It has proved much easier for Ukraine's reformers to win power than to wield it effectively. Yesterday's decision by President Viktor Yushchenko to sack the entire government led by prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, appointed by him after last year's Orange revolution, followed a growing unravelling of its authority over recent days and weeks.
A welter of corruption allegations and personal feuds raises the question whether this was a genuinely reformist government or one in which a previous oligarchy staged a coup to rearrange itself.
Both Ms Tymoshenko and her bitter rival Petro Poroshenko, president of the powerful National Security Council, whom she outmanoeuvred to become prime minister after last December's rerun elections, became rich during the 1990s and helped finance the revolution. Their continuing rivalry has been a running theme since then, much of it having to do with efforts to reprivatise 3,000 state companies sold off in the 1990s and rows over the price of oil sales to Russia. This crisis was provoked when Mr Yushchenko's chief of staff resigned last weekend, accusing Mr Poroshenko of corruption and demanding that he be sacked.
This left Mr Yushchenko with little option but to dismiss the government, telling Ukrainians that it is necessary "to halt the disappointment of society and make sure the ideals of the democratic revolution are not cast into doubt". A caretaker prime minister has been appointed between now and general elections in March. The erstwhile united reformist group is likely to be split, leaving open the possibility that the pro-Russian ruling group it replaced might make a comeback.
This is a bitter blow to the hopes expressed in the mass mobilisations against electoral fraud last November and the parliamentary agreement and supreme court ruling which led to the elections being rerun on December 26th. In a turnout of 75 per cent Mr Yushchenko defeated Viktor Yanukovich and went on to appoint Ms Tymoshenko rather than attempt a power-sharing arrangement with his foes. Although his powers as president have been reduced he retained the right to nominate and dismiss the government. But he has been less than effective since then, while Ms Tymoshenko has proved unable to resolve inherited problems and rivalries.
It remains to be seen whether this sorry record will provoke another round of street mobilisation or make for deeper popular disillusion with politics. Ukraine's 48 million people face both east and west and deserve better of their leaders after a genuine effort to change their political fate.