Strangely enough, the long-awaited political event that happened last week came as a bolt from the blue, especially to those who had been working the hardest for it. The scared leaders put up a brave front, trying to make everyone believe that it was all in their plans.

This year the question of Ukraine’s ability to adequately respond to internal and external challenges arose in a new aspect. The events in South Ossetia posed a new question: is Ukraine able to defend itself if confronted with a military threat?

Since the collapse of the USSR and the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has passed through three defining moments of statehood.   The most significant of these moments was the establishment of Ukraine as an independent state.

"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. 

A meeting with Volodymyr Ohryzko, Foreign Minister of Ukraine, opens a series of ZN interviews with the new Cabinet members.

All summits, which EU held with third countries, including the EU – Ukraine summit, testify to the fact that even in its current state the European Union is an important international partner.

It is doubtful that Solana arrived in Kyiv with the sole purpose of receiving the award from Viktor Yushchenko: he must have had other priorities in mind, especially in the light of the upcoming informal EU energy summit in Finland.

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.

Last autumn, the Kachinski brothers - Lech and Jaroslaw - started writing a new page of Polish history as soon as the rightists won the parliamentary and presidential elections.

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.

ALEXANDER BORISENKO

VADIM KARASYOV

We should not discuss the theology issues and the relations within the Orthodox Church. We should discuss the celebration of the 1,020th anniversary of the acceptance of Christianity by Rus where there was a complicated political intrigue.

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.

VADIM KARASYOV

The ruling elites consider Ukraine’s joining the WTO to be an important step and a serious foreign-policy victory. The point is that Ukraine is the first of the strong post-Soviet  economies that managed to join the WTO, although the process was not trouble-free. As to such WTO members as Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Georgia, their economies are insignificant and, above all, they have not pretended to play an important role in the WTO.

ARNAUD DUBIEN

An impression of the recent visits of Viktor Yanukovych to Berlin (February 28, 2007) and Viktor Yushchenko to Brussels (March 8-9, 2007) is that the EU – Ukraine relations are at a complete standstill.

VADIM KARASYOV

Our Ukraine is tired of the vague policy pursued by Viktor Yushchenko. When in the opposition, the party can act more independently and self-confidently in the political scene.

IGOR BURAKOVSKY

Ukraine’s movement towards the EU, NATO and WTO was proclaimed under presidency of Leonid Kuchma. The last Ukraine-EU summit shows that Ukraine’s foreign policy priorities have not been changed. The summit has become a routine meeting. Nobody is going to review priorities. However, some significant points of the summit are worth mentioning.

YAROSLAV ROMANCHUK

The EU has refused to give Ukraine the status of a country with market economy. At the same time, the European Union officials made the decision to simplify the visa regime for the Ukrainian citizens. Why did Ukraine fail to obtain the status? The Belarusian economist Yaroslav ROMANCHUK answered this question.

It seems that after the conflict with Georgia all we need is to clash with Ukraine. A lot of politicians both in Russia and Ukraine would definitely like it to happen. Caucasian crisis resulted in a new quarrel over Sevastopol, this time provoked by the Ukrainian side.

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.

Georgia has resolutely condemned Russia’s actions in Chechnya. Russia has severely criticized NATO actions towards Serbia. Later on the Georgian authorities tried to do the same thing in South Ossetia as the Russian authorities had done in Chechnya. Moscow decided to treat Georgia in the same way as NATO had treated Serbia.

On Friday, July 25, the Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement in which it noted that "events dedicated to the 1,020th anniversary of the acceptance of Christianity by Rus are being held in Kyiv in an atmosphere of disrespect toward the Russian Orthodox Church and the feelings of millions of Orthodox believers in Russia and Ukraine."

Remember the shell game, in which the unsuspecting player is challenged to follow a little ball with his eyes as it rolls from under one shell to the next with lightning speed? When the game operator finally stops, the player is asked to guess which shell the ball lies under in order to win a prize. However, in most cases, the operator has already managed to slip the ball into his own hands, thereby making any guess by the player a losing one.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has lost a lot since the heady days of his country’s Orange Revolution – executive power (due to constitutional changes), voter support (due to endless infighting) and international prestige (for lack of reform). More recently, his reputation as a martyr for democracy has also come under threat.

If there is one thing that has been hard to change in independent Ukraine, it's the country's image. Maybe that's why Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who has seen his own near demigod image from the 2004 Orange Revolution reduced to that of a mere man desperate to be re-elected, is so keen on successfully hosting the European football championship in 2012.

Last weekend saw the visit of Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to Moscow, where she met with Vladimir Putin for the first time since he went from being Russia’s president to heading his country’s government. During the joint press conference both premiers chose their words carefully, demonstrating the sensitivity of current Russian-Ukrainian relations.

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.

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 motivation of Ukrainian businessmen with influence if not seats in parliament to keep out foreign competition should not be underestimated. One need only do a quick cost comparison of what consumers are forced to pay in the Ukrainian capital for food, clothing, mobile communications, etc. in order to guess what kind of profits are at risk from a freer market.

When EU leaders visited Kyiv on September 14 for the annual Ukraine-EU Summit, they didn't say a lot that was new. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, their host, also stuck to his usual, pro-Western rhetoric. Nevertheless, taking place just two weeks before Ukraine's fateful, early parliamentary elections, the summit served as a nice sounding board.

If the EU is having trouble finding a common language with the Kremlin, what does this mean for Ukraine, which continues to awkwardly straddle the east-west divide in search of stability? Friday’s Russia-EU summit in Samara was supposed to address touchy issues like human rights and energy supplies. But judging by the press conference held thereafter, both sides agreed not to agree.