Presidential chief of staff Viktor Baloha last week led a breakaway faction from the Our Ukraine party in an apparent bid to open a new front in the power struggle between President Viktor Yushchenko and his erstwhile Orange ally PM Yulia Tymoshenko. Baloha’s decision to unilaterally move against the alliance that formed the bedrock of the Orange parties’ 2007 election campaign is one more example of the contempt he and many Ukrainian politicians display for public opinion and the will of the electorate More

President Viktor Yushchenko visited his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy last week to discuss a new French blueprint for an Association Agreement which could pave the way for greater Ukrainian EU integration, with Paris said to be keen on pushing the pact’s political chapter through at an EU-Ukraine summit planned for September, when France will hold the rotating EU presidency More

Next Sunday Vladimir Putin will hand the Russian presidency over to his anointed successor and take up his seat behind the throne as prime minister and de facto national leader. Critiques of his eight years in office will inevitably focus on the march towards authoritarianism and restoration of Russian national pride, but any objective history of his reign will also credit Putin as the Kremlin leader who lost Ukraine More

Ukraine is attracting record levels of foreign investment, making progress in its EU integration bid and posting impressive economic grow stats, but the country remains saddled with a judiciary undermined by allegations of corruption. Will the new Orange coalition be willing and able to reform what is one of Ukraine’s most troubling sectors? More