The New Ukraine

Russia Wins Ukrainian Election

Not really, but they might as well have. The former Ukrainian official now holds a position to push the Ukraine back into the influence of Russia.

The effort by the U.S. to distance itself from the Ukraine puzzled me and still does. After trying to bring former Soviet Union satellites into the West, why did we turn our back on Poland and the Ukraine? When you get a clear understanding of the current foreign policy in any direction please let me know.

Re-Introducing Viktor Yanukovych

Five years in the political wilderness has taught Ukraine’s apparent next president that the world does not end with the democratic rotation of power.

By ADRIAN KARATNYCKY

Kyiv, Ukraine

The triumph of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine’s presidential election on Sunday marks the remarkable political comeback of a man who was the pariah of the Orange Revolution of 2004. Despite derisive portrayals (in the media and by his rival Yulia Tymoshenko) of Mr. Yanukovych as an ex-convict, authoritarian, and captive of the Kremlin who would reverse Ukraine’s democratic progress and block its march toward the European Union, he was elected narrowly but clearly on Sunday by a margin of 49.5% to 45%, according to an average of independent exit polls.

Given the country’s strategic significance, and the Kremlin’s persistent interest in reclaiming Ukraine for Russia’s sphere of influence, it is important that the world have a clear picture of Ukraine’s new leader.

Mr. Yanukovych’s biography is as rich and contradictory as Ukraine’s tumultuous transition from Soviet rule to democracy, sovereignty, and the free market. His youth seems ripped from a Dickens novel—an orphan growing up in grinding poverty in an industrial backwater in eastern Ukraine, he spent his teenage years as a gang member who was twice arrested and convicted for assault and theft. Though both sentences were quashed in the late 1970s, allowing him to aspire to high office, Mr. Yanukovych admits to great regrets about his adolescence.

New Ukraine