What happened after the Orange Revolution?
I talked today to a friend of mine from the Ukraine who is heartbroken over what is going on in her country now. Yes, Viktor Yuschenko was elected President in December 2004 (”he was so handsome, you know, before he was poisoned”). But then the people in the densely populated pro-Russia south voted in a Prime Minister who was also sympathetic to Russia. It had been a very cold winter with great shortages of oil for heat, and enough people went along that the Ukraine ended up with a split government.
Yuschenko, in my friend's eyes, has no power. My friend is deeply worried about the corruption and lawlessness of present-day Ukraine. “It is such a beautiful country,” she said, “but we have had so many decades of corruption, and maybe our expectations were too high after 2004. We need to move slowly, step by step, towards a better life.” My friend's dearest dream is that the Ukraine will join NATO. She despises Russia.
A group of researchers made a study tour to Ukraine recently under the auspices of the 21st Century Trust, and they're blogging about what they've learned here. It's well worth reading — Ukraine isn't getting much coverage in US newspapers.
One of the researchers, and I suspect the instigator of the blog, is Maria Farrell, a very skilled ICANN policy person who likes to do these sorts of things on her days off.