A stone’s throw from this weekend’s candlelit vigils in Kiev marking a year since the start of the demonstrations that toppled President Viktor Yanukovich, a different kind of Ukrainian was out on the street: the black market currency trader.
“Selling dollars? I’ll give you more, I’ll give you 18,” said one man outside a foreign exchange booth offering 15.50 Ukrainian hryvnia to the US currency.
The re-emergence of shadow traders last seen after the Soviet Union collapsed is a sign that – a year after the protests in Kiev in which 100 people died hoping to secure a prosperous, European future – the war-torn country is again sliding into a financial crisis.