Yanukovych's Herculean tasks

Viktor Yanukovych will be sworn in as president of Ukraine on Thursday. The daily Die Presse lists the unpopular but necessary reforms he will face once in office, including cutting subsidies, raising energy prices and reforming the pension system: "Viktor Yanukovych could show that he is anything but a typical Ukrainian Apparatchnik by grabbing the bull by the horns. If he does he will deserve all possible support from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the EU. Notwithstanding, the greatest obstacles to radical reform and a strict austerity policy are to be found within Ukraine: whether it's the country's inefficient and poorly structured political system, the ongoing dispute between political camps or the extremely insalubrious links between the oligarchs and the sphere of politics. But Yanukovych has no interest in attacking the latter, as he himself is widely considered a marionette of the powerful Eastern Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov."

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