Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Tensions that were simmering between anti-government protesters and riot police for the past three months finally erupted into revolutionary conflict in Ukraine last week. Street clashes leave at least 26 people, including 10 police officers, dead and hundreds injured. The violence begins when protesters attack police lines and set fires outside parliament after it stalls… Read more.
I’m on record hailing Ukrainians as my favorite ex-communists. Alas, I’m also on record lamenting that, ever since their triumphal Orange Revolution in 2005, they have done nothing but trample all over my hopes for the political development of their country. Just two years after that revolution, which was supposed to set them on an… Read more.
I officially declare the coalition of democratic forces … in Ukraine’s parliament dissolved. This has been long expected, but for me it is extremely sad. I would not call this a political apocalypse, though it is true that it is another challenge of democracy. I hope we can overcome it. (Arseny Yatsenyuk, Speaker of the… Read more.
In 2005, the U.S. Congress hailed Viktor Yushchenko, the first democratically-elected president of Ukraine, as the George Washington of his country. However, no American politician could have anticipated the obsession fractious Ukrainians evidently developed for elections after their split from the former Soviet Union. After all, Sunday’s national poll was the third in three years,… Read more.
In November 2004, the world watched in awe as Viktor Yushchenko, scarred but unbowed by a botched assassination attempt, led Ukrainian democrats in an Orange Revolution. They were rising against the communists who had lorded over them for fifty-plus years. In April 2005, I wrote a laudatory and hopeful commentary on Yushchenko’s historic visit to… Read more.
Just months ago, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was heralded in Washington as the hero of Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution.” And, despite unsightly scars (from dioxin poisoning) that make him look more like a beastly ogre than the matinee idol he used to be, Yushchenko stood proud. A rare joint session of the US Congress showered him… Read more.
The US Congress welcomes Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko as the world’s latest hero of Democracy Yesterday, the newly elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, received a triumphal welcome before addressing a joint session of the United States Congress. Yushchenko thanked President George W. Bush for standing firm in his support for Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. He… Read more.
