The Guardian today carries yet another article by Jonathan Steele on how badly the Ukrainians have hurt Vladimir Putin’s feelings, here. Putin, at a “two-and-a-half hour meeting with academics and journalists in the Kremlin” apparently had this to say:
” One of the parties cannot be cornered by means of unconstitutional activities. Otherwise other people in [...]

Monaco is voting!
We were going to write something inevitably snarky about the Eurovision song contest (Hello from Minsk!) but Manolo’s Shoe Blog has pictures that are worth many, (Three points for Malta!) many, many thousands of words. (Good evening Amsterdam! Hello Kiev! This is the Netherlands calling!)
They’re here (Our twelve points go to … Turkey!)
here [...]

There’s a long article on Ukraine by two Tims, Garton Ash and Synder, in the New York Review of Books.
Regular readers of this site and Garton Ash’s Guardian column may not find anything revelatory, though I found this rather startling:
…the very large sums poured into Yanukovych’s campaign by Russian sources, which have been estimated [...]

Two of the topics that produced some of the most posts on Fistful last year - the Eurovision Song Contest and Ukraine’s Orange Revolution - have come together. Of course, we already knew that this year’s contest would be in Kiev but now Ukraine has chosen ‘Razom nas bagato!’ (Together we are many!) by Greenjolly, [...]

The always readable Timothy Garton Ash has another good column in today’s Guardian discussing how Europe’s inability to speak with one voice on the international stage weakens its impact. As he points out, the sheer number of people waiting to meet with President Bush this week help to show what the problem is:
Who knows what [...]

A happy ending for once. Has he died his hair brown?
Neeka liveblogged it. See my Ukraine Kinja digest for more blogospheric reactions.
(Added on Monday: I never got a round to publish my draft yesterday. Bollocks.)

How some of the siloviki went over to Yushchenko and, in their account, helped prevent a crackdown in Kiev on or around November. One of the reasons the orange revolution didn’t end in blood red.
Difficult to check, of course, and naturally the services want to ingratiate themselves with the new regime, but consistent in its [...]

EU vote boosts Ukraine membership hopes
by George Parker in Brussels, Raphael Minder in Strasbourg and Tom Warner in Kiev
Financial Times, 13 January 2005
Ukraine’s long-term hopes of joining the European Union were boosted on Thursday when the European parliament voted overwhelmingly to open the door to possible membership. …
Although the parliament’s vote was non-binding, it was [...]

Ukraine’s Central Electoral Commission has now officially declared Viktor Yushchenko to be the winner of the Presidential election, though Yanukovich reportedly still plans to appeal the decision. The BBC reports that Yushchenko may be sworn in as President as early as this weekend. More information at Le Sabot.

In what will most likely be our final Ukraine update of the year, Viktor Yanukovych has resigned as Prime Minister of Ukraine.
“I have made a decision and am formally submitting my resignation,” he said in a televised address.
However, the man declared to have lost the country’s re-run presidential election to Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko has refused [...]