Tense Times in Kyiv

It hasn’t gotten much coverage in the American media, but things have been a little tense in Kyiv these last few days. Large scale protests have been held in our future neighborhood by the various political parties. So far the demonstrations have been peaceful, but the court recently was forced to rule that the demonstrations stop to allow people to calm down. The people aren’t listening.

For those who aren’t up on the latest in Ukrainian politics, I’ll give you the brief version:

Largely pro-West president Yushchenko beat largely pro-Russia Yanukovich in 2004 after a large scale protest helped over turn the previous fraudelent election. This became known as the Orange Revolution. You may remember all of the images of how Yushchenko’s face was disfigured by a still unsolved poisoning during the election.

Since the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko has been largely ineffective and messy parliamentary elections in 2006 compounded the problem when Yanukovich (the one who lost the presidency) managed to become Prime Minister. Now Ukraine is stuck in a situation where the president and the prime minister are at direct odds with each other and Yanukovich is gaining more power daily.  Recently, Yanukovich’s party has been gaining seats in the parliament because members of other parties have been defecting and joining his. Because of this, Yushchenko is now threatening to dissolve parliament altogether and hold new elections. Yanukovich is against this while Yulia Tymoshenko, the lead voice of the opposition, is behind the move because she could probably gain even more seats in the parliament for her party, although mostly at Yushchenko’s expense, I think.

So this is where things stand currently. If you find politics at all interesting, then you should try following Ukrainian politics. It is something new everyday and the kind of place where a fist fight in parliament wouldn’t be totally out of place.

It looks like we’ll be arriving in Kyiv during an exciting, and rapidly evolving period of time. However, I hope things don’t get too out of hand, not only because I don’t want to see violence, but also because I don’t want us to get stuck longer in DC because things on the ground are dangerous.

If my description of the situation is too confusing to follow, here is a link to a recent story on BBC about what is happening.