground

IN THE early 1990s, as the collapse of the Soviet Union remade eastern Europe, two economies stood out for their size and potential. One was Poland, with 38m people; the other Ukraine, a country of 52m. It was not clear then which was destined for greater things: Poland’s GDP per person was no bigger than Ukraine’s, and its heavily indebted economy was shrinking fast. Today the comparison seems ludicrous. Ukraine’s economy shrivelled by almost 18% year on year in the first quarter. Poles are three times richer than Ukrainians.