As freedoms wane in ex-Soviet bloc, Ukraine fills the gap

Filipp Pishchik says this and similar cartoons, depicting the former president as a corrupt leader who stifles free speech, got him in trouble with authorities and forced him to leave Moscow last year for neighboring Ukraine.

"Ukraine is just great," said the 37-year-old designer and architect. "Here there is hope."

Since the 2004 Orange Revolution ushered in a vigorous, sometimes chaotic democracy, Ukraine has become an island of freedom and tolerance in an ex-Soviet bloc still dominated by authoritarian regimes, and journalists, political activists, artists, and business professionals have flocked here.

In Soviet times, a dissident wanting to live free had only the West to look to. Getting there was hard, the culture alien, the language foreign. Ukraine, however, is an easy visa-free destination for most, Russian is spoken and speech is free.

Rights groups complain that Ukraine is stingy with granting asylum, which guarantees the applicant's right to stay and work indefinitely. But still, the influx vividly illustrates how far the country's path has diverged from that of Russia, which by the time of the Orange Revolution had already begun rolling back democratic reform.

The number of foreigners registered as living in this country of 46 million doubled to nearly 200,000 from 2003 to 2006, according to United Nations statistics; that does not include the unregistered. The number applying for political asylum rose from 1,800 in 2005 to 2,300 last year.

Pishchik said he moved here after architecture magazines stopped publishing his work, longtime clients left him -hinting they were forced to do so by authorities -and he got threats from security officials. The reason, he says, was the cartoons he displayed in galleries and on Web sites.

Today, he lives in a spacious Kiev house loaded with exciting new projects and is married to a Ukrainian artist.

"I tell all my friends that they all will end up here one day," Pishchik says.