German Chancellor Schroeder, who is known to have a good personal relation to Russian President Putin, and who, according to news reports”, had told the German Bundestag earlier today that he remains “firmly convinced, firstly that the Russian president wants to develop a democracy [in Russia?!], and wants to do so out of inner conviction”, [...]

From Obdymok:
just saw thousands of berkut police from kharkhiv and donetsk, as well as thousands of coal miners, start walking in down lesi ukrainky blvd. in the direction of the central election headquarters.
lesi ukraini leads to bessarabsky rynok and the start of khreshchatyk, which is filled with about 100,000 yushchenko supporters.
i think a riot is [...]

Well Yanukovich has finally been declared the winner. Since someone else is undoubtedly about to post about this I’ll leave it at that. But while we all wait to see what happens next, can I recommend a viewing of the reuters photoslides. I think in many ways these photographs tell a story of their [...]

NYT reports:
Shortly after his rival’s offer, Yanukovich also hinted at compromise by saying that he was not interested in a “fictitious” victory and that “no position of authority, no matter how important, is worth a single human life.”
Yushchenko’s comments provided outgoing President Leonid Kuchma with a way to defuse a crisis that has convulsed the [...]

Update: (Nick - 1730CET) The official announcement has been made, declaring Yanukovich the victor. More ASAP when I’ve rounded up the reactions.
Maidan are reporting preparations for a state of emergency are being made at Yanukovich headquarters. Victor reports official results are 49.5% to Yanukovich, 45.5% to Yeschenko, though he already has reports of fraud. At [...]

After describing some of the election fraud tactics and explaining that some local authorities seem to have pledged their allegiance to Mr (President) Yushchenko, the Ukrainian author Andrij Bondar writes in today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (the English is my translation of the German translation of his article) -
It’a a draw. The European Union and the [...]

Living in Germany as I do, I often find that I have hard things to say about the Germans. (Germans should see this not as evidence of their special faultiness but of my misanthropy. Were I living in Tahiti, I would doubtless have a lot of hard things to say about the Tahitians, who I [...]

As Nick notes in an earlier post Barroso and Solana have both been voicing their concerns about what is going on in Ukraine. Barroso has also issued a scarcely veiled threat about possible consequences. (Come to think of it, a strong stand on Ukraine could be one way of recovering some authority after the [...]

OK, time for another new post as we wait for news from Kiev. The Central Electoral Commission is meant to be having a press conference now to declare the result but there’s still no news. As I mentioned in the thread below, the current rumours on the streets are that the official announcement (followed by [...]

In comments to an earlier post on neonazi electoral gains in eastern Germany, I noted that Germany’s mainstream right wing Union parties normally respond to this sort of thing with a rightward lurch of their own. And indeed, they are right on schedule.

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