Ukraine

Last week I talked about a few stories from 2009 that didn’t receive the attention that perhaps they should have. This week I’ll take a look forward and discuss a few of the events likely to shape global politics in 2010.  
 

It’s winter in Europe, time for snow, St. Nicholas, and the annual Russia-Ukraine dispute over natural gas supplies. On Wednesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned his counterparts in Ukraine not to try to modify a 10-year gas supply contract between the two countries.

It was all suppose to turn out so differently.  The Orange Revolution, was suppose to be the birth of a true and lasting democracy in Ukraine, a peaceful uprising in late 2004 against what were widely seen as rigged presidential elections.  Tens of thousands of Ukrainians took to Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (“Independence Square”) and in similar places around the country with a simple demand – to have their votes fairly counted.  A young, Western-leaning president was swept into office in what has held up as an example of people power to all the pseudo-democracies o