The Ukraine-European Union summit planned for 19 December, 2011, was supposed to be a milestone in Ukraine’s European integration process: the completion of talks on an Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU is expected to be announced there, accomplishing a negotiation process that had started in 2007. However, recent developments in Ukraine, particularly the criminal prosecution of former prime minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, raise serious doubts about the European aspirations of the current Ukrainian leadership.
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Twenty five years ago, when I crossed the border from Austria to Czechoslovakia, I was taken off of a train there and questioned by Czechoslovak cops for an hour. My wife and children were still on the train. It was a scary experience. In March this year, I drove from Bratislava to the Vienna airport. …
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Few countries have a better case for sovereign government and the rule of law than Ukraine. Even today you can take a short ride from the capital Kiev, as I did a couple of weeks ago, and speak to villagers who still remember the catastrophe of 1933, when Ukraine was a republic of the Soviet …
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Back in April 2010, I happened to talk to the ambassador of a leading EU country in Kyiv. My message was short: “How can you tolerate everything that is going on over here?” I meant, first of all, the parliamentary coup d’etat staged in March, shortly after Viktor Yanukovych’s inauguration, when a parliamentary majority was …
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Plevneliev’s Victory And The Dogs That Didn’t Bark “Elections don’t change anything,” reads graffiti scrawled across a wall in the center of Sofia. “If elections change[d] something, they would be banned.” In the wake of this month’s presidential and local elections, which culminated in a runoff for the presidency over the weekend, this may seem …
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