Ukraine receives a freedom rating 42 points higher than Russia

Ukraine is in 87th place on the 2006 State of World Liberty Index.  159 countries are ranked in terms of three criteria: individual freedom, economic freedom and government size/taxation 

The gloomy diagnosis of the report is that “the world is very far from free”, and “The world receives a failing score of 56.9% out of 100”.

The freest region in the world was found to be Europe which gained a score of 70.49, while the top score of the 159 countries was given to Estonia (85.25).

The researchers note that of the countries of “the mangled corpse of the Soviet Union” there is a satisfactory level of freedom only in the Baltic States.  While Estonia took top place, Lithuania was in 16th place and Latvia – 21st. 

No other former Soviet republic even made the first fifty countries in the list. In the first hundred were Georgia (58), Armenia (79), Ukraine (87) and Moldova (93). 

The Kyrgyz Republic was in 106th place, while Russia in 124th, receiving a score of 42.07.  This made its neighbours in terms of the ratings the Central African Republic and Egypt, with scores of 42.14 and 41.5 respectively.

The least free countries on the territory of the former USSR were found to be Uzbekistan, Belarus and Turkmenistan in places 152, 153 and 154 respectively.  The “unsurprising barrel scraper” was North Korea in 159th place, with a score of 6.2%

The study combines the results of past surveys carried out by the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal, the Frasier Institute/Cato Institute, Freedom House and Reporters without Borders
The “top ten” countries were: Estonia, Ireland, Canada   Switzerland, Iceland, the Bahamas, the United Kingdom, the United States, Cyprus and New Zealand, in that order.

Based on a report from Ukrainska pravda