This is an intersting night. Checking news sites and blogs one last time before getting some sleep - reading about Mr Yushenko’s declaration that the “struggle had only just begun” and rumors about a $21,6m bribe to the head of the election commitee, I can’t fight the impression that the quiet winter night the live [...]

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has addressed the Ukrainian situation in a statement. He said the US does not accept the results of the election. Reuters has a summary (check the State Department website later for a full transcript):
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday the United States did not accept the results [...]

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”, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

I’m starting a new post for the latest information as the old one was starting to get a bit long. The session in Parliament has broken up as there were 191 deputies there, but 226 (50%+1) were required for a quorum, so no action could be taken. However, the Kyiv Post reports that Yushchenko has [...]

Via Matthew Yglesias, the Oxbloggers pass along an appeal for donations to purchase urgently needed supplies and equipment for a hospital in Beslan. Especially for our readers in the UK, this is an opportunity for positive action.
Full text below the fold.

Read more… or [...]

Jumping in feet first ahead of AFOE’s more knowledgeable German-based members (of course fools always rush in where…..), I can’t help but be concerned by reading this about the annual “Pressefest” of the National Democratic Party of Germany:
what struck the German intelligence officers who observed last month’s gathering in M?ckay, Saxony, was less [...]

“Russia is our No.1 destination for technology outsourcing,” says Cha Dae Sung, who is in charge of “global technological cooperation” for Samsung.
And Samsung is not alone. LG Electronics, Daewoo Electronics, and hundreds of smaller companies rely heavily on Russian engineers, who labor either from Korean suboffices in Moscow or in the office towers of Seoul. [...]

Book Review:
The Tainted Source
by John Laughland
A while back, I discovered that my great-grandfather’s estate in Ukraine, Apanlee, figures in a novel which is something of a favourite among neo-Nazis and Aryan supremacists. This led me to a number of websites that I wouldn’t regularly have frequented, including the Zundelsite and Stormfront’s webpage. There [...]