According to the BYT Jan. 23 press service release, Pavlychko says, “The victory of Yanukovych in the runoffs will bring us the second state language, Russia-dominated free market and customs union, and complete dependence on Russia in Ukraine domestic and foreign policies. It will also turn the clock back on national and democratic reforms over the past 19 years. Ukraine will turn into a province of the re-created Russian empire.” Moscow’s secret services, Pavlychko stresses, have again used “the bacilli of personal ambitions and...

Even as most Russian commentators are focusing on which of the two remaining candidates will become Ukraine's president, one Moscow analyst is arguing that it is important to recognize that the incumbent leader, Viktor Yushchenko, played a critical role in transforming Ukraine into a very different country than the one it was when he came to power. Indeed, Konstantin Krylov, argues on the APN.ru portal, Yushchenko's administration, with all its problems, was for Ukraine if not fateful then extremely remarkable. After it, Ukraine became a different place. In reality, during [his much-criticized administration of the country], it actually arose...

When the results of the country's most respected exit polls were announced on television after voting ended in Sunday's presidential election, pro-Moscow candidate Viktor Yanukovych came in first with more than 31 percent of the vote. Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko followed with more than 27 percent. But the heroine of the 2004 Orange Revolution placed far better than expected, putting her in good position to gain enough support to win the presidency in a second-round vote next month...

Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yanukovich and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko will face each other in a run-off presidential election on February 7 and official results from Sunday's first round suggest a close contest ahead. The election will define how Ukraine, a former Soviet republic of 46 million people wedged between the European Union and Russia, handles relations with its powerful neighbours, and may help unblock frozen IMF aid for its ailing economy. Despite fierce accusations and recriminations in the run-up to the vote, analysts say the differences between Tymoshenko's and Yanukovich's economic policies are few and nuanced. Both say they aim to fight poverty and...

Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s outgoing president, has tasted a heavy defeat at the polls. But despite his humiliating rejection by all but 6 per cent of the electorate, history should judge him kindly. For all the political and economic turbulence of the past five years, Ukraine has been transformed under his presidency from just another ugly post-Soviet basket case into a country with real hopes of success as a democratic civil society. One has only to compare political life in neighbouring Belarus and Russia to the vibrancy of the contest in Ukraine to see the effect the Orange Revolution has had...

Presidential candidate, leader of the Party of Regions Viktor Yanukovych won 35.39% votes, and presidential candidate, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko received 24.97% votes, according to results of vote count of 90.97% protocols of district election commissions. Central Election Commission provided the data. Serhii Tihipko won 13.07% votes, Arsenii Yatseniuk won 6.98%, Viktor Yuschenko 5.42%, Petro Symonenko 3.54%, Volodymyr Lytvyn 2.33%, Oleh Tiahnybok 1.45%, Anatolii Hrytsenko 1.21%, and Inna Bohoslovska 0.42%. In addition...

Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych has said that Kiev's attempts to blame Russia for the 1932-1933 Holodomor famine are unjust. Ukraine, which says that more than 3.9 million people died during the famine, has been seeking international recognition of the famine as an act of genocide. A number of Ukrainian nationalist parties say that Russia, as the legal successor of the Soviet Union, should bear responsibility for the famine. "Holodomor took place, was denounced and...

No one can say who will win Ukraine's presidential election later this month. But one thing is sure: Russia won't waste time declaring itself the victor. Ever since the 2004 Orange Revolution brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets of Kiev to overturn the rigged result of Ukraine's last presidential vote, Russia has been itching for a rematch. For Vladimir Putin, seeing his man ousted in favor of a pro-democracy coalition that promised to take Ukraine into NATO and the EU was the "single worst strategic setback" of his presidency, according to Putin biographer Andrei Kolesnikov. Russia has spent the intervening five years ensuring that no such revolution can take place at home and that the Orange coalition in Ukraine would fail. These efforts, such as...

"There is a parable of Western Ukraine about a man who was born in Austria, educated in Poland, who went to war in Ukraine, fled to Germany and was executed in the Soviet Union, and he did it all without ever leaving his village." It’s difficult to write about Ukraine without writing about history, and it’s difficult to write about Ukrainian history and still leave room for anything else. I want to write a travel essay. My parents were encouraged to visit Ukraine in the 1970s after a friend of theirs did so and suffered only...

Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko has welcomed a verdict of the Kyiv Court of Appeals dated January 13, 2010 calling the leaders of the Soviet totalitarian rule guilty of genocide in Ukraine in 1932-33 and has initiated establishing an international tribunal for communism crimes in Ukraine, guided by the charter of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (IMT) of 1946, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity of 1968, the Law of Ukraine on the Holodomor 1932-1933 in Ukraine...