Entries from SAIS Next Europe tagged with 'Ukraine'
Moldova's Non-Orange Revolution
On April 5th, 2009 the Moldovan Communist Party announced that it had won more than 50 percent of the votes and could thus once again reign supreme in Parliament with 61 seats, giving its deputies enough leverage to elect the new president. The following day, thousands of young demonstrators flooded to the streets of Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, to protest the election results. Over 10,000 protesters gathered outside the parliament building demanding new elections and shouting, "Down with the Communists" and, "Freedom, Freedom." Unfortunately, the demonstrations culminated with the storming of the president's office and parliament building on Tuesday, April 7th.
The Moldovan protest had the makings of an orange revolution, but the sight of hundreds of youths pelting police with rocks, smashing windows, and trashing furniture had nothing to do with the Ukrainian precedent.
Ukraine on the Brink
The gas supply crisis between Russia and the EU has been resolved; the larger crisis in Ukraine has just begun. In what has become a regular ritual, gas deliveries to Europe via Ukraine were halted for two weeks in January as the Russian and Ukraine argued over debt, shipment fees, and the price of gas sold to Ukraine. With EU intervention, Russia and Ukraine agreed to resume shipments to Europe. Europe is now breathing a sigh of relief, but Ukraine is wincing at the new price it will have to pay for domestic gas and implications for its economy.
For New EU President, A Baffling Array of Challenges
The Czech Republic took over the European Union's six-month rotating presidency on New Year's Day amid substantial apprehension across the continent. While Nicolas Sarkozy used the job to fill an American leadership gap during the outbreak of the world financial crisis, the presidency has shifted to an outlier of sorts: a country that does not use the euro, one of the two in the 27-nation bloc which has not approved the Lisbon Treaty, with a fiery Euroskeptic president, at a time when an uneven economic downturn offers the EU its greatest challenge in a decade. And additional tests did not wait long to pop up. In the first week of 2009, Israeli ground troops invaded Gaza and all Russian gas headed for Europe via Ukraine was cut off.
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