For much of the world, Ukraine’s story begins with the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the full-scale invasion in 2022. Inside the country, though, another storyline has run in parallel for decades.

After independence in 1991, Ukraine inherited weak Soviet-era institutions, an unreformed judiciary, and an economy that quickly became dominated by a handful of oligarchs who accumulated enormous influence in the 1990s through privatisations, media ownership and control of key industries.

This created a structure in which political parties, business interests and parts of the law-enforcement system became mutually dependent. Elections were heavily shaped by oligarch-backed networks; state contracts and regulatory decisions often favoured entrenched interests; and courts frequently f

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