Ukraine will hold parliamentary elections on Sunday. From the AP:
- Opinion polls show no party will get a majority, which means Ukraine’s future government will be determined by who joins in a coalition. A strong showing would give [Yulia Tymoshenko] the upper hand in talks aimed at restoring the partnership known as the Orange Team, which shattered in September when President Viktor Yushchenko accused Tymoshenko of betraying the revolution and fired her as prime minister.
Yushchenko needs Tymoshenko if he hopes to keep the Orange Team alive, but many analysts have predicted that he might find it more palatable to unite with [Viktor] Yanukovych, whose fraud-marred victory in presidential elections sparked the 2004 protests. Yushchenko and Yanukovych have strong ideological differences, but not the personal hatred that seems to have built up between the one-time Orange allies.
For those of you who may have forgotten – it seems like only yesterday Kiev was the center of the blogiverse – Yanukovych is the one-time Hitler of the Week who supposedly tried to assassinate Yushchenko.
UPDATE 3/24: A reader says that Yanukovych was not accused of anything. Formally, no. But the implication in the Western media at the time was pretty clear. From the London Times (December 2004):
- Proof that Mr Yushchenko was deliberately poisoned would be a devastating blow for his rival, the Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych, as the two candidates prepare for a repeat of a presidential run-off on December 26.
It would raise questions about whether the poisoning was ordered by Mr Yanukovych, his allies, or even the Kremlin, which fears that Mr Yushchenko will take Ukraine out of its sphere of influence by joining Nato and the EU.
Mr Yushchenko had said recently that he would soon reveal proof that his opponents had tried to assassinate him, but a spokeswoman said he had no plans to travel to Vienna.
Frankly, I have about as much interest in the poisoning itself as the average Ukrainian has in the McKinley assassination. I just find the events of the last year and a half to be an interesting challenge to the monolithic Orange Revolution narrative we Westerners were fed.