The governing coalition in Ukraine collapsed yesterday in a crisis brought on by Russia’s war with Georgia, raising the prospect of the country being knocked off its pro-Western course.
“I officially announce the collapse of the coalition of democratic forces,” parliament speaker Arseny Yatsenyuk told lawmakers.
“I would not call this an apocalypse. It is a challenge for democracy, but I hope we will overcome this challenge together,” he said.
Less than four years after Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko joined together in the “Orange Revolution” against a Moscow-backed presidential candidate, their political marriage lies in tatters.
Tensions between them came to a head last month following Russia’s war with Georgia, with Yushchenko’s allies accusing Tymoshenko of “high treason” for not supporting Georgia enough. Tymoshenko rejected the charge, saying she is no Kremlin ally.
Meanwhile, European officials have warned Ukraine could be the next target for interference by Russia because of the high proportion of Russian-speakers and tensions over Russia’s Black Sea fleet, based in southern Ukraine.
Yushchenko is now expected to resign and start trying to build a new coalition, possibly with the pro-Russian Regions Party, which is led by Orange Revolution loser and former prime minister Viktor Yanukovych.
Tymoshenko is expected to continue functioning as prime minister until the formation of a new Cabinet, which must happen within 30 days. After that date, Yushchenko can call new elections.
The political crisis began when Yushchenko pulled his Our Ukraine party out of the coalition on Sept. 3 after Tymoshenko sided with the pro-Moscow opposition to pass new laws trimming the president’s powers.
Yushchenko bitterly described the vote against him as a bid by Tymoshenko to establish a “dictatorship” and complained of a parliamentary “coup.”
Tymoshenko in turn accused the president of having “destroyed” the governing coalition by pulling out of the alliance with her party.
Fresh parliamentary elections would be the third such vote in two years for Ukraine.
Tymoshenko and Yushchenko were the icons of the 2004 Orange Revolution and have each been considered Western-leaning politicians despite persistent and sharp disagreements on domestic issues.
The political crisis comes ahead of a key presidential election due next year or in 2010, which is expected to pit Yushchenko against both Tymoshenko and Yanukovych and will be closely watched in Western capitals. The crisis has also set back Ukraine’s NATO and EU aspirations.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema