The double row of horse chestnuts lining the boulevard from the airport is aflame just now with springtime candles, a gleaming white counterpoint to the verdant green of the birch forest.

In the city itself, clean and friendly, young couples stroll arm in arm.

Many carry small bouquets of lilac or lily-of-the-valley as they listen to the street musicians, or gaze at the designer labels in the shop windows.

Gleaming top-of-the-range Western saloons and four-wheel-drives sit nose to tail along the kerbs.

The Mafia, people say, is no longer the potent force it was only a few years ago.

Even the police, many still wearing the huge old Soviet-style peaked caps half the size of dustbin lids, have learnt to smile benevolently.

Religion makes a comeback - and so does poverty

Kiev, in short, seems the very image of a modern city, a place that has happily made the leap from rigid state control to a relaxed liberal democracy.

Beyond the city centre, though, and out in the fertile but increasingly neglected countryside, it is a grimmer story.

The bare statistics give some idea of the desperation.

The population is falling, down from 52 million at independence in 1992 to under 50 million now.

Partly that is because for six or seven years after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in April 1986, few people chose to have babies at all.

Add to that missing generation the steady haemorrhage of emigration, as Ukrainians opt for a better life abroad.

And, ominously, life expectancy is dropping.

A Ukrainian boy born today can expect to live for 65 years, a good 10 years below the west European level, and a sharp drop from Soviet days.

Freedom for what ?

For women the deterioration is less marked, but still evident.

Older people, especially, wonder what they have gained from the fall of the Soviet state.

Many pensioners live on 35 to 40 gryvnia a month, equal to about $10.

The cheapest loaf of bread costs 60 kopeks (100 kopeks equal one gryvnia).

The golden city belies the grey realities

Many now believe independence was part of a Western plot to topple the rich and powerful empire they fondly remember.

And some believe that, while the old regime had to go, the West could have done far more to help Ukraine to change.

"I live one day at a time," a young professional woman says.

"I do not want to think about what tomorrow may bring.

"Our politicians will change nothing, and we have stopped hoping.

"A few days ago I met my old music teacher in the street. She had trained at the Moscow Conservatoire.