This week's G-20 meetings might say more about the true state of U.S.-Europe relations than any other recent event, highlighting fissures in the post-Cold War bonds between President Obama and his European counterparts. Over the next few months, heads of state from both sides of the Atlantic will have to face their two most vexing concerns: the financial crisis and conflicts with non-state actors, especially in Afghanistan. Both of those threats require unified, international action, something the two sides are finding difficult to produce as their meetings progress.

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The Russian Black Sea resort town of Sochi has yet to begin building the dozens of event venues and other facilities it will need to host the 2014 Winter Olympics. But the contest to become Sochi's next mayor is well underway, with a cast of candidates rivaling that of the 2003 California campaign that elected muscle man and action movie actor Arnold Schwarzenegger governor of the most populous state in the U.S.

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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.

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The belief that the European Union (EU) is the globally most successful promoter of democracy has become a part of the liberal orthodoxy on both sides of the Atlantic. The narrative tells us that by offering the ex-communist countries of Central Europe the juicy perspective of membership in their rich man's club, West Europeans benignly forced them to implement democratic reforms and thus made sure their democratic transition ended up, by and large, successfully.

The story of the EU as the foremost democracy promoter has recently gained extra popularity thanks to the neoconservative Middle East fiasco. Brussels mandarins love to lecture their American partners that where the U.S. failed with its aircraft carriers and stealth bombers, the EU triumphed with its "cohesion funds" and technocratic expansion of the web of institutions. American Democrats, reckoning with the Bush era, nod in approval. After all, Central Europe is soundly democratic and the Middle East is not.

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If it weren't so sad, it would be funny to read Russia's President Medvedev's recent interview with Novaya Gazeta, in which he said, "Democracy [in Russia] existed, exists, and will exist."

Human rights still appear to be a luxury in Russia. Recently, Lev Ponomaryov, director of the Moscow-based Organization For Human Rights, and a leader in the new political opposition movement Solidarity, was reportedly beaten by a group of men outside his home . Stanislav Markelov, whom the Wall Street Journal called one of Russia's top human rights lawyers, was murdered in late January, as was Anastasia Baburova, a 25-year-old freelancer for Novaya Gazeta, which, according to the New Zealand Herald, is the last major publication critical of the Kremlin. Novaya Gazeta also lost three other journalists in the last decade-- Anna Politkovskaya, Yuri Shchekochikhin, and Igor Domnikov.

When I read about a journalist or a human rights activist hurt or killed because of their work, it hits a little too close to home. My father, who never joined the Communist Party, was a journalist at the Ostankino radio tower in Moscow until the end of 1993, when, after several years of trying to get permission to leave the country, my family and I immigrated to the U.S. with refugee status. I grew up knowing that certain opinions I heard at home were those of the minority and repeating them outside our apartment was not a good idea.

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Europe's passive attitude towards the ongoing crisis in Moldova shows that when faced with the choice between power and principle, the EU is all too eager to abandon its core values in exchange for apparent geopolitical gains. True, the wise conduct of foreign policy often requires such compromises between what is right and what is necessary. But in the case of Moldova, the EU misjudged the forces at play and made a mockery out of its alleged commitment to a free society.

By European standards, Moldova today qualifies as a failed state. The country's average GDP per capita is only $250, with almost 30 percent of its four million citizens living below the poverty line. It is also one of the main sources of human trafficking on the continent and the break-away republic of Transdniester, which stretches between Moldova and the Ukraine, is a regional hub for money laundering and arms smuggling.

In the eyes of the disenchanted Moldovan youths, the victory of the Communist Party in the parliamentary elections held on April 5th signaled the continuity of this bleak horizon. In scenes familiar to Eastern Europe in 1989, thousands of protesters took over the Parliament building in the capital Chisinau and demanded a recount of the vote, which they claimed was rigged. The regime of outgoing President Vladimir Voronin - himself a former interior minister in the days when Moldova belonged to the Soviet Union - responded with a Soviet-style crackdown. Over 200 people have been beaten and jailed, some without access to lawyers. The body of 23-year old student Valeriu Boboc was returned to his parents covered with bruises and journalist Natalia Morar, one of the key planners of the anti-communist demonstrations, went into hiding after being placed under house arrest. Ten other journalists have been threatened or arrested by the Moldovan authorities. Backed by the Russian government, President Voronin accused Romania of plotting a coup against him, expelled the Romanian ambassador from Chisinau and reintroduced visas for Romanian citizens.

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