Just as things were starting to look as if they may have been heading towards a solution, the latest news from Ukraine suggests the temperature is rising once more. Following the voting- down in parliament of a motion of no-confidence in the government of Viktor Yanukovich, AFP is reporting that a top aide to Yushchenko [...]

The euro today again broke through to a new high at $1.3329. This was on the back of an unexpected decline in US consumer confidence. What seems to be happening is that any piece of good news in the US temporarily stems the rise, whilst bad news sets it off again. And this despite the [...]

The Dutch EU presidency seems to be putting the finishing touches to the summit preparations for 15/16 December. One of the major items on the agenda: decision time on opening negotiations with Ankara about Turkey’s EU membership.

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It’s a sidenote, but a noteworthy one, given the climate in Ukraine. Matthias Braun, who is blogging the events in Ukraine in German for the weekly Die Zeit mentions that Elena Gajduk, who is reporting from Kyiv for New Iswestija found out that the meteorologists of the central Ukrainian weather service are taking a stance [...]

After such a busy week in Ukraine, it seems to have become almost quiet over the last day or so, but that’s mainly because the focus of the action has moved away from the streets (though the protestors - from both sides - remain, and show no sign of leaving) to the Supreme Court and, [...]

While the German Chancellor is - contrary to earlier reports - apparently planning to visit the US President even before his second inauguration in January, a US human rights group, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, is about to disturb the two governments’ reconciliation efforts.
According to a report by the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau [...]

While we are waiting, Veronica Khokhlova offers her impressions from inside the Ukrainian Supreme Court hearing and finds the proceedings almost surreal given the atmosphere on the independence sqare - much better tv, for sure -
The judges look tired, interrupt every once in while, but let the Yushchenko’s team guy finish. Channel 5 interrupts the [...]

To those of you, gentle readers, who have only recently discovered afoe, it may be interesting to find out that we’re not usually an - almost - single issue blog. Quite to the contrary. However, one unfortunate consequence of having only limited resources is the obligation to choose how to use them. When we chose [...]

As the Constitutional Court seems to be playing wait and see, progress on the legal front has become unlikely in the immediate future. Yet following the increasing tension between the camps, what may be the first major outbreak of violence in the ongoing Ukrainian stand-off may have occurred in the Eastern city of Luhansk. Maidan [...]

Preliminary election results are in for Romania. But the outcome isn’t yet clear. Either the ruling PSD party is going to just squeak back in with a narrow majority — or it’s going to be a hung Parliament, which could lead to new elections fairly soon.
Nobody’s on the streets here. There are [...]