15 January 2010 Ukraine: Two Cheers for Democracy By Gwynne Dyer Yushchenko, Tymoshenko and Yanukovych were once called the “eternal triangle” of Ukrainian politics, and it was not a compliment. But eternity is not what it used to be: one side of the triangle is about to disappear. Five years ago, when the “Orange Revolution” …
7 January 2009 Russia, Ukraine and Gas: the Thieves’Quarrel By Gwynne Dyer Three years after the last drama involving Russia, Ukraine and gas supplies to Europe, here we are again. Russia’s monopoly supplier Gazprom cut off gas shipments to Ukraine on New Year’s Day because of alleged unpaid bills, and by 7 January no gas …
13 November 2008 Realism in Ukraine By Gwynne Dyer The brawl in the Ukrainian parliament last Tuesday was an undignified ending to the country’s two-month political crisis, but something important has changed. In the immediate aftermath of the Orange Revolution of 2004, the more extreme Ukrainian nationalists fantasised that the country could break all …
27 March 2006 Small Earthquake in Ukraine, Not Many Hurt By Gwynne Dyer Ukrainians did not reject the “Orange Revolution” of December, 2004 in last Sunday’s election. Indeed, if you read the news stories very carefully, they don’t even claim that — but most of the headlines deliberately give that impression. After all, why would …
5 January 2006 Gazprom: What Were They Thinking? By Gwynne Dyer It was a Ukrainian triumph, and a Russian foreign-policy disaster. Ukraine gets cheap supplies of natural gas for five years. Russia loses a big chunk of the European energy market forever. The giant Russian natural gas producer Gazprom is effectively an arm of the …
9 December 2004 The New Revolutions By Gwynne Dyer The Ukrainian revolution has won. There still has to be a re-run of the second-round presidential election on 26 December, but there is no doubt that it will be pretty clean this time, and that opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko will win handily. So the heavy-industrial, Orthodox, …
26 November 2004 The Orange Revolution By Gwynne Dyer “There will be fraud, but the scenario of victory by the government through fraud is utopian, it won’t happen,” said Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko just before the vote was held on 21 November. He may well be right, but we probably won’t know for another …
18 November 2004 Ukraine’s Election By Gwynne Dyer It’s not just Ukraine’s fate that is at stake in Sunday’s election; it is probably Russia’s as well. If the Kremlin’s favoured candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, wins, then Ukraine will end up inside a Russian-dominated common market that also includes the authoritarian regimes of Belarus and Kazakhstan and …