This is why Ukraine is facing its most important presidential election in decades

At precisely the moment when some would have us pull up the drawbridge on our European neighbours or when sections of the media seem hell-bent on retreating into a parochial backwater, it’s more pressing than ever that Scotland remains outward looking.

Right now there’s enough political myopia, narrow thinking and tribalism going on around us without adding to it or undermining the internationalist vision that Scotland needs as it looks towards the future.

Which brings me to a country the force of whose desire to enter the embrace of the European Union (EU) is matched only by Britain’s Tory government efforts to wrench away.

I’m speaking of Ukraine, which this month holds its most important presidential election in decades. Not only does the ballot come after five years of conflict with Russia, but at a moment when the nation stands at a political crossroads and avenues to organisations like the EU and Nato beckon.

In the eyes of many Ukrainians the election marks another major stage in the country’s journey to break free of Russia and carve out an independent future for itself free of constraints imposed by the Kremlin. If that all sounds a tad familiar, then the reasons are obvious even if the circumstances are very different.

Ever since Viktor Yanukovich,the last Moscow-friendly Ukrainian president, was toppled by the now famous Euromaidan protests in Kiev and fled to Russia in 2014, his successor and current president Petro Poroshenko has put fierce opposition to Moscow at the heart of his re-election campaign.

READ MORE: Revealed: the grim reality of Ukraine’s ‘frozen conflict’

It’s perhaps not surprising then that Poroshenko, in his bid to secure re-election, has wasted little time in branding his two main rivals as “agents of the Kremlin”.

Whether voters buy into such an accusation is as debatable as the claim itself, but what’s certain is that Poroshenko would be the last of the three to get the Kremlin’s political endorsement.

Far be it, though, that the other two candidates are pals with Moscow, with Yulia Tymoshenko, third in the polls behind Poroshenko, calling Russia an “aggressor country” and Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a TV comedian leading the polls, insisting the two countries are at war and that Ukraine should join the EU.

Much is at stake here, not least too for those in the Kremlin eyeing Ukraine’s presidential tussle.

The irony is that Moscow’s response in 2014 and subsequent actions in annexed Crimea and separatist-held eastern Ukraine have all but inadvertently disenfranchised millions of voters and deprived Russia of options for shaping events in the parts of Ukraine it doesn’t control.

Between them Crimea and separatist-held eastern Ukraine is an area with a combined population of some six million people, and most will not now vote because they need to undergo a special registration process on Ukraine-controlled territory. Similarly, a further three million Ukrainians who live and work in Russia will not be able to vote either, deeply undermining Moscow’s influence at the ballot box.

That said, it’s a given that Russia will do all it can to influence the outcome of the election by whatever means at its disposal, mischief making included.

The Kremlin, after all, has something of a growing track record in this capacity, most recently in places like Montenegro and Macedonia.

Already Kiev is saying that Moscow’s intelligence and special services operatives, with the help of local proxies, are preparing to spread false exit-poll data to set the grounds for the Kremlin to claim the results are fake and the election illegitimate.

Fresh warnings, too, from the Ukrainian military about Russian troop movements have only added to the fraught picture ahead of the March 31 ballot.

This week the chief of Kiev’s military general staff Viktor Muzhenko warned that Russia had deployed “strike units” at its borders with Ukraine and would seek to use “pre-election turbulence ... to undermine Ukraine’s defence potential”.

And even before any outside interference is factored in, all is not good within Ukraine itself. During visits to the country, time and again I’ve found the contentious issue of corruption the most talked about alongside the war in the east.

As the election campaigning intensifies, already it’s thrown into the spotlight pressing questions over the pace of badly needed reforms in dealing with corruption’s scourge.

For some time judicial and anti-corruption reform have been among the key priorities for international allies and Ukrainian civil society.

The signs have been encouraging, with the overhaul of Ukraine’s biggest state company Naftogaz, the clean-up of the tax system and banking sector and most notably the setting up of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.

But all this received something of a setback these past days when Ukraine’s constitutional court annulled a law on illicit enrichment, forcing prosecutors to close scores of cases against deputies, judges and officials whose conspicuous wealth doesn’t tally with their official salaries.

That several deputies from Poroshenko’s party backed efforts to quash the law was a warning there can be no let-up in the fight against corruption which has plagued the country for years and fuelled political instability.

Despite these setbacks though, Ukrainians have the chance at the ballot box this month to make clear the political direction in which they want their country to travel. Writing in The Guardian this week Angelina Kariakina, editor in chief of Hromadske TV, the internet station in Kiev, made the case that five years on from Maidan, despite the inevitable focus on turbulent relations with Russia, electoral battles and corruption, there are decent, solid agents for change growing across the country and looking to the European fold.

On that point Kariakina is so right and Ukraine badly needs and deserves something positive to emerge from its forthcoming election. Speaking last month Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, made clear his organisation’s own constructive position on Ukraine.

“Here and now I want to say that there is no just Europe without an independent Ukraine,” he insisted. It was doubtless music to the ears of many Ukrainians and reassuring as they head to the polls.

How nice it would be were we to realise the same political welcome and sentiment extended to Scotland in Europe sometime in the future.