by Ron Popeski
KIEV - Ukraine has asserted its own identity more than most former Soviet republics, enjoying all the attributes of statehood, but its role on the international stage is yet to blossom.
Almost the size of France, a population of 52 million and a standing army of 700,000, Ukraine sometimes feels that the West is still looking at her as "an afterthought to Russia".
The fact that it has established 25 embassies, taken part in United Nations peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and, after a shaky start, worked hard in enforcing sanctions against Serbia, have done little to attract international attention to the country's financial need.
One example most Ukrainians use to illustrate "Western neglect" is the 175 million dollars pledged by the United States for the dismantlement of Ukraine's nuclear weapons - a figure dismissed as small change when dismantlement and cleanup will actually cost 2 billion dollars.
President Leonid Kravchuk has also kept the nation free of the violence plaguing nearly all other former Soviet Republics - despite plenty of potential for ethnic conflict - another fact which has also gone largely unnoticed by the West.
If these factors irritate the Ukrainian people, an ongoing government crisis is viewed with apprehension both by the parliament and the population at large.
Often described as one of the most stable states of the former Soviet Union, the Ukraine is facing the same constitutional crisis as Russia and a number of other newly independent republics.
Less than eight months into office, Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma is already challenging President Kravchuk's constitutional right to call the shots.
Parliament, once critical of Kuchma because of his bold moves toward privatization and phasing out hefty state subsidies, is caught between the two sides.
The brewing power struggle, coupled by the country's economic problems, has shaken the resolve of many who once equated voting for independence and statehood with prosperity.
Inflation of about 2,500 percent in the year following independence has eroded living standards and cast vast sectors of the population into dire poverty, particularly the elderly.
A year of floundering economic policy under now-discredited former Prime Minister Vitold Fokin remains one of Kuchma's major headaches and the litmus test of his market reforms.
Another uphill struggle involves the country's luke-warm relations with next-door-neighbor and once big-brother Russia where most of Ukraine's oil and natural gas comes from - at world prices.
Like a carrot-and-stick situation, Russia is using oil as a leverage against Ukraine's grip over the Black Sea fleet and to some extent the future status of the Crimea.
On the home front, privatization was launched with great flair at an auction of enterprises in the western city of Lvov in February. Same 20 other auctions have since taken place - no small feat in an economy with a 94 percent state sector prior to independence. That too had little impact on revitalizing the ailing economy.
Of the so-called big-three former Soviet Republics, only Russia has proceeded more quickly. Belarus, Ukraine's other Slav neighbor, has proven a more reluctant convert to the market and many mechanisms of the command economy have deliberately been left in place.
Prices remain inordinately high for average wage-earners. One kilogram of sausage can cost 1,500 Karbovanets, compared to average monthly salaries of about 15,000 to 20,000.
The Ukrainian currency, better known as coupons, has suffered a series of collapses. Introduced at par with the Russian ruble in January 1992, it now trades on Kiev streets at about four to the Russian currency. One dollar fetches about 3,000 Karbovanets.
Unemployment currently stands at a few tens of thousands , but forecasts show it climbing sharply as loss-making plants close for lack of state subsidies.
The economic buffeting has left the average Ukrainian apathetic about politics. Parties are split among groups enjoying only small factions of popular support.
Resistance to change from former Communists can be fierce in Parliament, particularly among deputies from Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.
But Kravchuk and Kuchma appear to have less difficulty in facing them down than does Russian leader Boris Yeltsin. Even in the east, most discontent is confined to calls for a federal state, rather than a return to the Soviet order.
The main potential flash point remains the Crimean peninsula taken over by Russia two centuries ago and given as a "gift" to Ukraine in 1954 when no one could have conceived the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ethnic Russians make up 70 percent of the population in Crimea, and Kravchuk's granting of sweeping autonomy to the area has only partially stifled calls for reintegration into Russia, supported by conservatives in Moscow.
Some 11 million of Ukraine's 52 million residents are Russian and the Russian language still dominates day-to-day affairs in Kiev and the east. Official institutions must function in Ukrainian and many schools are switching to Ukrainian to promote the language at grass-roots level. The army, to be reduced from 700,000 to 400,000 within three years, is also moving to Ukrainianization. But all this has done little to attract foreign investment.
The explosion of joint ventures in Russia in retail trade, tourism, hotels and restaurants has yet to reach Kiev. A handful of hard-currency stores have appeared, but the influx of "outside money" has been sporadic, with Germans and Italians leading the way.
As for U.S. financial involvement, it is presently through the two million-strong Ukrainian Diaspora and the figures rarely involve amounts more than $100,000 per investor.
While the average Ukrainian does not hesitate to speak out against Washington's reluctance to invest in Ukraine or to pour in aid money, sober diplomats and intellectuals expect little change until Ukrainian-Russian relations are placed on a more stable footing.
At the moment, however, fundamental differences remain with Russia over the Black Sea fleet, the price of Russian gas and oil, the repayment of the former Soviet Union's debts and doing away with Ukraine's share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
Editor's Note: Mr. Popeski is a wire service correspondent based in Kiev.
