Ureneck: Ukrainians searching for economic justice

Prof. Lou Ureneck weighs in on the antigovernment protests rocking Ukraine for The Boston Globe using the insight he gained as a Fulbright scholar in 2011.

Ureneck spent the year teaching business journalism to young Ukrainians at the National University in Kiev – shaping his view of the current protests – and the protesters.

From the Globe on Feb. 22, 2014:

“Many of my students wore shells of cynicism that hid an inner core of hope and idealism. They had been hardened by life in a nation where government corruption is rampant, and power, both political and economic, is held by billionaire oligarchs who managed to gain control of the country’s principal assets after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The protests in Kiev are the consequences, mostly, of a nation beset by huge economic problems resulting in a chasm between the nation’s rich and poor. A middle class barely exists in Ukraine.”

Read Ureneck’s Op-Ed published on BostonGlobe.com.