I fear that in the U.S., too few understand the political and psychological problems of the Russians after the collapse of the USSR, the phantom pains of millions, and the problems of a massive country whose capital is nearly as close to Washington as to Vladivostok.

Barack Obama's election may have prompted celebrations from Chicago to Nairobi. But in Tbilisi, it was disappointment that carried the day, with many Georgians ruefully contemplating what John McCain's defeat would mean for them.

A Gallup Poll found a strong majority of Ukrainians (65%) saying their leadership is taking the country in the wrong direction and only about one in six (16%) expressing confidence in their national government.

The lecture by Steven Pifer, Visiting Fellow of the Brookings Institution, on Russia's interests and influence in modern world and the ways for the U.S. government to reach the point in this key bilateral relationship.

The Bucharest summit was anything but the failure portrayed by some of the media. There was concrete progress in a number of crucial areas, including Afghanistan, NATO enlargement, and missile defense.

Interview with Volodymyr Ohryzko, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

President Islam Karimov attended the NATO summit in Bucharest on April 2-4, and offered pact members the use of Uzbek territory as an overland route for supplying non-military material to Afghanistan.

"NATO has always taken Russia into account when considering the modalities of enlargement, the timing of it and the likely consequences of it. But it has never granted Russia a veto over this process or a role to play in it," James Sherr. 

Days before the NATO summit in Bucharest began, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili rolled out a new peace initiative for breakaway Abkhazia.

Speaking today at NATO's summit in Bucharest, Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the alliance wants to welcome Ukraine and Georgia as members someday.

Georgian voters will have to answer a question if Georgia should become a member of NATO at the January 5th plebiscite, which will be held alongside the presidential poll.

Kyiv actually dreamed of being invited to join the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) at the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. Yet it was not the alliance’s fault that it did not happen once again, despite numerous favorable conditions.

ALEXANDER RONDELI

The decision of the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting not to allow Georgia to join NATO Membership Action Plan did not surprise Tbilisi or anybody else. Georgia has received an annual plan for 2009, but its substance is not known. 

SERGEI ROGOV

Barack Obama is an outstanding policy-maker. He was considered to be a classical marginal politician, who had nothing to do with the U.S. political establishment and who was not taken seriously. But he felt that the U.S. voters expected changes.

MARIA YULIKOVA

Two months of blaming rhetoric between Russia and the US leaders, prompted by the August Caucasus crisis, nearly annihilated all the diplomatic achievements in the relationships between the two countries of the current millennium, and caused frustration among the diplomats on both sides.

DMITRY TRENIN, ALEXEI ARBATOV

According to Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev, the armed conflict between Georgia and Russia has changed the world. This may be an exaggeration, but in fact the war has changed the Russian foreign policy, it deeply influences Russia’s economy and Moscow's relations with the West and the New Independent States.

ROGER N MCDERMOTT

Current re-engagement between the U.S., NATO and Uzbekistan may be characterised as officially cautious and low key.

ALEKSANDR RAHR

The USA, where the presidential election campaign goes full swing, tries to take the toughest possible line with Russia. In many respects that is why some American government officials seek to support Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili.

VLADIMIR CHIZHOV

The outcome of the extraordinary EU summit held on September 1 in Brussels was more or less predictable, both in terms of the views expressed by the EU member states and in terms of the EU Presidency conclusion.

GEORGETA POURCHOT

The current Russian military operation in Georgia marks the beginning of the end for Georgian sovereignty. The peace deal brokered by France contains the seeds of further chipping away at Georgian territory.

VITALY PORTNIKOV

The holding of “Sea Breeze” military exercises and Ukraine’s joining NATO should be regarded as two different processes. Some people want to unite them, but Kyiv has not applied for the NATO membership yet. Ukraine has not received the NATO Membership Action Plan and, apparently, will not recieve it in December.

KONSTANTIN ZATULIN, ALEXANDER KONOVALOV, TATYANA PARKHALINA, OLES DONIY, LEONID KOZHARA, IVAN ZAETS, ANDREW KUCHINS

"Why do the Central and Eastern European countries seek to join NATO? For many of them it is a way to join the EU. Many countries took this as institutionalization of independence from Moscow. For many countries it was a way to return to Europe," Tatyana Parkhalina.

STEPHEN BLANK

In advance of NATO’s Bucharest summit Russia has decided to employ the traditional Soviet tactics of intimidation and blackmail to block NATO’s enlargement.

GEORGETA POURCHOT

The Bucharest NATO summit offers a significant possibility that NATO’s and Russia’s positions on a variety of issues will further diverge, marking the beginning of the end of this uneven relationship.

GEORGETA POURCHOT

Eurasian Home website with a kind permission of the Greenwood Publishing Group Inc., publishes the first chapter "Sovereignity from Within" of the book "Eurasia Rising: Democracy and Independence in the Post-Soviet Space" by the Eurasian Home website contributor Georgeta Pourchot.

VYACHESLAV IGRUNOV

One of the major issues directly concerning the relations between Russia and NATO is the Alliance’s enlargement and accession of new members, the former Soviet republics (Ukraine and Georgia) to the Alliance.

MERAB PACHULIA

Ambitions of the Georgian authorities to develop cooperation with NATO are largely supported by the population. There is a consensus on the benefits that the country could receive after acquiring membership of the Alliance, though contradictions remain.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

Members of the “National Forum” and some other opposition parties fear that Georgia may join NATO without Abkhazia and South Ossetia, thus losing those territories for good.

GEORGETA POURCHOT

NATO’s most recent informal summit in Sophia underscores a decade and a half of balancing act between two former adversaries, the North Atlantic Alliance and Russia.

A report recently released by U.S. intelligence agencies predicts that American influence on the global stage will diminish over the next 15 years, as the rise of powers such as China, India and other third-world giants creates a more multi-polar planet. So where does Ukraine fit into this scenario?

The buzz over the election of America's first black president, Barack Obama, continues unabated. Fresh faced, eloquent and from a modest background, his 'story' sells well just about everywhere. But being liked so much for doing so little is a little like being king for a day, secretly hoping that the reality of tomorrow never has to come.

The 2008 U.S. presidential-election campaign has been watched with much anticipation, both at home and abroad. There’s a woman vice president on the Republican ticket, and an African-American being fielded by the Democrats for the nation’s top job. Whichever party wins, history will be made.

In Transcarpathia, near the Ukrainian village of Delovoe, there are three geodetic signs indicating the geographic center of the European subcontinent. The first sign was put up in 1887 under Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. The second one was set up by the members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The third one was put up in the first years of Ukraine’s independence after the Soviet Union had collapsed.

Since 1991, Ukraine has sat on the fence like a country coquette with her back to her jealous ex-husband Russia, from which the country’s ‘elite’ have nevertheless continued to get rich on cheap gas, while batting her eyes at the glamorous West, which offers lots of nice gifts but never a firm proposal of marriage.

The typical criticism of the UK’s Foreign Office is the one eloquently expressed in John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener - that they are pitiless practitioners of real-politik who care more about stability than idealism, and who only really work to protect the interests of British corporations, rather than British values. But on Russia, the Foreign Office seems to have erred on the other side.

The Russian foreign policy boringly runs around in circles: the row with Estonia on the historic past, the squabbles between Moscow and Kyiv over the Crimea and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the confrontation with Georgia because of its breakaway republics etc. After having made a full circle we are back to square one - another conflict with Georgia.

If NATO can bring Ukrainians rule of law and a decent living standard, it would already have justified its expansion. But judging by the way other Western reforms have been perverted in Ukraine, one couldn’t be blamed for having serious doubts. Probably with more candidness, Mr. Yushchenko pointed out that Ukraine can join any international organization that it likes.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and his one-time ally Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko have increasingly traded blows over the country’s budget, privatization, energy policy and, most recently, the Kyiv mayoral elections; however, when it comes to foreign policy, the two politicians who rose to power during Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution show unusual and possibly even unintended solidarity.

NATO leaders arrived for their summit in Bucharest last week in an atmosphere of uncertainty bordering on mistrust. Outgoing US president George Bush continued to push for the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance, while European heavyweights Germany and France voiced the opposition of older member states to further eastern expansion.

The issue of whether Ukraine should join NATO has returned to the public agenda, sparking off heated debates between supporters and opponents of the country’s bid. In the past, such polemics have usually meant proponents of Euro-Atlantic unity coming under attack by pro-Russian factions in the run up to an important election or a NATO-sponsored military exercise on home soil.

To be or not to be a member of NATO – that is the question for Ukrainians, who still aren’t in a position to decide the issue. Public opinion polls conducted in the country continue to show that most Ukrainians are against joining the Western military alliance. But advocates of NATO membership  insist that Ukrainians have not been given an accurate picture of what the alliance is about.

I was at the first US-Ukrainian conference in Boston last week. The first speaker, a former US National Security Council wonk named John Tedstrom, was particularly excited about Ukraine’s move to join NATO, which at the moment looks more realizable than its other ambition to join the EU. NATO accession, said Tedstrom, would help anchor Ukraine in a trans-Atlantic-focused foreign policy.