It has a stylish design and high-quality printing. However, the press conference where the report was presented was more revealing than the 100-page book.

Dmytro Shymkiv, deputy head of the Presidential Administration, addressed journalists on Feb. 12 at a press event in Kyiv. He championed Ukraine’s progress in 2015, praising President Petro Poroshenko, the Cabinet, Verkhovna Rada, as well as the civil society. Shymkiv also chairs the Executive Reforms Committee of the National Reforms Council,

Definitely, progress was made in 2015. New patrol police replaced the old corrupt “militsia” in several cities. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau started operating. State drug procurement were handed to international organizations to eliminate corrupton. And government also launched the transparent online platform ProZorro to shift state purchases online.

However, according to the report itself, only 70 percent of the reforms planned for 2015 were achieved, with two of 17 directions – public administration and health – trailing far behind the schedule. Three other types of reform – energy independence, education and the legal fight against corruption – are defined as being at risk.

Meanwhile, according to the poll by market research company TNS, the nation’s mood is pessimistic.

Shymkiv admitted that “lots has yet to be done.”

Nevertheless, the tone of the event once again showed that Ukrainian authorities just want to feed the nation with beautifully wrapped good news, but are not ready to be open.

For instance, Shymkiv avoided answering the Kyiv Post question on why Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin is still in his seat, although not only media and anti-corruption activists, but also Western leaders have been urging Poroshenko to fire him, saying he failed to prosecute lawbreakers.

“There are now many concerns about reforming in prosecution. I presented the results that have already been achieved. You can look up in the report the list of things that still have to be done,” Shymkiv said. “Questions considering the leadership of institutions are political; I would like to not comment on it.”

I also wondered why the Presidential Administration ignores the lustration process, failing to dismiss its Deputy Head Oleksiy Dniprov, who served as a deputy education minister under Dmytro Tabachnyk in the government controlled by the ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.

Shymkiv claimed the Presidential Administration has gotten official letters from the Justice Ministry confirming that Dniprov is not subject to the legislation on governmental cleansing, designed to prevent the people who held the top posts under the Yanukovych regime from taking jobs in government.

But Shymkyv’s claim contradicts the information obtained by the Kyiv Post. Deputy head of the Justice Ministry’s lustration department, Dmytro Dymov, has repeatedly told the Kyiv Post that Dniprov must be fired under the lustration law.

Another significant moment of the press conference was when one of the journalists asked Shymkiv whether the administration was aware that Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius was dissatisfied with political pressure coming from presidential ally and lawmaker Ihor Kononenko. Abromavicius resigned with a scandal on Feb. 3, blaming Kononenko. The reporter also wanted to know whether another ministers voiced similar complaints.

But Shymkiv avoided the question. Twice. First, he made a long and meaningless speech about how some people in government are just pretending to change something, and some of them are sabotaging reforms, and how people don’t like changes in general. When a journalist insisted that Shymkiv answered the question, Shymkiv went on again about how authorities should unite and cooperate, not giving a response.

“When someone asks about resistance… Well, there is resistance. I have a list of people who resist, from an administrative staff to political figures. So what? We are looking, looking how to reach the result. The final goal should be Ukraine – European country. These are the things we need to achieve. That’s it,” he said. “Result is the most important thing, not the process.”

Does that speech make sense to you? No, to me neither.

The press conference was over at that.

Interestingly, at the very beginning of the event Shymkiv acknowledged that the National Reform Council wanted to present the reforming progress report a week earlier. However, they didn’t, as the situation in the country was tense over the resignation of Abromavicius.

That means that the government knew that journalists, as well as the rest of Ukrainians, won’t buy their sweet report on successful reforming of Ukraine when at the same time the West sounded alarm over the resignation of one of the most reform-minded ministers.

The question remains: How many of these reports we need to swallow, or rather beat off, before the government comes clean and start cooperating not with each other, but with the nation?

Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov contributed reporting to this op-ed.