The Georgian crisis has had an immediate effect on the politics of another Black Sea state which wants to join NATO and the EU – Ukraine. As discussed in the last Digest, there has been a bitter falling-out between the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, and the country’s Prime Minister, Julia Timoshenko. Now that falling out has translated into a collapse in the coalition between the two leaders respective parties. The cause of the crisis was the failure of Timoshenko’s government to criticise Russia over Georgia. Yushchenko immediately turned with even greater fury on his former ally, accusing her of mounting a “coup” against him because her party voted with Viktor Yanukovich’s Party of the Regions to reduce the powers of the presidency. (Much Ukrainian politics in recent years has consisted in a struggle for power between the Presidency and the government.) Now there is talk of a parliamentary coalition and government being formed by Timoshenko and Yanukovich, the man who lost the presidential election to Yushchenko in 2004. [Handelsblatt & other papers, 3 September 2008]
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