GRIFFITHS: It’s fashion week in Kiev, where the real star of the show isn’t on the catwalk. The spotlight’s on Ukraine’s new First Lady, Kateryna Yushchenko.

KATERYNA YUSHCHENKO: I think Ukrainian fashion is wonderful and I think that very soon all of Europe is going to understand that the centre of fashion is in Kiev.

GRIFFITHS: But whatever they’re wearing in Kiev this season, there’s one inescapable fact, right here, right now – orange is the new black. Orange was the colour of their revolution, the weeks of mass protest late last year which made Victor Yushchenko President of Ukraine.

His opponents tried to poison him, then they rigged the election but the people took to the streets and this was their anthem [crowd singing song].

ROMAN KALIN: This cheating created a sense of protest in people’s hearts and souls. We felt this energy and that’s why we wrote this song.

GRIFFITHS: On stage was Victor Yushchenko. Also savouring victory, were two women who helped put him there. First his wife Kateryna, born in the United States to Ukrainian immigrants, educated, activist and politically astute.

KATERYNA YUSHCHENKO: A year ago I think my husband was very confident that he and his team would win and he instilled in me a confidence.

GRIFFITHS: And a crucial political ally, Yulia Tymoshenko, without her Yushchenko could not have won.

YULIA TYMOSHENKO: I didn’t have any doubts, not for a day, let alone a month, that it would end this way.

GRIFFITHS: These days the crowds on Independence Square have put down their flags and picked up their daily lives, but there’s been one big change. They now have hope, hope that is pinned on the country’s new leaders.

Victor Yushchenko asked to be Ukraine’s Ambassador to Australia when he left his job as head of the National Bank six years ago.

VICTOR YUSHCHENKO: I’ve wanted to go to Australia all my life but failed…

GRIFFITHS: Now he’s President Yushchenko and aware of the huge challenges ahead.

VICTOR YUSHCHENKO: The new team, the new government – new democratic government that emerged in Ukraine – has created enormous expectations from people in the streets. People want to live better now, not later in the day, but right now.

GRIFFITHS: Memories of the Orange Revolution that swept him to power are still fresh.

KATERYNA YUSHCHENKO: During the Revolution there was a major outburst of creativity.

GRIFFITHS: And naturally a source of pride for the President’s wife.

KATERYNA YUSHCHENKO: Well the Orange Revolution itself was something that, it was an amazing time in Ukrainian history. What happened here in Ukraine is not something that happens once in a lifetime, it happens once in a millennium where people in our country stood up for their rights. It was an exhilarating time. It was a dangerous time. It was a very positive time.

GRIFFITHS: The person credited with rallying the crowds is Yushchenko's political right hand woman, the charismatic Yulia Tymoshenko. With her peasant’s braid hairstyle, she’s the real cover girl of the Orange Revolution and is now Ukraine’s Prime Minister. Always conscious of her image, today she is posing for Ukraine’s version of Elle Magazine.

YULIA TYMOSHENKO: I think the main driving force of our revolution was the people’s belief. People believed that their life could be free, happy, and they fought for themselves, for their kids. We just helped them to recognise some politicians who can do the work honestly.

GRIFFITHS: And the third force which helped Victor Yushchenko triumph was music.

GREEN JOLLY SINGING: We wont stand this. Revolution is on, cause lies be the weapon of mass destruction. Revolution is on, ‘cause lies be the weapon of mass destruction. Altogether we’re one, altogether we’re strong. God be my witness, we waited too long.

GRIFFITHS: Hip-hop band Green Jolly wrote the tune that became the protestors' theme song.

ROMAN KALIN: We became a sort of symbol for them - let’s say a catalyst for what happened. The characteristic of this revolution was a lot of music. And music became part of this revolution.

GRIFFITHS: The revolution might be over but the protests continue. Outside the President’s office small groups gather every day looking to their new leader to solve their problems.

VICTOR YUSHCHENKO: If you have a question, come over here. We have a party coalition – here is a State Secretary. Go to him. Tell him you have such and such a problem. Whose camera?

LADY: ABC Australia.

VICTOR YUSHCHENKO: Wise camera.

GRIFFITHS: Victor Yushchenko says he will help them.

VICTOR YUSHCHENKO: Of course we’ll manage it. It’s my job. Because for 14 years there were lies in this country – for 14 years there was oppression. They come here seeking the solution.

GRIFFITHS: These days everyone wants to meet the Ukrainian President. Today new political chums from Poland and Germany but he still has plenty of enemies like those who poisoned him with dioxin. Many Ukrainians think the Russians were behind it. The President says he knows who tried to kill him but he’s not yet naming names.

VICTOR YUSHCHENKO: I know the truth. But this is my truth. In a legal aspect the investigation of the case needs to be completed. As the Prosecutor-General told me, it is his professional duty. It’s a matter of honour for the security services and for the Prosecutor-General to solve this case.

KATERYNA YUSHCHENKO: When it happened it was very frightening. I was a few months of living in, in a dream wondering if this was really happening.

GRIFFITHS: And now, do you still fear for him?

KATERYNA YUSHCHENKO: Of course. Of course. He is still overcoming his illness. He’s feeling much stronger and healthier but he’s still overcoming the effects and obviously we still have to be concerned because people who made billions in the old system will not give up very easily.

GRIFFITHS: It’s Spring Festival time in Ukraine. Victor Yushchenko has brought his family along for the fun.

VICTOR YUSHCHENKO: I just want to boast. He started walking today.

GRIFFITHS: Ukraine’s first family is very much in the public eye. It’s an effort to show that he’s open and accessible, everything the old regime was not.

KATERYNA YUSHCHENKO: I think my husband has made it very clear that he wants to have an open policy. He wants to, to sort of end that period where the public knew nothing about their leaders.

GRIFFITHS: For Kateryna Yushchenko it’s also about countering some of the more extraordinary allegations against her, including that she’s an American spy.

KATERYNA YUSHCHENKO: The fact that I was brought up in the United States was very much used against my husband by his opponents largely because they had nothing else that they could find to accuse him of. He was not corrupt. He didn’t steal as many as his opponents did and so they tried to find something and they played on old stereotypes from the Soviet Union of the evil American.

GRIFFITHS: Ukrainians already know a lot about Victor Yushchenko. Here he is four years ago as Prime Minister, taking communion alongside this man, former President Leonid Kuchma.

Yushchenko also worked closely with his Deputy Prime Minister, a then dark haired Yulia Tymoshenko. In the end Kuchma sacked them both.

YEVGENY LAUER: They were appointed, were productive and were sacked by Kuchma. So you can call them victims of the Kuchma regime who were progressive – and because of that they were sacked.

GRIFFITHS: Yevgeny Lauer is a Yushchenko supporter and long time political observer in Ukraine. He says Yushchenko and Tymoshenko bring together different backers.

YEVGENY LAUER: People who support Yushchenko are in general, the political forces in the parliament who represent medium-sized business and political movements based on moral principles. People who support Tymoshenko are the representatives of big business, who’ve adjusted themselves quickly to today’s politics.

GRIFFITHS: Now Victor Yushchenko is at the top of a system still steeped in the ways of the past. By the President’s own reckoning, more than half of Ukraine’s economy is in the shadows.

VICTOR YUSHCHENKO: Starting from the border, from Customs, we feel that half of what may belong to the budget, of what can work for a disabled person, a poor person, a soldier, a teacher, a doctor, does not reach the budget.

GRIFFITHS: Ukraine has the trappings of a proud state but according to the President, it’s a wracked by corruption.

VICTOR YUSHCHENKO: The law didn’t work in this country for years. A phone call from the presidential administration, or any official to a court, was much more important than the legal norm, the law. Now we are working hard to make the courts public, open, and make them accountable to the law.

GRIFFITHS: In the dark world of Ukrainian politics, the murder of opposition journalist Georgiy Gongadze became the symbol of all that was rotten. One night in September 2000, Georgiy Gongadze walked out of a friend’s apartment on this busy Kiev street to catch a taxi. Weeks later his headless corpse was found a couple of hours drive outside the capital.

YEVGENY LAUER: This case is the national shame of Ukraine and in the eyes of many it characterises the state of the power, the legislative power and courts.

GRIFFITHS: One of Victor Yushchenko’s election pledges was to find Gongadze’s killers. Within days of taking office, two men were arrested and President Yushchenko declared the case solved. That’s caused doubts about his own judgment.

Yushchenko’s announcement that the Gongadze case had been solved, even before a trial was odd enough, but then came the mysterious suicide of one of the key witnesses. The former interior minister was about to be questioned by prosecutors when he shot himself in the head not once, but twice. Yushchenko’s reaction? He had sentenced himself to death for the crime.

For many Ukrainians, finding the truth about the journalist’s murder will be an important test of whether the Orange Revolution has changed anything. Yevgeny Lauer says that will be difficult because many members of the old government of President Kuchma are still in positions of power.

YEVGENY LAUER: I don’t doubt Yushchenko’s intentions, for one good reason – he’s not implicated. But I doubt they’ll solve it because some of the people surrounding Yushchenko are from Kuchma’s time.

GRIFFITHS: The President promises it will be done.

VICTOR YUSHCHENKO: As for those who gave the orders and who organised the deed, I’m sure Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General’s office will answer this question. The world will have the answer.

GRIFFITHS: The new Prime Minister also has strong links to the bad old days of Ukrainian politics.

PRESENTER OF TELEVISION SHOW: Today’s studio guest is Prime Minister Yulio Tymoshenko.

YULIA TYMOSHENKO: Good evening.

GRIFFITHS: Tonight on national television, Yulia Tymoshenko is delivering her first budget. It hasn’t yet been passed by the Parliament but it will be. Yulia Tymoshenko has threatened to bring the protestors back to the streets if MP’s defy her.

YEVGENY LAUER: She’s a very experienced, tough, controlling, ambitious politician slash “businessman”. It’s not a pointless saying that in Ukraine’s political establishment the only man is Yulia Tymoshenko.

GRIFFITHS: It’s not without irony that Tymoshenko is now in charge of the state budget. In the 1990’s she made millions when state assets were up for grabs and is widely regarded as Ukraine’s wealthiest woman.

YEVGENY LAUER: All big wealth in the era of chaotic, unruly, disorganised capitalism has a criminal nature. That goes for the wealth of Tymoshenko or anyone else.

GRIFFITHS: These days the Prime Minister opens the Cabinet meeting with a joke about newspapers exposing the expensive watches worn by some politicians.

YULIA TYMOSHENKO: Dear Ministers, take off your watches – they’re secretly taking photos and publishing them.

GRIFFITHS: She says the old regime tried to destroy her, taking away her business, charging her with corruption and throwing her in jail. There’s even a warrant for her arrest in Russia on bribery charges. Persecution by a hated regime made Tymoshenko the people’s hero.

YULIA TYMOSHENKO: If all the forces of such a black regime were against me, I must be doing everything right. Prison was just further evidence of that.

GRIFFITHS: It is by any measure a stunning comeback. There’s already talk of when, not if she’ll challenge Victor Yushchenko for the Presidency.

YULIA TYMOSHENKO: I’m not excluding that of course, but I’ve agreed to support Victor Yushchenko in the next Presidential elections in 2009. So far for ten years, Ukraine will have a worthy president in Victor Yushchenko and after that, time will tell.

GRIFFITHS: Having watched both these politicians at close quarters for a week, the contrast is stark. Yulia Tymoshenko exudes ambition. Victor Yushchenko is low key but clearly has respect. The Prime Minister’s character analysis seems spot on.

YULIA TYMOSHENKO: Everybody considers Yushchenko to be quiet, compromising, very intellectual. His capacity to balance things is very important for the country because so many different people live here. As for me, the best word is “action”.

GRIFFITHS: It was action by the people that brought these two political players to the top. The band which wrote the theme song already senses its place in history.

ROMAN KALIN: It was the evening, it was cold. We came to Kiev to be part of the revolution, not to perform. We were ordinary musicians and now we’re historical persons who helped change the path of history in Ukraine.

VICTOR YUSHCHENKO: It’s a hard professional challenge. But I know there are people in the government who are professional. No-one’s here by accident. We’ll succeed.

GRIFFITHS: Ukrainians found their voice in the Orange Revolution, if their new leaders fail them, they may well speak again.